Episode 5:Biodiversity conservation

Dragonfly team members and instructors Jeannie Miller Martin and Ramana Callan join host Kevin Matteson to discuss the required readings for this discussion as well as thoughts on mainstreaming biodiversity.

Towards the end of the podcast, Kevin talks about whether or not to plant exotic bamboo in his backyard. Turns out there IS a native bamboo genus in the USA. Who knew?!

If you want to jump ahead, we discuss the Redford article at 15 minutes, Mace and Norris at 31 minutes, and Kueffer et al. article at about 47 minutes.

Notable quotes:

“Everything we do in Dragonfly comes back to “What is the question”, “What is the question” “What is the question?” We have to consider, Is the question that we want to drive data for our paper or is the question that we want to create a change somewhere?” – Jeannie referring to Redford et al. 2015 article 

“Sometimes biodiversity and ecosystem services are almost used synonymously which is a big pet peeve… I love that they (Mace et al. 2012 article) make it clear how they are different.” – Kevin

“I never really liked the ‘rivet airplane analogy’ (of species loss affecting ecosystem stability). I like the Jenga analogy better where you are destabilizing this tower and the context of the rivets (location, etc.) affects what happens.” – Ramana  

“There is really no wrong answer when you are doing the right thing.” – Jeannie 

Readings Discussed

• Redford, K. H., B. J. Huntley, et al. (2015). Mainstreaming Biodiversity: Conservation for the Twenty-First Century. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 3(137).

• Kueffer, C. and C. N. Kaiser-Bunbury (2014). Reconciling conflicting perspectives for biodiversity conservation in the Anthropocene. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 12(2): 131-137.

• Mace, G. M., K. Norris, et al. (2012). Biodiversity and ecosystem services: a multilayered relationship. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 27(1): 19-26.

Transcript of Audio