Author: Leon

Dean R. Lomax is an internationally recognized palaeontologist, author, television presenter, and science communicator. He is currently a visiting scientist at the University of Manchester and is a leading authority on ichthyosaurs. He is due to publish a remarkable popular science book, Locked in Time, that looks at what the fossil record can tell us about behaviours of extinct animals by way of fifty remarkable examples. Leading up to publication, we reached out to Dean and asked him some questions.

Could you tell us a little about your background and where the motivation for this book came from?

My passion for palaeontology stems from my childhood fascination with everything dinosaur. In high school, I was not very gifted academically and my grades were not good enough to attend university so at the age of 18 I ended up selling my possessions – including my cherished Star Wars collection(!) – to help fund a trip to excavate dinosaurs at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in the USA. That trip changed my life and formed the backbone of my career. Not only did it provide me with the necessary experience I needed to help build a career in palaeontology, but it is where the idea for Locked in Time originated. Whilst looking at the museum displays, one particularly outstanding fossil caught my eye. A trackway with its maker preserved at the very end – an animal that had literally been caught dead in its tracks. I had never seen anything like this fossil before, in books, in museums or in documentaries. This prehistoric story was preserved in time for all to see. I was hooked. It gave me that spark to discover more about prehistoric animals and their behaviours and I even ended up describing this particular fossil in the scientific literature.

In your introduction, you mention the field of palaeoethology (the study of fossils to infer behaviour). How big of a subfield is this in palaeontology? Are there specialised palaeoethologists, or is it more a case of palaeontologists contributing to this field whenever someone finds something?

Palaeoethology is a fascinating subject that allows us to explore the study of behaviours of extinct species through the evidence preserved in fossils. It is a small subfield of palaeontology, due mostly to the rarity of fossils with direct and reliable evidence of behaviours preserved. There aren’t necessarily any specialised palaeoethologists, but rather those palaeontologists who contribute to the field when something is found and described; however, palaeontologists may often be entirely unaware that they are actively contributing to the field because the idea of ethology/behaviour in the fossil record can easily be overlooked. Having said that, there are some palaeontologists that could easily add ‘palaeoethologist’ to their CVs, most notably those who work with amber which often preserve snapshots of behaviours in action. A real pioneer in the field of palaeoethology was Dr Arthur Boucot. He spent years searching for evidence of behaviours in prehistoric animals, writing numerous papers and academic monographs, and even introduced the term “frozen behaviour” for those instances where an extinct organism was preserved in the midst of some type of behaviour. Delving into his history and research was genuinely inspiring. As I have researched and published on multiple specimens and have written this book, I guess this probably qualifies me as a palaeoethologist too.

Ideas about behaviour are important to those who produce artwork depicting prehistoric lifeforms, i.e. palaeoartists. Do you find there is much of an exchange between palaeontologists and palaeoartists to try and depict behaviour in artwork according to the latest science?

The field of palaeoart has grown immensely over the last twenty years. In fact, several palaeoartists have become excellent scientists in their own right, including Bob Nicholls (the artist for this book), who has co-authored multiple scientific studies. Good palaeoartists stay informed of the latest scientific research and discoveries, with several often working very closely with palaeontologists to ensure their reconstructions are scientifically accurate. Subsequently, when based on the latest science, thoroughly researched palaeoart reconstructions are anatomically plausible. However, that said, practically all aspects of behaviour depicted in palaeoart are not based on direct evidence but assumptions. Usually, the best a palaeoartist can do is look at an extinct animal’s anatomy and environment and speculate about its lifestyle and behaviours. This is why fossilised evidence of behaviours, like those contained inside this book, are so precious and important to study and understand. These remarkable fossils tell us that prehistoric creatures were not movie monsters (prehistoric life, especially dinosaurs, are too often portrayed as roaring monsters!) but real animals that behaved in a variety of familiar and surprising ways.

What have technological advancements contributed to this line of inquiry? Are palaeontologists going back to old fossil material to reexamine them with new tools and finding new evidence of fossilised behaviour?

The use of flashy, high-tech computers, scanners and the like have helped to unlock an entirely new world of information contained in fossils. As a result, not only are newly discovered fossils subjected to this technology but much older fossil discoveries, where none of these technologies were previously available, can now be reanalysed with a fresh approach, breathing new life into old fossils as it were. This has led to some exciting discoveries of fossilised behaviours in specimens that have otherwise been deemed as having little to no research value.

Whether dinosaurs or early mammals, prehistoric organisms were faced with many of the same basic challenges as animals alive today. Has the fossil record revealed any examples of behaviours that were unique and now effectively extinct?

These types of questions are what get me excited about unravelling the mysteries of prehistoric behaviour. In many cases, “the present is the key to the past”, as geologist Charles Lyell famously introduced in the 1800s, and this definitely holds true with understanding behaviour. For example, on a basic level, we know that some groups of mammals live in herds today and that some extinct mammals also lived in herds millions of years ago (we have good fossil evidence for this). However, the natural world is filled with so many incredible acts of behaviour that you might expect the fossil record would reveal something unique. As such, perhaps one of the most unusual and apparently unique behaviours was recorded in an ancient roughly 430 million-year-old arthropod nicknamed the ‘kite runner’. The young of this arthropod were literally tethered to the parents via long spines. It appears to be the only known occurrence of this type of brooding behaviour known among fossil or living arthropods.

Rather than body fossils, past behaviour is often deduced from so-called trace fossils or ichnofossils. Nests, fossilised footprints, and trackways must be fairly easy to recognize. But what about the harder-to-identify traces? Do palaeontologists frequently encounter suspected ichnofossils where they don’t know who made them, how they were made, or perhaps even what they represent?

Yes, palaeontologists (or palaeoichnologists) frequently encounter mysterious trace fossils that are difficult or near impossible to identify or decipher. By their very definition, trace fossils represent evidence of behaviour, so we can say with confidence that an ancient animal made a nest, left its tracks or created a burrow, but they generally do not provide all of the tell-tale signs that allow us to identify what organism made it, how it was made or even what the trace might really represent. To find definite answers, we have to go a step further. In much rarer circumstances some trace fossils provide more than a ‘simple’ track or burrow and may be directly related with its maker, such that the body fossil is present inside the burrow or at the end of the track. In other examples, a track might show where the animal walked, stopped, sat down and then walked away, or a burrow might preserve evidence of scratch marks that could indicate how the burrow may have been constructed and by whom. These types of fossils provide much more information about specific moments (and behaviours) in deep time.

Were there any examples of fossilised behaviour that did not make the cut for this book but that you would have loved to include, or any noteworthy recent discoveries?

Having spent a substantial amount of time combing through hundreds of scientific papers and books, and examining specimens in museum collections, my initial plan was to tell the story of prehistoric behaviour through 100 fossils, rather than 50. It was incredibly tough selecting 100 fossils, so cutting this in half was much harder! I had to rank each of the fossils against one another, in terms of the type of behaviour, type of animal and so forth. This meant some really unusual specimens, like the aforementioned ‘kite runner’, did not make the final cut. One fossil that I would have really liked to include, and which has received worldwide media attention recently, is the so-called ‘Dueling Dinosaurs’ fossil, which appears to preserve a Tyrannosaurs and Triceratops locked in combat. I opted not to include the specimen as it has yet to be formally described, although I do make some subtle references to it. I’m very excited to see what research is revealed from this fossil, especially as only one fighting dinosaur fossil has been described, which inspired the book’s cover.

Finally, what are some of the biggest unanswered questions when it comes to fossilised behaviour? What would you love to find?

There are so many ancient groups and species that it would be easy for me to rattle off a list of some of the biggest unanswered questions about fossilised behaviour, but the reality is that we have only really scratched the surface. We have so much to learn when it comes to fossilised behaviour. After all, inferring and attempting to understand behaviour in long-extinct organisms is incredibly hard and is made even more challenging when evidence of behaviours are not preserved. It is also vitally important to remember that, by its very nature, the process of fossilisation is already an incredibly rare event, so to have any form of evidence for ancient fossilised behaviour preserved is genuinely astonishing.

Ooh, what would I love to find! I’m torn between several imaginary fossils, but if I was forced to choose one then it would have to be finding a dinosaur dead in its tracks. The thrill of following in the footsteps of a dinosaur only to find its skeleton lying at the very end of the track would be the ultimate dinosaur detective story.

Locked in Time: Animal Behavior Unearthed in 50 Extraordinary Fossils
By: Dean R. Lomax
Hardback | May 2021

 

 

Behavioural ecologist and entomologist William Eberhard is an emeritus scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and emeritus professor at the Universidad de Costa Rica. His research interests include sexual selection, evolution, and animal behaviour, and one group of organisms he has worked on in particular is spiders. Based on half a century of study, Spider Webs is an unprecedented and very large book on their biology, evolution, and diversity. Leading up to publication, we dipped into the book and asked him some questions.

As I was reading your book, it seemed all the spiders in my garden were out to build webs and I found myself barred from reaching my laundry one morning. How bad should I feel for accidentally destroying a web?

Out of consideration for my fellow inhabitants of the Earth, I always walk around webs rather than through them. But that is my own idiosyncrasy. Many spiders make a new web every day, so having a web knocked down is not a big disaster. Some move away from sites where their webs have been destroyed, so you might decide where to walk, depending on whether you do or do not want the spider to stay at the same site.

Spider webs are marvellous contraptions, even more so when you realise how they are made. You explain how spiders are virtually blind to their own web lines and that webs are often built at night. This implies an important role for tactile senses. Yet, construction starts by floating so-called bridge lines to distant objects, suggesting a role for vision. How good is spider eyesight and how much do we know about their visual acuity?

Eyesight has little and probably nothing to do with their floating bridge lines. Casting those lines down the wind constitutes a blind bet that maybe there is some object there that they will snag on.

You point out that the majority of published behavioural observations have been of mature females. What do we know about males and immature spiders? Is web construction specifically a female activity? Or have we just not looked hard enough?

In most spider families, mature males dedicate themselves nearly strictly to sex –finding receptive females is probably a tough job. They stop making prey capture webs and lose the glands that made the sticky silk in these webs. They also stop eating, except, in a few species, in which males occasionally temporarily appropriate a web from a smaller, immature individual. Immature individuals, both male and female, make webs.

A web is built from various different kinds of silk, and different parts have different functions, from structural support to prey capture. How do spiders control what kind of silk they release, especially given that some species can build a complete web in as little as half an hour?

Presumably valves in the ducts of different types of silk glands open or close to control which types of silk are extruded from the corresponding spigots. Even in a given orb, the kinds of silk that are used to cement lines together are turned on and turned off hundreds of times in an extremely precise manner during the construction of a single web.

You mention that orb webs are neither the pinnacle of web evolution nor necessarily the optimally designed structures that they are often claimed to be. Most organismal traits are a product of history and contingency as much as natural and sexual selection. I might be asking you to speculate here, but, in your opinion, are there any particular evolutionary thresholds that spiders have not been able to cross that would make a big difference for web construction?

There is a small section in the book (Section 9.8) where I discuss web designs that are possible but that have not arisen in spiders. In general, they have used radial rather than rectangular arrangements of lines; I do not know whether the widespread adoption of and ensuing variations on rectangular arrangements would have made a big difference or not.

Do you find that technological advances have changed the way arachnologists work and the sorts of questions they ask?

Yes, very much so. Important techniques that have begun to be used and that have produced new kinds of data during my lifetime include electron microscopy (especially scanning electron microscopy), molecular comparisons to produce phylogenies, digital movies, virtual sections (“micro-CT scans”), and large scale, computerized data analysis. At the same time, fads for using these techniques have led to less frequent use of simpler but powerful types of observations such as study of the details of behaviour.

Producing a book of this scope must have been a tremendous job, and you remark that a thorough, book-length review of spider webs had yet to be written, despite more than a century of research on spiders. With the benefit of hindsight, would you embark on such an undertaking again?

I seriously underestimated how difficult it would be. I had written two books previously, both largely concerned with ideas, rather than being attempts to review previous work as was the case in this book. My previous experience did not prepare me for the challenges of reviewing and evaluating – and in some cases arguing against (hopefully sympathetically and constructively) – conclusions from previous work.

You mention this book’s coverage is inevitably idiosyncratic. What lacunae remain in our knowledge that future authors could fill with further work?

My major deficiencies are in the chemical and mechanical aspects of silk – a field that is currently very active and that will undoubtedly eventually (perhaps soon) result in book-length treatments. A second major blank space that I hope will be filled with future work is linking web construction behaviour to the slowly emerging but very important field of animal cognition. The many advantages of orb webs for studying the details such as errors and other difficult questions in the behaviour in animals whose behaviour has a major innate component (and probably little in the way of learning) have yet to be exploited.

Spider Webs: Behavior, Function, and Evolution
By: William Eberhard
Hardback | November 2020 | £59.99

 

All prices correct at the time of this article’s publication.

After her incredibly successful book The Unfeathered Bird, Katrina van Grouw has recently finished Unnatural Selection, a beautiful combination of art, science and history. In this book, she celebrates the rapid changes breeders can bring about in domesticated animals. This was a topic of great interest to Charles Darwin, and it is no coincidence that Unnatural Selection is published on the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s book The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication.

In this post we talk with Katrina about her background, the work that goes into making a book and plans for the future

On your website, you write that you always had an interest in natural history, but that your talent in drawing made your teachers push you to pursue an art career, rather than studying biology. Did you ever consider a career as a scientific illustrator, something for which there must have been more of a market back then than there is now? If not, when and how did you decide to start combining your passion for biology with your talent as an artist?

No, I didn’t. There are several reasons for this; some a result of indoctrination, and others, decisions of my own.

There were two revelatory moments which brought art and science together for me and set the path for what was to come. Once when I’d rejected art and was sliding down a greasy pole into oblivion. And another, when I was an art student seeking direction. The first was at a zoo, and the second at a museum, and both were as vivid as a flash of light from the sky.

Even with art and natural history combined in my work, however, it was always in a fine art sense and never as an illustrator. I still don’t really identify with the term. Being an illustrator usually involves working to someone else’s brief and taking instructions from a non-illustrator about how the work should be done. I’m too self-obsessed for that! I lack imagination when it comes to commissioned work and can’t seem to generate much passion for other people’s projects, though I have the greatest respect for people who can do these things. I’m basically just no good at it!

You worked as curator of the bird skin collection of the London Natural History Museum. How did you end up there after an art degree?

How I ended up there is quite a long story. I do have a degree in art (two actually) but I also spent many years gaining valuable skills in practical ornithology that were precisely what the NHM needed; a combination of skills that was lacking in all the other applicants for the post.

I’d taught myself to prepare study skins and was good at it. I knew my way around the inside of a bird and had written a Masters’ thesis on bird anatomy (albeit aimed at artists). I was a qualified ringer who’d held an A class ringing permit for many years, which meant that I could age and sex birds accurately and knew how to take precise measurements consistent with other field workers. I’d taken part in ornithological expeditions in Africa and South America, so I had some first-hand experience of non-European birds. I’d worked in other museums. And I was a birder.

It’s a sad fact that one’s education often defines how a person is categorised for the remainder of their life, but self-taught skills, and hands-on experience can be worth far, far more. People often assume that artists can only ‘do art’ and nothing more, and that only people with a science degree are able to ‘do science’. A great many people are able to do both (though fewer questions are raised when it’s a qualified scientist who turns his/her hand to art!)

Your previous book, The Unfeathered Bird, took some 25 years from conception to publication, mostly as you found it very difficult to find a publisher. How did you manage to convince Princeton University Press to publish this book after so many rejections?

The quick answer is, because Princeton University Press is a publisher of vision and wisdom! (And no, they didn’t pay me to say that).

The full story is that the majority of publishers I approached had entrenched preconceptions about what an anatomy book should be and were unable to envisage anything that wasn’t a highly academic technical manual aimed at a niche audience. The book I had in mind was geared toward a much broader spectrum of bird lovers, including and especially bird artists. Additionally, I wanted it to be beautifully produced and aesthetically pleasing. So it wasn’t so much a problem of not being able to find a publisher, but not being able to find a publisher willing to think outside of the box. To answer the question: I didn’t actually need to convince Princeton –a fortuitous meeting lead to a great collaboration.

Your response to critics of breeding has been to counter their objection by saying “look at what nature has done to the sword-billed hummingbird!” which I thought was a sharp response. However, an animal welfare advocate might counter this argument by pointing out that natural selection can only push sword-billed hummingbirds so far. If this adaptation – the extension of the bill to retrieve nectar from ever deeper flower corollas – becomes maladaptive it will be selected against. Breeders, however, can select for traits that are maladaptive, because these animals grow up in an artificial environment where they are relieved of the pressures of natural selection. The shortened snouts and breathing problems of short-nosed dog breeds such as boxers come to mind. Obviously, if these traits become too extreme, the animals will not survive until reproductive age, but we can push them into a zone of discomfort and suffering through artificial breeding. What would your response to this be?

I’m an animal welfare advocate too. It’s difficult not to be when you keep animals and care for them every day. I too will freely admit that there are exhibition breeds in which artificial selection appears to have gone too far, resulting in health problems or discomfort. I can also appreciate that these problems might have their roots deeply embedded in history and culture and might be difficult to rectify without tearing down systems that would have devastating consequences to the entire fancy.

(Incidentally, the suffering of poultry selectively bred for the commercial meat industry is on a scale many thousands of times greater than the relatively low numbers of extreme pedigree breeds.)

The process of selecting out these physical defects will be a slow one and I think it’s important to support the work of breeders in this task. We can support them by trying to understand more about their world and by ceasing to attack them in gutter-press fashion with pseudo-scientific terms we don’t fully understand.

My book Unnatural Selection isn’t intended to voice personal opinions about animal welfare however. As the title suggests, it’s a book about evolution, based on and elaborating on the analogy that Darwin made between natural and artificial selection. For that reason I’ve discussed selective breeding solely within this evolutionary and historical context. It’s not that I was deliberately avoiding welfare issues; they simply weren’t relevant to the points I was discussing.

You write that the work on Unnatural Selection took six years of full-time work, around the clock. How long do you typically take to complete an illustration? And how do you manage to support yourself during this period, do you have freelance illustrations assignments on the side?

If I’m in-practice I can usually complete a full-page illustration in two or three days. There are 425 illustrations in Unnatural Selection, not forgetting the 84,000 words of text (somehow people always forget the text…). Not to mention thousands of hours’ research and background reading. Working like this is all-consuming, and definitely very unhealthy.

The fact is that non-fiction books taking so long to produce will never, ever, pay for themselves. Luckily Husband works full time, so we don’t actually starve, though I’d prefer to be able to contribute more financially to the household.

I would love to supplement my books with a part time job, but it certainly wouldn’t be illustrating! I dislike illustrating for other authors. I actually get far more pleasure from writing and I’m equally good at it, though this side of me is unfortunately often eclipsed by the artwork.

People talk in airy-fairy terms about the freedom and personal reward of being an artist transcending material gain, but it’s not like that at all. It’s not the actual poverty that’s damaging, but the feeling of inadequacy you get from working so hard, with such integrity, for so long, yet making no money.

The things that make it worthwhile are making those books exist at the end of it all, and having people tell me how grateful they are.

With two books now published by Princeton University Press, you seem to have started a very successful collaboration. How has the reception of this book been so far? Have you received nominations for prizes?

Boy, I’d love to win a prize! It’s still early days yet, so I’m ever-hopeful. To be honest though, I suspect I’m not the sort of person who wins prizes. Prizes seem to be dished out to academics and people whose career has been rather more conventional than mine. Like my books, I rather defy taxonomy and, even though we communicate science exceedingly well, few institutions would be brave enough to award a science writing prize to a self-taught scientist.

That’s not to say that we’re unpopular; quite the opposite. I’m proud to say that The Unfeathered Bird was embraced by a huge range of people: birders, naturalists, painters, sculptors, taxidermists, poets, mask makers, puppeteers, aviators, falconers, bibliophiles, palaeontologists, zookeepers, creature-designers and animatronics-people, academic biologists and vets! The pictures have been used in a trendy Berlin cocktail bar, on Diesel t-shirts, and tattooed onto several people’s bodies, and I get very genuine letters of thanks from all manner of people, from university professors and 12-year old boys and girls.

Unnatural Selection is a far better book than The Unfeathered Bird. It has better art and better science and, unlike The Unfeathered Bird in which the images take the lead, Unnatural Selection is very much led by good scientific and historical text, with the images serving solely to illuminate and enhance what’s being said. Everyone who’s seen it so far says it’s stunning, and the reviews have all been excellent. I hope the scientific community will take it seriously and not dismiss it as merely a quaint and witty book with good pictures. It’s so much more than that.

Will you continue to work on more books in the future? And are you already willing to reveal what you are working on next?

In answer to your first question: definitely—though if you’d asked me that toward the end of The Unfeathered Bird I would probably have said no. That book was supposed to have been a one-off, and I’d been looking forward to resuming work as an artist afterwards. However, when the time came I found that I’d moved on. Producing pictures for their own sake no longer ‘did it for me’. Books, on the other hand tick all the boxes: creatively, intellectually; at every level.

It’s important to understand that these are not ‘art books’—they’re not collections of artwork made into a book. The book itself is the work of art, not the individual illustrations. They’re science books nevertheless. For me the challenge is communicating science in the best possible way and finding just the right unique angle for each book. I’m especially proud of Unnatural Selection which I think is the finest and most original thing I’ve ever created.

Unfortunately, large illustrated books take many years to produce so I probably won’t have sufficient time left to bring more than two or maybe three more into existence. After all, I’m no spring chicken.

I’ve already signed a contract with Princeton and begun work on a greatly expanded second edition of The Unfeathered Bird. The new book will have 400 pages (that’s 96 more than the first edition) and will include a lot of new material on bird evolution from feathered dinosaurs (which of course will be unfeathered feathered dinosaurs, if you see what I mean). There’ll be lots of new and replacement illustrations and the text will be completely re-written. The science will be better, but the book will still accessible to anyone and devoid of jargon. However, this shouldn’t put people off buying the original version—the new edition will be virtually a different book.

I’m also intending to write an autobiography/memoir type book focusing on the relationship between art, science, and illustration, and will be looking for a publisher for that. This won’t be illustrated though, so it would be a comparatively quick one!

Unnatural Selection has been published in June 2018 and is currently on offer for £26.99 (RRP £34.99).

 

In Vaquita: Science, Politics, and Crime in the Sea of Cortez, author Brooke Bessesen takes us on a journey to Mexico’s Upper Gulf region to uncover the story behind the world’s most endangered marine mammal. Through interviews with townspeople, fishermen, scientists, and activists, she teases apart a complex story filled with villains and heroes, a story whose outcome is unclear.

In this post we chat with Brooke about her investigations in Mexico, local and international efforts to save the vaquita and the current status of this diminutive porpoise.

The vaquita entered the collective imagination (or at least, my imagination) when it became world news somewhere in 2017 and there was talk of trying to catch the last remaining individuals, something which you describe at the end of your story. Going back to the beginning though, how did you cross the path of this little porpoise?

I first heard about vaquita during a visit to CEDO, an educational research station in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico. I was enchanted to discover this beautiful little porpoise was endemic to the Upper Gulf of California, mere hours south of my home, yet saddened to learn it was already critically endangered. I still have the t-shirt I bought that day to support vaquita conservation. That was 2008 when the population estimate was 245.

The last update I could find was an interview in March 2018 on Mongabay with Andrea Crosta, director of the international wildlife trade watchdog group Elephant Action League. He mentioned there might be only a dozen vaquita left. Do you know what the situation is like now?

The last official population estimate was <30, but that was from 2016. With an annual rate of decline upwards of 50 percent, the number is surely much lower. If only we were able to watch the numbers go down in real time, we would all be forced to emotionally experience this sickening loss. But I think there is a (legitimate) fear that if an updated estimate revealed the number to be in or near single digits, key institutions might announce the species a lost cause and pull up stakes. If pecuniary support disappears, it’s game-over. Vaquita has graced the planet for millions of years—we cannot give up the battle to prevent its extinction so long as any number remain.

Once your investigation on the ground in Mexico gets going, tensions quickly run high. This is where conservation clashes with the hard reality of humans trying to make a living. Corruption, intimidation and threats are not uncommon. Was there ever a point that you were close to pulling out because the situation became too dangerous?

Truth told, my nerves were prickling from start to finish. The emotional fatigue was intense. But having witnessed the gruesome death of Ps2 [the designation given one of the Vaquita carcasses that washed up, ed.], I simply could not turn back. Then as the humanitarian crisis became clear and I was meeting families struggling to raise children in the fray, I was even more committed to telling this story. When courage wavered, I only had to remind myself of the host of social scientists, biologists, activists, and law-abiding fishermen working so bravely for the cause.

You describe a widespread indifference to the vaquita. I have the feeling a lot of this is cultural. Do you think a change in attitude can ever be effected? Or is the combination of poverty and the need to make a living completely at loggerheads with this?

I see two main obstacles to solving the vaquita crisis: corruption and poverty. In that order, because until local citizens can trust their military and police officers to rightfully enforce law, and until Pesca [Mexico’s National Fisheries Institute and its National Commission of Aquaculture and Fisheries, ed.] authorizes legal, sustainable fishing methods instead of providing loopholes for poachers, there will be no economic stability in the region. Money is pouring into the pockets of crime bosses while upstanding folks barely get by. Focused on either greed or survival, nobody has much capacity to care about porpoise conservation. That said, I do believe change can be effected. Several NGOs are already connecting with the communities in meaningful ways, and mind-sets are slowly shifting. If Mexico’s president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who goes by the nickname Amlo, manages to abolish corruption as he has promised to do, civic finances will balance out and efforts to care for vaquita will find better footing.

As the story progresses, more and more foreign interests enter this story. Sea Shepherd starts patrolling the waters, and Leonardo DiCaprio also gets involved, signing a memorandum of understanding with the Mexican president to try and turn the tide. What was the reaction of Mexicans on the ground to this kind of foreign involvement? Are we seen as sentimental, spoiled, rich Westerners who can afford unrealistic attitudes?

Since the majority of environmentalists working in the Upper Gulf are Mexican, and even Leonardo DiCaprio had the alliance of Carlos Slim, the socio-political divide does not seem to be so much between nationalists and foreigners as between fishermen and environmentalists. Fishermen who openly expressed distain for “outsiders” disrupting business meant Sea Shepherd, for sure, but they also meant scientists and conservationists from places like Mexico City, Ensenada, and La Paz. Some of the locals I spoke with or followed on Facebook did seem troubled by the amount of resources being spent on vaquita while their own human families suffered. They felt the environmentalists were not appreciating the strain and fear of their jobless circumstances. Then again, a good percentage voiced gratitude for the efforts being made to protect vaquita as a national treasure and seemed to feel part of an important crusade for their country and their community.

Related to this, the West has outsourced the production of many things to countries overseas and so many of us are far removed from the harmful impact that our desire for food and stuff has on the environment. Deforestation in the Amazon to graze livestock for hamburgers is one such long-distance connection that comes to mind. The vaquita has also suffered from the impact of shrimp trawlers. No doubt many who shed tears over the vaquita will happily gorge themselves on said shrimps without ever making the link. Do you think that globalisation has in that regard served to polarise the debate where wildlife and nature conservation is concerned?

Yes, this is a really important point. It’s easy to point fingers, but we are all complicit in the destruction of ocean life. Anyone who eats fish or shrimp caught in gillnets—or trawls, or longlines—is funding the slaughter of cetaceans and sea turtles and myriad other animals. It’s a painful truth. The root of the problem is that most of us don’t know, and don’t care to ask, where the seafood on our dinner plate came from. This is not intended to be accusatory, as I, too, am finding my way in this era of culinary disconnect. I just know the first step is to quit pretending we are bystanders.

One side of the story I found missing from your book was that of the demand for totoaba swim bladders in China. I imagine it might have been too dangerous or time-consuming (or both) to expand your investigation to China as well. How important and how feasible do you think it is to tackle the problem from that side? Without a demand for totoaba bladders, the vaquita wouldn’t face the threats of gillnets after all.

I think it’s imperative to attack the totoaba trade from the consumer side, with the goal of systematically eliminating the demand for swim bladders. As for feasibility, I’m less confident. Time and distance prevented me from effectively researching the situation in China, but from what I’ve read, the cultural, political, and economic trappings there are just as complicated as they are in Mexico. I’m pleased to know efforts are underway. It also must be said, though, that ending the totoaba trade is not a sure-fire resolution for vaquita because fishermen in the Upper Gulf traditionally use gillnets for a range of legal fish.

With the book now written, are you still involved in efforts to protect the vaquita?

Knowing what I know now, it’s unthinkable to walk away from vaquita. I was down in San Felipe last month, exchanging summer c-pods and catching up on the latest news. Everyone is nurturing the flicker of hope that Amlo will take action to save his national marine mammal by cleaning up the corruption that has stymied vaquita conservation.

Vaquita: Science, Politics, and Crime in the Sea of Cortez is due for publication in September 2018 and is currently available at the pre-publication price of £19.99 (RRP £22.99).

 

Chris D. Thomas is a Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of York and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in July 2012. He has an interest in understanding how humans have changed the biological world, and how we might protect the biodiversity that remains. His first book, Inheritors of the Earth, is a very interesting and thought-provoking read on the current mass extinction crisis, and conservation philosophy in general, focusing on the proverbial winners, and calling out conservationists for holding viewpoints that seem more driven by nostalgia than by logical thinking about the biological future of our planet. Sure to ruffle some feathers, NHBS nevertheless believes that this book makes an important contribution, and that his arguments are more balanced than a cursory glance might suggest. We contacted Chris with a list of questions that arose after reading it.

1. In your book, you quite rightly argue that, despite species going extinct, there are species who are benefitting from our presence and the changes we have wrought to our ecosystems. You acknowledge that our influences largely seem to result in an accelerated introduction of species in new areas. Will the net result of this great reshuffling not be a world that is suited only to generalist species (the proverbial rats and pigeons) at the expense of specialists?

This is not quite how I see it. Take your two examples. The Asian brown rat was a regular rodent (granted it was omnivorous, but so are many other rodents), before it hitched a lift with us around the world. Today, the brown rat mainly lives in and around human habitation and farmland, except on islands that lack native rodents, so you could simply call it a specialist on human-modified environments. The feral or town pigeon originated as a specialist cliff-nesting pigeon (the rock dove) in western Europe, the Mediterranean, and into western Asia. It is still a cliff-nesting bird, living on our buildings. Neither the feral pigeon nor the brown rats are unusually generalised, relative to many other birds and mammals. It is their proximity to us that makes us think of them as generalists.  I don’t think we should synonymise ‘successful’ or ‘living in human-modified environments’ with being a ‘generalist’.

2. In Chapter 6, “Heirs to the World”, you mention that most current conservation efforts focus on trying to defend the losers. You argue that, though honourable, it will be more effective to back the winners, i.e. those species that will make up future biological communities. An important theme in the recent book Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want it Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future is that the loss of wild crop varieties through extinction is threatening our future food supply. Many of these wild varieties might have the potential of providing new food sources when our current crop varieties will inevitably succumb to new insect pests or pathogens, or can provide other benefits (e.g. pharmaceuticals). This is why projects such as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and other seed banks are so important. Do you see any value in the conservation of threatened species, or is this crying over spilt milk?

I argue that we should in most instances continue to protect ‘species’. Rare species may become common and hence fulfil important roles in future ecosystems, and species that we currently ignore (or have not yet discovered) may become economically, medically or socially important to us in the future. Hanging onto as many species as possible is not a preservationist agenda, but rather a means of maintaining the building blocks of future ecosystems, fuelling biological changes that will take place in the coming centuries. Similar arguments apply to rare genes that belong to wild relatives of plants and livestock that we already use. They provide long-term resilience and flexibility.

3. In Chapter 11, “Noah’s Earth”, you call for a new conservation philosophy that acknowledges that life is a process, not a final product. In your view, this philosophy would rest on four overarching principles: a) accept change, b) maintain flexibility for future change by conserving species wherever possible, c) accept that humans are natural and that anything we do is part of the evolutionary history of life (this includes not shying back from employing any and all solutions at our disposal, including genetic techniques – none of them will make the world less natural), d) live within our natural boundaries. In the remainder of that chapter you elaborate on the first three principles, but not the fourth. How do you envision realising this fourth principle?

As I say: “We know that we cannot expect the bounty to continue if we carry on killing animals faster than they can breed or cut forests down faster than they grow. This strategy failed when our ancestors drove most of the world’s largest land animals to extinction, and it has played out in the last few centuries as whale and fish populations have collapsed under the pressure of over-harvesting. We need a resilient and sustainable approach. We should aim for maximum efficiency, by which I mean that we should pursue strategies that fulfil all human needs – and, where possible, desires – of every citizen on Earth while generating the least possible collateral damage to the global environment.”

Harvesting a species faster than the survivors can reproduce can be thought of as a relatively ‘hard’ natural boundary (once a species is extinct, it is no longer a resource), but other bounds are much softer (a forest with one fewer species still grows), and hence we often need to specify tolerable levels of change, rather than catastrophic points of no return. These issues deserve book-length treatment on their own, which is why I did (deliberately) somewhat duck the issues!

When I refer to the ‘least possible collateral damage to the global environment’, I am thinking about the development of technological and social ‘game changers’. For example, most meat production is based on filling our fields and barns with cows, sheep and chickens, which we then kill for food. If we could switch to the consumption of ‘factory-grown’ cultured meats, powered by renewable energy, it would dramatically reduce pressure on the land; although admittedly not by as much as if we all became vegetarians.

4. Your book makes many valid points as to how our current thinking around species conservation is in conflict with itself, or simply illogical (e.g. the distinction between native and invasive species, because, seen over long enough time scales, species distribution has always fluctuated. Or the idea that there is no one period in the history of life that we can take as a benchmark of the idealised pristine state the world should be in. Or simply the idea that conservation means “freezing” the world in its current (or a former) state – after all, the only constant of life on our planet has always been change). You also, provocatively I would say, argue that many island species that have gone extinct were effectively already evolutionary dead ends, having evolved in environments free from predators and pathogens. We have merely hastened their demise, but they would eventually have gone extinct anyway. Should we really give up on them?

I don’t think it is particularly controversial (or provocative, therefore) to say that most flightless and disease-susceptible terrestrial birds (as opposed to seabirds) that live on oceanic islands represent evolutionary dead-ends, on a time scale of ten or so million years. What are the alternatives? They would never be able to establish viable populations on continents because pathogens and predators are present. Confined to their island homes, they would eventually have died out, either when the islands eroded away, or when additional continental species arrived without human intervention (for example Darwin’s finches have ‘only’ been on the Galapagos for two to three million years). In most cases, we have accelerated the extinction of such species but not altered their eventual fate.

What we should do with the few remaining survivors is another issue. What I argue in Inheritors of the Earth is that we should think quite broadly. Can we introduce new genes to disease-susceptible birds that will make them resistant (for example to save the remaining Hawaiian honeycreepers)?  Can we cross predator-susceptible birds with related species that reproduce fast enough to survive the new levels of predation (for example to save New Zealand black stilts)?  Could we introduce new strains of bird malaria that are less potent, and displace the existing fatal ones? In other words, can we make the endangered island forms more resistant in some way and the continental invaders less virulent, so that long-term coexistence becomes possible? If not, then maybe we should indeed abandon some of the losers, and contemplate releasing continental walking birds (which can resist pathogens and predators) and pollinators, rather than dwell too long attempting to recreate a biological world that was inherently unstable.

5. One argument in favour of trying to conserve the “charismatic megafauna”, such as elephants and rhinos, are that they function as flagship species, and that conservation efforts aimed at them can benefit whole ecosystems. In your book, you don’t really go into this. What are your thoughts on the concept of flagship species, especially in light of your argument that “defending the losers” is ultimately a lost cause?

I am generally in favour of large, flagship species because they require large areas to protect, and this indirectly benefits many other species (though flagship conservation is not sufficient because it may miss areas of endemism). They are also culturally important to conservationists as well as to the general public, gaining public and political support for conservation. The giant panda has been globally important, and critical to the conservation of Chinese forests, despite being a slightly ‘dodgy species’!

When I discuss losers, remember that I then add the question “can we turn them into winners” (or at least into survivors). For the large megafauna that still survive, this is easy. We can choose not to hunt them to extinction any longer. It is already the case that large birds and large mammals are tending to recover in Europe and North America, and this is also true of the Great Whales. They were losers in the context of historic human culture, and there is no necessary reason why they ‘must be’ losers. Once ivory and rhino horn ‘culture’ is turned around, there will be nothing ‘wrong’ with these species either.

6. If you were put in charge of a major conservation organisation, say WWF, what would you do differently? Would you, for example, have greenlighted their recent campaign to try and protect the last remaining individual vaquitas (the threatened porpoise endemic to the Gulf of California)?

I’m not going to answer your first question because that would be a whole new book (or job if they offer it to me!). I’ll just say that, on day one, I would request a review of activities, and for every measure currently being undertaken to prevent change or decline, I would ask for the staff to develop an additional measures to promote changes that would increase diversity (or the status of an endangered species).

As for the vaquita, I am no expert. However, it is evolutionary distinct, and it is a perfectly viable species if we were stop killing it (including through gillnets). It is not a species that one should necessarily give up on. More broadly, it is a symptom of the mismanagement of the world’s marine resources. We sorted out farming on land a long time ago, but we are still more or less acting as hunter-gatherers in the marine realm. It is hopelessly inefficient.

If I had an infinite supply of money, I would be looking to invest in fish farms (they can be locally damaging, but humans still need food), and I would also invest in new GM crops which produce fish oils so that the farmed fish could be fed on terrestrial plants rather than ‘wild caught’ marine resources. Beyond that, I would invest in cultured fish meat (factory grown muscles), further reducing the need to catch wild fish. The aim would be for virtually all fish consumed in the year 2100 to be farmed or, ideally, cultured as tissues in factories.

Whether or not the vaquita itself can be saved, these strategies are all about generating permanent means of providing a global supply of fish meat without causing anything like as much collateral damage as takes place at present.

7. As mentioned above, I think your book makes excellent arguments. And yet, reading it also brought with it a certain sense of unease. It almost feels a bit defeatist, as if we might just as well give up on fighting to save threatened species and just go with the flow. I can see this argument not being popular. A lot of people feel we have a moral responsibility, as an intelligent, thinking species, to not drive other species over the edge, and to put a stop to our destructive ways. Isn’t saying “everything we do is natural, we are just another step in the evolution of life” a bit of a cop out?

I’ll leave others to discuss morals!

Saying that everything is natural, including all conservation actions we take, allows us to take ‘affirmative action’ for wildlife in a manner that some conservationists would historically have been nervous about (“I can’t do that, it would not be natural”). So, I see it as an opening up of new conservation opportunities, not a cop out.

8. It is perhaps a bit early to ask you how the book has been received. But, clearly, when a book like this is written, it is often based on years of work and research that has led up to it. These ideas did not just appear. So, how have your viewpoints been received so far?

The response to the book seems good so far, but it is far too early to judge. You are right, I have put some of these views out there previously, and they have received a mixture of responses. Many people seem very supportive. However, invasive species biologists are mostly negative, I think fearing that non-native species legislation could be undermined, more than genuinely questioning the biological thesis (that may just be my interpretation). There are also those, such as E. O. Wilson, who consider that I and others are being Anthropocene apologists. I understand their point, but we cannot simply continue to wish that we live in an unchanged world. We have to develop an understanding of biology, and an approach to conservation, that works with change rather than against it.

9. Obviously, there are many parties in our society who stand to gain a great deal from ignoring conservation concerns and steam-rolling ahead with “business as usual”, continuing to destroy natural habitats for corporate gains. With this book now poised to be published, do you not worry that your narrative will be hijacked, the way has happened with the debate surrounding climate change? I can already see people using your arguments to legitimise their actions, arguing along the lines of “this biologist said that the extinction crisis really isn’t such a big deal. See? Lots of species doing really well!”. Have you considered strategies to prevent this from happening?

I nearly didn’t put fingers to keyboard for this very reason. However, if we build a case for conservation based on a loss-only view of the world, eventually it will fall. The edifice is already creaking. A more balanced view that admits to the reality of biological gains as well as losses should, in the end, lead to more rational decision-making.

In terms of conservation, I have stated my own views. In the Epilogue, I write: “If [existing conservation] efforts were abandoned, the extinction rate would escalate. A major task of conservation is to keep the losses towards the lower end of the likely range – as well as to encourage biological gains. Although I have been advocating a more flexible approach to the environment, and specifically to conservation, nothing I have said should be used to undermine attempts to save existing species or maintain protected areas.”

As for the extinction ‘big deal’, biological gains of the Anthropocene do not let us off the hook. A simple linear extrapolation of the current rate of extinction wipes out about three-quarters of all species in the next ten millennia. This is risky, given that species represent our planet’s biological parachute. All future ecosystems will be formed from the descendants of existing species, and we do not know which of today’s currently-rare species will be important components of future ecosystems (especially if humans alter the planet in yet another, unexpected way). Letting rare species go could have major long-term consequences. My advice would be not to discard the biological building blocks of our planet lightly.

Inheritors of the Earth is available to order from NHBS