The Bee\u27s Knees or Spines of a Spider: What Makes an \u27Insect\u27 Interesting?

Insects and their kin (bugs) are among the most detested and despised creatures on earth. Irrational fears of these mostly harmless organisms often restrict and prevent opportunities for outdoor recreation and leisure. Alternatively, Shipley and Bixler (2016) theorize that direct and positive experiences with bugs during middle childhood may result in fascination with insects leading to comfort in wildland settings. The objective of this research was to examine and identify the novel and unfamiliar bug types that people are more likely to find interesting and visually attend to when spontaneously presented with their images. This research examined these questions through four integrated exploratory studies. The first study (n = 216) found that a majority of adults are unfamiliar with a majority of bugs, despite the abundance of many common but ˜unfamiliar\u27 bugs. The second (n = 15) and third (n = 308) study examined participant\u27s first impressions of unfamiliar bugs. The second study consisted of in-depth interviews, while the third study had participants report their perceptions of bugs across multiple emotional dimensions. Together, both studies suggest there are many unfamiliar bugs that are perceptually novel and perceived as interesting when encountered. The fourth study (n = 48) collected metrics of visual attention using eye-tracking by measuring visual fixations while participants viewed different bugs identified through previous studies as either being interesting or disinteresting. The findings of the fourth study suggest that interesting bugs can capture more visual attention than uninteresting bugs. Results from all four studies provide a heuristic for interpretive naturalists, magazine editors, marketers, public relation advisors, filmmakers, and any other visual communication professional that can be used in the choice of images of unfamiliar images of insects and other small invertebrates to evoke situational interest and motivate subsequent behavior

TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits - the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants - determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait‐based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits - almost complete coverage for ‘plant growth form’. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait–environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

Stewarding emotional places: Effects of place and emotion on pro-environmental behaviors in working landscapes

Understanding the contribution of social-psychological forces on human behaviors that influence the environment is a vital aspect of understanding and identifying practices and policies that act on these forces to promote conservation of complex social-ecological systems. This research closely examines the contributions of two interrelated social phenomena (concepts of place and emotions) as they relate to human behaviors that benefit the environment and sustainability of agroecosystems in the context of working landscapes in the Midwestern United States. In the first study, I conducted a systematic review to examine the role of emotions of pride and guilt in predicting pro-environmental behavior. Through a meta-analysis I found that across 35 studies pride and guilt both were significant predictors of pro-environmental behavior and anticipated pride was most strongly correlated with behavior. In the second study, I tested the factor structure of a novel place meaning scale and tested for differences in place meanings across two different rural contexts in Illinois and Iowa, U.S. Through confirmatory factor analyses I found evidence that eight place meanings could be distinguished and that respondents living in the two study sites differed in their place meanings. In the third study, I conducted interviews with farmers living in the Kaskaskia River Watershed, Illinois to understand their decision-making and adoption of sustainable agriculture practices. Through a narrative analysis, I found that farmers described their decision-making as a process of active place-making where emotions and place meanings served as aspirations for their land. Farmer decision-making was articulated through two recurrent narratives, one narrative was unified around meanings of efficiency and commodity values of place, whereas another narrative that empathized farm and family legacy. In the final study, I examined relationships among concepts of place and pro-environmental behavior using data collected from a survey administered to a panel of residents living in the Kaskaskia River Watershed. Through structural equation modeling, I confirmed multiple hypotheses, notably that diverse place meanings were predictors of place attachment and that anticipated emotions of pride mediated the attachment-behavior relationship across urban and rural respondents. In sum, findings from my mixed-method research indicate that concepts of place and emotions – particularly pride – are related to engagement in behaviors that benefit the environment. These findings emphasize the importance of recognizing the influence of concepts of place and emotions to understand farmer decision-making, as well as encourage sustainable transformations of working landscapes across the Midwestern United States.LimitedAuthor requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD syste

TRY plant trait database - enhanced coverage and open access

10.1111/gcb.14904GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY261119-18