Ecological Understanding through Transdisciplinary Art and Participatory Biology

Full version unavailable due to 3rd party copyright restrictionsIn this study evidence is presented that suggests transdisciplinary art practices and participatory biology programs may successfully increase public understanding of ecological phenomenon. As today’s environmental issues are often complex and large-scale, finding effective strategies that encourage public awareness and stewardship are paramount for long-term conservation of species and ecosystems. Although artists and biologists tend to stay confined to their professional boundaries, and their discourses largely remain inaccessible to larger audiences, arguments here are presented for a combined approach, which may disseminate knowledge about ecology to non-specialists through novel art-science participatory research and exhibitions. Moreover, historically several scientists utilized varied creative art forms to disseminate scientific insights to a larger populace of non-specialists, such strategies as engaging writings and visually provocative artworks may still be effective to captivate contemporary audiences. In addition such historic hybrid science-art practitioners may have laid a conceptual terrain for some of today’s transdisciplinary art and citizen science practices. Furthermore, seminal ecological artworks from the 20th Century by Joseph Beuys, Patricia Johanson and Hans Haacke utilized novel strategies to reach audiences with a message of wetland conservation, blurring boundaries between art, ecology and activism. More recently artists like Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, Helen and Newton Harrison and others have integrated biological research into their art practices, which resulted in new scientific discoveries. Through my own transdisciplinary artwork about frogs, data suggests that the visual strategies I employ were effective to increase non-specialist understanding of the ecological phenomenon of amphibian declines and deformations. In addition through my participatory biology programs, Public Bio-Art Laboratories and Eco-Actions, evidence suggests that non-specialists achieved an increased awareness of the challenges amphibians and ecosystems currently face. Likewise, that through such participatory citizen science research new scientific insights about the proximate causes for deformities in anuran amphibians at select localities in middle England and Quebec were achieved. Here laboratory and field evidence, generated with the aid of public volunteers, found that non-lethal predatory injury to tadpoles from odonate nymphs and some fishes resulted in permanent limb deformities in post-metamorphic anurans. From an environmental-education and larger conservation standpoint, these findings are very relevant as they offer novel strategies for experientially engaging non-specialist audiences while generating important insights into biological communities and wetland ecosystems

Ten years later: An update on the status of collections of endemic Gulf of Mexico fishes put at risk by the 2010 Oil Spill

The 2010 Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon was the largest oil spill in human history that occurred during a 12-week period in a region less than 100 km from the coast of Louisiana; however, after more than a decade of post-spill research, few definitives can be said to be known about the long-term impacts on the development and distribution of fishes in and around the region of the disaster. Here, we examine endemic Gulf of Mexico fish species that may have been most impacted by noting their past distributions in the region of the spill and examining data of known collecting events and observations over the last twenty years (ten years prior to the spill, ten years post-spill). Five years post-spill, it was reported that 48 of the Gulf’s endemic fish species had not been collected and, with expanded methods, we now report that 29 (of the 78 endemic species) have not been reported in collections since 2010 (five of these are only known from observations post-spill). Although the good news that some previously ‘missing’ species have been found may be cause to celebrate, the lack of information for many species remains a cause for concern given focused sampling efforts post-spill