Ecological Education

Ecological education is the process of creating an ecological understanding or literacy whose dimensions and parameters have changed through time both in regard to and in relation with the development of ecology as a science and the needs the user/learner. As such, it should be seen as a fluid and dynamic system of learning and information chosen to suit the specific needs of the situation. In this context, ecological literacy is defined as giving the learner such information as to allow for sound, scientifically based decisions to be made about a given ecological situation or context. The scope of ecological education is vast—it ranges from the most specific and detailed knowledge for researchers to limited and general ideas in primary school education. Likewise, the avenues through which it is disseminated are equally diverse—from university to business to local citizen group. There are no widely agreed models of ecological education; however, a structural look at the topic suggests four elements (the first three of which are reported here). The first, agency, refers to the capacity of individuals to actively access, gain, and benefit from a study of ecology. Thus, age, interests, gender, education, prior experience, etc. all play a part in constructing and constraining the individual’s access to ecological knowledge. Second, these individuals then need to access educational opportunities, i.e., context. Scales from local to global and formal to informal encompass the wide range of options with schools, higher education, business, pressure groups, media, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) carrying the bulk of instructional work. Third, there is the content, namely, the actual ecological concepts seen as required learning for any given situation. This would range from a very general overview, as might be seen in a secondary school course, to highly specific and detailed information needed by a researcher. In addition, content could range from the most theoretical models through to applied ecology. All three elements are underpinned by a philosophy whose own roots are far from clear cut. At one level, standard positivist perspectives give way to far more phenomenological and structural ideas, such as queer theory, eco-feminism, and deep green ecology, that privilege and dictate the range of knowledge “permitted.” Finally, it is worth noting that Ecology as a term derives from the late 19th century. However, as an idea it can be traced back to Greek times if not before. Still, as a modern endeavor, it is best seen from the 1950s onward, as treated here.

Mass Effects

In the last two decades, community ecology has matured to consider biotic communities as a product of both local and regional processes. Therefore, local communities are currently thought to be connected by the dispersal of organisms, thereby forming a metacommunity. A metacommunity is organized by multiple processes, including environmental filtering, biotic interactions, dispersal, and ecological drift. Thus, spatial variations in local diversity (i.e., alpha diversity) and community composition (i.e., beta diversity) result from the relative roles of these major processes. In turn, these processes are mediated by organisms’ characteristics, environmental heterogeneity, and the connectivity between localities in a metacommunity. For a given environmental gradient, the role of environmental filtering is likely to be dependent on the dispersal rates shown by organisms. Unsuitable habitat patches (i.e., sinks), in terms of biotic and abiotic characteristics, may be occupied by different species due to high dispersal rates from suitable habitat patches (i.e., sources). Thus, mass effects occur when species are established at localities where their populations cannot be self-maintained. Even though it may be difficult to prove the action of mass effects per se, given the complex interactions between different mechanisms shaping biotic communities, there is some empirical evidence supporting their importance in nature. In addition, high dispersal rates that lead to mass effects may have important implications for biomonitoring and biodiversity conservation. This is because species occurring at sites beyond their niche requirements may provide false information about a site’s ecological quality or result in misleading plans to conserve species at sites where they cannot persist in the absence of continuous influx of propagules.

Ecology of the Atlantic Forest

Extending along the southern coast of Brazil, into Argentina and Paraguay, the Atlantic Forest is a domain that once covered 150 Mha and includes many distinct forest subtypes and ecosystems. Its large latitudinal (29˚) and altitudinal (0–2,800 m above sea level) range, as well as complex topography in the region, has created microclimates within forest subtypes, which has led to biodiversity specifically adapted to narrow ecological ranges. The region is incredibly species-rich and is home to charismatic or economically important species such as the black and golden lion tamarin, the red-browned Amazon parrot, and the highly prized palm heart from Euterpe edulis. Through widespread human-driven change dating back to the arrival of European settlers in 1500, this realm has been extensively reduced, fragmented, and modified. Nowadays, this region is home to about 130 million people (60 percent of the Brazilian population) and is responsible for producing 70 percent of Brazil’s GDP, putting a strain on natural resources and providing challenges to conservation. Due to its high levels of endemic species coupled with a high threat of habitat loss and fragmentation, the Atlantic Forest has been identified as a “biodiversity hotspot.” Numerous studies have assessed the effects of habitat transformation on biodiversity and the consensus is that the majority of species are negatively affected. It is puzzling however that few species have actually gone extinct in the wild, even if some extinctions might have gone undetected. Extinctions do not immediately follow habitat change, there is often a time lag of many decades between habitat transformation and extinction. This may suggest that many species in the Atlantic Forest are “living deads,” as despite their presence the available habitat no longer supports their requirements. It also suggests that there is a window of opportunity to restoring the domain to avert extinctions before they are realized. Current research and policy actions are geared toward optimizing restoration and increasing the extent of native forest cover, bringing hope to the conservation of this unique domain.

Plant Blindness

“Plant blindness” is the phrase introduced in an influential 1999 publication by James Wandersee and Elisabeth Schussler in connection with zoocentrism, initially in the context of biological education in the United States, but later addressed by researchers in a diversity of cultures. Wandersee and Schussler were much influenced by the psychology of perception and how it appeared to account for a general insensitivity to plants in the environment and dwindling understanding of the fundamental importance of plants for human survival and global ecology. The roots of plant blindness have been intensively analysed. Some studies conclude that it is an intrinsic trait, hardwired into human physiology and psychology. Others point to the consequences of historic trends in industrialization and urbanization and the progressive disconnection of people from the natural environment and primary sources of food, feed, fiber, and fuel. Much of the plant blindness literature confronts the need to remedy what it terms a specific condition, particularly at a time of climate and biodiversity crisis. Perhaps one of the challenges in this work is that those seeking to counteract plant blindness through education are often scientists or science educators who frequently perceive plant blindness as an ontological condition, which can be overcome by scientifically structured representations of plants using controlled vocabularies. But for those outside these communities plants are part of a worldview that is far more epistemological and thus the way plants enter, or fail to enter, an individual’s consciousness is constructed as a sociological event related to culture, experience, and environment. Understanding this is crucial if communicators and educators are to engage with the complexity of plant blindness effectively.

Secondary Production

Secondary production is the generation of new heterotrophic biomass and is analogous to net primary production of autotrophs. For an individual, secondary production is equivalent to the growth of new somatic or reproductive biomass over time. For a population, secondary production comprises the total formation of biomass, regardless of its fate, by all individuals within the population over a defined time interval. Some consider secondary production the ultimate measure of population ‘success’ because it incorporates aspects of survivorship, individual growth rate, biomass, development time, and reproduction. Secondary production is often associated with the subfield of ecosystem ecology because it is a flux with dimensions of mass or energy area-2 time-1. This flux is typically estimated with an ecological currency (e.g., joules, carbon, organic matter) that can be compared with other ecosystem processes such as primary production or decomposition. Secondary production estimates are thus useful for placing species, populations, and communities within a broader ecosystem context, and for facilitating the study of energy flows and ecological efficiencies in trophic interactions. The vast majority of secondary production estimates have come from freshwater and marine ecosystems, while there are very few studies in terrestrial ecosystems. In the aquatic studies, although early work was largely focused on fishes, most estimates are for benthic invertebrates; some studies have quantified production of zooplankton, bacteria, and fungi. Early studies of secondary production were focused on methodology and basic comparisons among populations or communities. More recent literature has expanded the application of secondary production toward broader ecological questions related to, for example, energy and chemical flows in food webs, species interaction strengths, and responses to anthropogenic stressors. This bibliography focuses on primary literature that highlights key historic, conceptual, theoretical, and applied papers related to secondary production. Papers highlighted herein are biased toward freshwaters and invertebrates because of their dominance in the literature, but key references that extend to other habitats and taxa are included.

Territoriality

Territoriality is a foundational concept in animal behavior and behavioral ecology. Territoriality is commonly defined as “the defense of an area,” wherein the area being defended is known as the “territory.” Territoriality serves as a framework that allows animal behaviorists and behavioral ecologists to describe and hypothesize links among diverse aspects of animals’ biology. The many facets and functions of territoriality include the acquisition of food, nest sites, and shelter, space-use and movement behavior, and interactions with mates and competitors. Thus, because territoriality encompasses behaviors that directly determine individuals’ survival and reproduction (i.e., their fitness), it offers a powerful approach to understanding the evolution of animal behavior. Territoriality has been used to describe animal behavior for many centuries, particularly in avian systems; conversely, many advances in how biologists conceive of and use territoriality have arisen in research on birds. Operational definitions of territory fall broadly into two categories—those that focus on animals’ behavior and those that focus on their ecological relationships. That said, the question of how to conceive of territory has long been a subject of contention, with widely varied opinions on how the term should be defined and whether and how it is useful for understanding animal behavior. Discussions and critiques of territoriality, from not only animal behavior and behavioral ecology but also from the social sciences, help to contextualize and sharpen how we use the concept to understand the evolution of animal behavior. Technological and statistical advances continue to change the ways in which territories are mapped and quantified, with different methods available for taxa of different sizes, habitats, and life histories. Research on territoriality can be divided into two large domains based on the function served by territory—foraging and mating—but these two functions are intimately linked through the socioecological hypothesis that proposes a relationship between resource distributions and mating systems. This hypothesis has served to structure much research on territoriality in the last half-century or so. Finally, territoriality is pertinent not just to within-species interactions but also to between-species interactions and species coexistence, with implications for macroecological and macroevolutionary patterns and processes.

Radioecology

Historically, radioecology is a branch of radiation biology that focuses on the movement of radionuclides through the biosphere and thereby affects ecological processes, but also the composition and the functioning of ecosystems. Modern radioecology has expanded to include studies of the consequences of radiation for biological processes (e.g., adaptation and evolution) and organismal, population, and ecosystem endpoints (Mothersill and Seymour 2012, cited under Bystander Effects). Radioecology is the scientific discipline focusing on how radioactive substances interact with nature, the mechanisms responsible for migration of such substances, and the uptake of radioactive substances in individuals, in the food chain that is composed of these individuals, and in ecosystems that are composed of the populations of these different species. Radioecological research may consist of field experiments to ensure biological realism in experiments, designed field and laboratory experiments, and the development of predictive simulation and population models. This interdisciplinary science combines aspects from basic biology; traditional scientific fields such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, and ecology; and applied aspects of radiation protection. Radioecological studies form the basis for estimating doses and assessing the consequences of radioactive pollution for the health of the environment, but ultimately also for all living organisms, including humans. While radiation may have broad-scale consequences for living beings, and for the future of the entire planet, radioecology constitutes, perhaps surprisingly, but a modest branch of research. We can most readily display this marginal role by listing the number of citations of scientific publications in radioecology and accompanying fields. The number of citations at Web of Science accessed 3 September 2018 in radioecology (179) is much smaller than other fields of biology, such as ecology (2,513,600), evolution (1,895,861), genomics (418,078), and genetics (6,351,551). This distribution of citations for different fields of biology, ecology, and radiation biology implies that radioecology is a young and marginal science, barely visible when compared with these other major fields. The number of citations (on Web of Science accessed 3 September 2018) for fifty scientists currently working in radioecology (with connections to radiation/radioactivity) was unevenly distributed with two scientists exceeding 30,000, eight scientists exceeding 3,000 citations, and the remaining scientists receiving less than 3,000 citations. This suggests that papers dealing with mature sciences published in general journals get citation scores as high as research in any other field. Finally, we provide a list of five fields of radioecology that potentially could be particularly productive and hence impact the distribution of overall citation scores within and among fields. Acknowledgments: We gratefully acknowledge Gennadi Milinevsky and Igor Chizhevsky for logistic support and help in organizing fieldwork in Ukraine, and Isao Nishiumi and Keisuke Ueda for help with field work in Fukushima. We received funding from the CNRS (France), the University of South Carolina, the Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust, and the US Fulbright Program to conduct our research.

Evolutionarily Stable Strategies

Evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS) are phenotypes that persist in populations over evolutionary time and cannot be replaced by invading strategies. Cases in which alternative strategies coexist stand as being of particular interest. Evolutionary biologists were introduced to the concept of ESS through the efforts of John Maynard Smith and George R. Price, whose work remains the keystone expression of this concept. Maynard Smith and Price dealt with animal conflicts, in which combatants may have differing strategies and physical abilities. The stability of evolutionary strategies is often analyzed using the tools of game theory, which allows determination of the persistence of strategies when played against one another. Game theory also opens the door to assessing the potential success of novel strategies upon introduction into a population. ESS often coincide with the Nash equilibrium, a game theory concept that describes conditions under which cognitively aware players in a game cannot gain by changing their individual strategy. In addition to animal conflict, analyses of ESS have been applied in a wide variety of evolutionary contexts and indeed are applicable whenever alternative heritable phenotypes are present. One possibility is that ESS occur as alternative genotypes within populations and thus should be analyzed using population-genetic approaches. ESS can also be conditionally expressed by individuals, depending on environmental and social context. This second option also requires a genotypic basis for strategies but allows for more strategical complexity through responses that may shift over developmental time or with experience. Interspecific interactions are an additional context for ESS, in which ESS drive evolutionary arms races between predators and prey or hosts and diseases or parasites. Maynard Smith and Price built on a conceptual framework in evolutionary ecology developed by William D. Hamilton in studies of kin selection, sex ratios, and herding behavior, and by Geoff Parker, working on sperm competition. ESS offer convenient latticework for thinking about many ecological and evolutionary trade-offs in which organisms balance costs and benefits of potential strategic choices in development and behavior, either in within-generation decision-making or between-generation evolution.

Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is a concept that has quickly risen to prominence both in academic work and in policymaking at all levels, particularly since 1987 when the World Commission on Environment and Development, better known as the Brundtland Commission, released its report promoting this approach. The report defines sustainable development as development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” and states that “the concept of sustainable development does imply limits—not absolute limits but limitations imposed by the present state of technology and social organization on environmental resources and by the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities. But technology and social organization can be both managed and improved to make way for a new era of economic growth.” The thinking behind the concept extends back for decades before the Brundtland Report, particularly since the early 1970s with rapid rise of what is known as “sustainability science,” although the term “sustainable development” was not coined until 1980. Sustainable development owes much of its political attractiveness to its vagueness, allowing hundreds of countries to sign onto international agreements that endorse the concept without fear that their development plans will be constrained. This advantage, of course, is linked to the disadvantage of allowing a “green” discourse to be used to promote just about any imaginable activity, no matter how damaging. Even countries importing toxic waste from the rest of the world claimed that they were practicing “sustainable development,” the Marshall Islands being the best known. The bibliography that follows presents some of the evolution of the concept of sustainable development and its scientific underpinnings. Two processes have proceeded in parallel: the political process of sustainable development that began with the Brundtland Report in 1987 and was extended by the United Nations (UN) Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 and the scientific process that evolved autonomously in response to the vagueness of the Brundtland definition. The sequence of international agreements associated with sustainable development has led this concept to permeate the planning of actions by governments and other entities throughout the world. Current application focuses on the seventeen sustainable development goals, or SDGs, which were agreed at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in 2015, together with their 230 individual indicators and 169 targets. A clear example of the challenge of moving sustainable development beyond a role as a greenwashing discourse is offered by the Climate Convention. The Kyoto Protocol requires that all projects in the Clean Development Mechanism contribute to sustainable development, and in 1997 when the Protocol was signed this was seen as a way to prevent climate-mitigation projects from causing untoward social and environmental impacts. However, it was later decided that there would be no international standards defining what constitutes sustainable development, and it would be left up to each country to decide for itself whether proposed projects in the country met that country’s own criteria. A Designated National Authority (DNA) in each country would certify that each project represents sustainable development, with the result that projects are virtually never blocked on this basis. In Brazil, a dramatic example is the Teles Pires Dam, which was certified as “sustainable development” and now receives clean development mechanism carbon credit. The Munduruku indigenous people near the dam were never consulted, as required by International Labor Organization Convention 169 and by Brazilian Law. In 2013 the tribe’s most sacred site was fist dynamited and then flooded. This was the Sete Quedas rapids, which is where the spirits of respected tribal elders go after death—equivalent to heaven for Christians.

Vicariance Biogeography

Vicariance biogeography seeks geo-physical explanations for disjunct distributions of organisms. Optimally, vicariance hypotheses are tested on the basis of the comparison of unrelated lineages of organisms that share geographic arenas. The fundamental approach is to marry geology and biology in the study of current and historical patterns of biodiversity. As a science, vicariance biogeography grew out of a synthesis of Alfred Wegener’s continental drift as realized by the plate-tectonic mechanism, Léon Croizat’s track analyses, and Willi Hennig’s phylogenetic systematics into a discipline with more readily testable hypotheses than those from classical dispersal biogeography. Vicariance biogeography, at the time of its emergence in the mid-1960s, offered a common explanation for many of the most puzzling disjunct-distribution patterns across the globe. From the 1960s to the early 21st century, vicariance biogeography dominated the field, marginalizing inquiries into geographic distributions on the basis of dispersal explanations, in part because center-of-origin ideas had fallen into disrepute. However, with the realization that vicariance hypotheses fail to explain an array of biogeographic patterns, including both isolated biotas on oceanic islands and many groups spread over previously connected landmasses, dispersal’s role in disjunct distributions of living things has been resurrected. The current consensus is that both processes play key roles in shaping the distribution of organisms through time.