Recently in Biodiversity Category

Carol Yoon has a wonderful piece on the importance of taxonomy in the New York Times. You should definitely read the whole thing, but here are a few choice paragraphs to whet your appetite:

[T]he ordering and naming of life is no esoteric science. The past few decades have seen a stream of studies that show that sorting and naming the natural world is a universal, deep-seated and fundamental human activity, one we cannot afford to lose because it is essential to understanding the living world, and our place in it.

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[T]o order and name life is to have a sense of the world around, and, as a result, what one's place is in it.

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No wonder so few of us can really see what is out there. Even when scads of insistent wildlife appear with a flourish right in front of us, and there is such life always -- hawks migrating over the parking lot, great colorful moths banging up against the window at night -- we barely seem to notice. We are so disconnected from the living world that we can live in the midst of a mass extinction, of the rapid invasion everywhere of new and noxious species, entirely unaware that anything is happening. Happily, changing all this turns out to be easy. Just find an organism, any organism, small, large, gaudy, subtle -- anywhere, and they are everywhere -- and get a sense of it, its shape, color, size, feel, smell, sound. ... [L]uxuriate in its beetle-ness, its daffodility. Then find a name for it. Learn science's name, one of countless folk names, or make up your own. To do so is to change everything, including yourself. Because once you start noticing organisms, once you have a name for particular beasts, birds and flowers, you can't help seeing life and the order in it, just where it has always been, all around you.

The piece is adapted from Yoon's new book Naming Nature: The Clash between Instinct and Science. I haven't read the book, but I just ordered it for my Kindle. It looks as if it will be both a wonderful survey of the history of taxonomy and a wonderful example of how a skilled writer communicates science to a broad audience.

A couple of weeks ago I pointed out that there's a "name that species" competition going on. Well, the top seven finalists have now been named, and now's your chance to vote for your favorite. Be sure to read the accompanying explanations before you cast your vote, and check back at the YoS site to see which name is finally selected.

In 2006 a jellyfish stung a young girl swimming in the Caribbean. She went to the hospital, and it turned out that the jellyfish is a species that has not yet been described.

Now you have a chance to name it.

All you have to do is to visit the web site sponsored by COPUS and the Year of Science 2009, read a little more about the jellyfish, and submit a name that follows the rules of zoological naming (by the 14th of June¹), and your name may be the one selected for the new species.

If you don't want to pick a name, you can check back during the week of June 17th to June 21st to vote for your favorite among the scientists' top five. After June 23rd you can check back and find out which name was selected and read the paper in which the new species is described.

From Science Daily for April 16, 2009:

"I discovered the new species in 2007 while doing a survey for lichen diversity on Santa Rosa Island in California," said Kerry Knudsen, the lichen curator in the UCR Herbarium.¹ "I named it Caloplaca obamae to show my appreciation for the president's support of science and science education."

Here's a link to the original publication in Opuscula Philolichenum.

You don't normally think of the National Science Foundation as a major funder of agricultural research in the United States, or at least I don't.¹ Well, NSF announced a major change yesterday.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) today announced a nearly $50 million partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support innovative, solutions to critical agricultural challenges in developing countries. Each organization will provide $24 million over five years to support a competitive awards program for science research projects that address drought, pests, disease and other serious problems facing small farmers and their families who rely on their crops for their food and income.

The new program is called BREAD -- Basic Research to Enable Agricultural Development.

I mentioned the political unrest in Madagascar a couple of weeks ago because it caused one of my students to cancel her planned fieldwork on Erasanthe henrici this spring.(That's a photo of E. henrici to the left. Rather attractive, don't you think?) Since then the president (Ravalomanana) has been ousted by the former mayor of Antananarivo (Rajoelina), who is six years too young to serve as president according to the constitution. Rajoelina has suspended parliament, though he promises to hold new elections within two years. Over the last two days supporters of the former president have held protests in Antananarivo demanding that Ravalomanana be returned to office. Now they are threatening a tax boycott to ratchet up the pressure. It looks as if the situation is going to be unsettled for awhile.

And lawlessness is starting to spread to some of the national parks. Marojejy has been closed to tourism because of "the lawlessness that has descended over the ... region during this time of political unrest in Madagascar, and the resultant looting and destruction which is currently occurring within the park."

Both [Mireya] Mayor and [Patricia] Wright are also concerned about the long-term future of conservation in Madagascar.

Former President Ravalomanana had committed the Madagascan government to increasing protected areas on the island and had demonstrated a willingness to work with conservationists.

"Now," Mayor said, "we don't know what's going to happen.

Mayor has worked with primates in Marojejy, and Wright is a scientist and conservationist whose work focuses on Madagascar.

The Charles Darwin Foundation has compiled a checklist of all marine and terrestrial species known from the Galapagos Islands. You'll find six species of Geospiza, four of Sula, fifteen of Geochelone (including Geochelone darwini), and five of Darwinothamnus among many others. If you don't recognize those genera (and even if you do), head on over to the Darwin Foundation site and have a look.

You'll find the checklist at http://darwinfoundation.org/en/checklists/.

In developing any conservation plan, whether for a single species or for an entire ecosystem, we have to know what "success" would look like. After all, if we don't know where we're going, we'll probably end up somewhere else.

But how do we define success?

As I tell students in my conservation biology course, the definition of success we choose is at least as much an exercise in ethical or aesthetic values as it is an exercise in ecology. Scientific investigations can identify the consequences of different choices -- loss of sea ice in the Arctic unless global CO₂ emissions are controlled, extinction of Kirtland's warbler if young jack pine forests in northern Michigan are lost. But they can't tell us whether those consequences are desirable, undesirable, or indifferent. They can't tell us whether investing $X to protect jack pine forests is "worth it", given $X used to protect jack pines is $X not used to provide food and clothing to people who are unemployed. Protecting jack pines and feeding people are both worthy goals, and if those goals conflict, science can't tell us which is more important. It's a matter for ethical argument, not scientific experiment.

Why do I harp on so long about this? Because a couple of recent controversies in conservation illustrate the central role that ethical and aesthetic values play choosing conservation goals. In both cases the argument is less about scientific "facts", and more about the purposes of conservation.

Read a story about Paul Stamets in Conservation Magazine.