Ecological research and practice are crucial to understanding and guiding more positive relationships between people and ecosystems. However, ecology as a discipline and the diversity of those who ...call themselves ecologists have also been shaped and held back by often exclusionary Western approaches to knowing and doing ecology. To overcome these historical constraints and to make ecology inclusive of the diverse peoples inhabiting Earth's varied ecosystems, ecologists must expand their knowledge, both in theory and practice, to incorporate varied perspectives, approaches and interpretations from, with and within the natural environment and across global systems. We outline five shifts that could help to transform academic ecological practice: decolonize your mind; know your histories; decolonize access; decolonize expertise; and practise ethical ecology in inclusive teams. We challenge the discipline to become more inclusive, creative and ethical at a moment when the perils of entrenched thinking have never been clearer.
Ultimately, this volume is another brick in Wilson's ongoing project to build an alternative understanding of human social evolution through his particular lens of group-level selection as a driving ...force of evolution that overrides individual-level selection. ...The Neighborhood Project is an ambitious mix of many elements pulled together to service a grand vision. (Where have we heard that before?) Wilson eloquently recounts the serendipitous connections in the "pinball machine of life" that led him to study the city of Binghamton as a single organism shaped by the same evolutionary processes that have been observed in other organisms, as exemplified in his parables of the water strider, the wasp, and the human immune system.\n The parable of the crows provides some insight into the challenges other organisms face in dealing with or adapting to human habitats such as cities, although the emphasis remains on the implications for the evolution of social groups.
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We present evidence that there can be substantial variation in species richness in residential areas differing in their socioeconomic and cultural characteristics. Many analyses of the impacts of ...urbanization on biodiversity rely on traditional “urban-to-rural” gradient measures, such as distance from urban center or population density, and thus can fail to account for the ways in which human socioeconomic and cultural characteristics are shaping the human–environment interaction and ecological outcomes. This influence of residential values and economic resources on biodiversity within the urban matrix has implications for human quality of life, for urban conservation strategies, and for urban planning.
Citizen science, also known as participatory research, combines the efforts of professional researchers and community volunteers to collect data. We have established one such collaborative project in ...eastern North Carolina, near the 79,000-acre Hofmann Forest, called the Hofmann Open-Water Laboratory (HOWL) citizen science project. The White Oak River, New River, and Trent River all flow out of the Hofmann. The Hofmann is an ecological keystone in the region, acting as a natural filtration system for harmful runoff that occurs in the coastal plain of North Carolina. Our purposes for this study were twofold: (a) to evaluate the HOWL project by assessing the perceptions of HOWL participants and determining whether the project achieved its goals of individual development and community engagement and (b) to provide recommendations for the HOWL project as well as suggestions for other participatory research projects in their beginning phases. We interviewed 12 HOWL citizen scientists who participated in the project, and we drew two major conclusions from our research. First, we recognized that community engagement and collaboration drastically increased in rural eastern North Carolina due to the community members’ participation in water monitoring and natural resource management. Second, citizen scientists achieved their personal goals and objectives by participating in the HOWL project: Participants reported that they learned new skills, gained knowledge of scientific and research procedures, developed an attachment to their community and region, and acted as environmental stewards.
Urbanization presents novel challenges to native species by altering both the biotic and abiotic environment. Studies have attempted to make generalizations about how species with similar traits ...respond to urbanization, although existing results are idiosyncratic across cities and often fail to account for seasonality. Here, we present a comparative study in three US cities: Fresno, California; Tucson, Arizona; and Phoenix, Arizona. Using presence-absence data to define regional bird species pools and urban assemblages in non-breeding (winter) and breeding (spring) seasons, we tested whether urban avian assemblages were a random subset of regional assemblages on the basis of both traits and phylogeny, and whether urbanization was associated with homogenization among avian assemblages. We found evidence for non-random trait filtering into urban assemblages, including of diet guilds, migratory status, and primary habitat, but filtering differed across cities and seasons, being strongest for diet and in Fresno. There was no evidence for non-random phylogenetic-based filtering in urban avian assemblages. Dissimilarity in species and diet guild composition within each season was higher between cities than between regional species pools. These findings show the potential for biotic differentiation as opposed to homogenization as the outcome of environmental filtering processes operating on species traits across cities and seasons.
Avian species have the potential to serve as important reservoirs for the spread of pathogenic microorganisms. Here, we report the genome sequence of a drug-resistant strain of Bacillus pumilus, ...CB01, isolated from the feces of an American crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos.
Does replacing the term “citizen science” do more harm than good?
As the scientific community, like society more broadly, reckons with long-standing challenges around accessibility, justice, equity, ...diversity, and inclusion, we would be wise to pay attention to issues and lessons emerging in debates around citizen science. When practitioners first placed the modifier “citizen” on science, they intended to signify an inclusive variant within the scientific enterprise that enables those without formal scientific credentials to engage in authoritative knowledge production (
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). Given that participants are overwhelmingly white adults, above median income, with a college degree (
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,
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), it is clear that citizen science is typically not truly an egalitarian variant of science, open and available to all members of society, particularly those underrepresented in the scientific enterprise. Some question whether the term “citizen” itself is a barrier to inclusion, with many organizations rebranding their programs as “community science.” But this co-opts a term that has long referred to distinct, grassroots practices of those underserved by science and is thus not synonymous with citizen science. Swapping the terms is not a benign action. Our goal is not to defend the term citizen science, nor provide a singular name for the field. Rather, we aim to explore what the field, and the multiple publics it serves, might gain or lose by replacing the term citizen science and the potential repercussions of adopting alternative terminology (including whether a simple name change alone would do much to improve inclusion).
Increasingly, national funders, including the National Health and Medical Research Council, require grant applicants to provide evidence of Indigenous partnerships, including Indigenous leadership. ...SIEGLINDE SNAPP CHANGETHE REWARDSTRUCTURE Working for an international research organization that studies global food production, I think we, as an organization, need to change the reward structure. According to a 2021 study, only 16% of articles in high-profile developmentjournals were authored by researchers exclusively based in the global south; 73% of authors came from the global north (V. Ammarante et al. Most of the 13 agricultural gene banks and research centres in the global research partnership CGIAR, including CIMMYT, use the h-index for performance evaluations.
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Urbanization contributes to the loss of the world's biodiversity and the homogenization of its biota. However, comparative studies of urban biodiversity leading to robust generalities of the status ...and drivers of biodiversity in cities at the global scale are lacking. Here, we compiled the largest global dataset to date of two diverse taxa in cities: birds (54 cities) and plants (110 cities). We found that the majority of urban bird and plant species are native in the world's cities. Few plants and birds are cosmopolitan, the most common being Columba livia and Poa annua. The density of bird and plant species (the number of species per km2) has declined substantially: only 8% of native bird and 25% of native plant species are currently present compared with estimates of non-urban density of species. The current density of species in cities and the loss in density of species was best explained by anthropogenic features (landcover, city age) rather than by non-anthropogenic factors (geography, climate, topography). As urbanization continues to expand, efforts directed towards the conservation of intact vegetation within urban landscapes could support higher concentrations of both bird and plant species. Despite declines in the density of species, cities still retain endemic native species, thus providing opportunities for regional and global biodiversity conservation, restoration and education.
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