THOMAS E. LOVEJOY
The perspectives provided by the chapters of this book are at the heart of what some have called the Century of Biology. If biological science is able to plumb the details and complexity of living systems to an extent undreamed of heretofore, then surely what lies ahead mere decades from now defies imagination. These advances will have incalculable benefit for human society that will include traditional biological sectors, such as agriculture, forestry, medical sciences, resource management, and limnology. They will also include activities such as industrial processes in which enzymes and organisms can replace toxic chemical catalysts and help in bioremediation (cleanup of wastes) and its flip side, bioconcentration (when biological processes recover and concentrate valuable but dispersed resources). The dream of industrial ecology, including nanotechnology, is much closer to realization than we think.
If biology is to be ever more central to human enterprise, the promise will rest squarely on biological diversity and our knowledge of its component parts: plants, animals, and microorganisms (Wilson 1988, 1992). If extinction rates continue to accelerate—even if they remain on the current order of one hundred times normal—the promise for science and society will be severely undercut.
It has always astonished me that many of our colleagues seem impervious to the elevated extinction rate even when, in the most self-interested sense, it represents the destruction of the library of life upon which our science is based. In contrast, when the Arno River flooded in the 1960s and the great art treasures of Florence were threatened, art historians immediately created the Committee to Rescue Italian Art. This response came not only because of the threat to the wherewithal of their discipline but also because they believed in the intrinsic importance of these resources and treasures.
The time is way overdue to get our act together as a profession and as a society. So the question is, How might we do it? How might we go beyond suffering “physics envy,” bemoaning the physical scientists’ ability to put together “big science” projects (with major facilities like atom smashers) and get them funded? The answer I believe lies in thinking differently about what big science is or might be. The Human Genome Project (see Nature Feb. 15, 2001; Science Feb. 16, 2001) gives us a useful point of departure, for certainly it is understood as big science by virtually everyone. Its essence can be explained in a sentence: It has a multibillion-dollar budget. At the same time it is made up of myriad increments, with each investigator driven to complete his or her share and reap the benefits as a team, and society as the biggest “winner” of all.
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), endorsed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development science ministers in their Megascience Forum, is similarly constructed. While the goal is to have all biodiversity information (starting with data housed in and available from the great natural history museums and botanic gardens of the industrialized world) accessible to everyone via the Internet, GBIF is built up of small pieces (e.g., the Mexico specimen data, which that country has paid to have digitized in institutions like the National Museum of Natural History and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew). Again, it is a big science project built up of many small but significant pieces.
In a sense I am suggesting that we have fallen into the habit of not thinking big enough. When not thinking big enough, of course, one does not address questions at greater temporal and/or spatial scales or ask for enough resources to complete the tasks. And when our science questions are highly specialized, the funding response and rewards are likely to be correspondingly small.
Many years ago G. Evelyn Hutchinson (1959) asked a new question: “Why are there so many kinds of animals?” It was a question ahead of its time because we do not know how many kinds there are and cannot answer why are there so many kinds, or why are there so many of each kind. Hutchinson had important conclusions to draw nonetheless. Eugene Odum (1969) called attention to the need to investigate ecological succession (he termed this process ecosystem development) at a level of organization higher than the more traditional individualistic approach (Gleason 1926). This perspective resulted in new approaches, questions, and rewards. We know history has played as important a role in what is biologically possible. We also know that the interactions among life histories, biotic and abiotic processes, and biology have been both important and complex (Levin 1999). Clearly our limited knowledge of biotic diversity constrains our ability to think about such important questions as well as what they mean for a sustainable path for civilization.
We need simple themes that can encompass much of what we require and want to do. There are certainly many ways to parse these themes, but I hope the ones finally chosen will include at least elements of the following two concepts: exploring life on Earth and studying how the world works biologically.
In the mid-fifteenth century Prince Henry the Navigator ushered in an age of discovery as he launched expedition after expedition from his observatory at Sagres to explore the world. Although they were not alone, the Portuguese held a role in exploration that was nothing sort of staggering. I believe a similar age of exploration of the biology of our planet, now possible because of abilities and emerging technologies—including examination at the level of molecules, remote sensing, and information technologies capable of taming huge amounts of information—would be an equally thrilling form of exploration, and even more likely beyond our greatest dreams.
An integrated approach would be a logical umbrella theme for systematic biology and for tackling great unknowns such as the Lilliputian world of soil biodiversity (and all its component disciplines), for example. Its scientific legitimacy rests on completing our knowledge of the basic dimensions of life on Earth. It is exciting to learn, as we have in the last twenty-five years, that entire biological communities can exist around thermal vents on the ocean floor, depending not on sunlight but rather on the primal energy of the Earth; that organisms there can exist at temperatures greatly in excess of the boiling point of water; or that seemingly inanimate particles, prions, can behave like organisms. Similar proposals have been made before (Raven and Wilson 1992). Most recently E. O. Wilson (2000) has estimated one could do the basic job for $5 billion. We need to unite as a community to seek that support, both from society and from funding agencies.
There are wonderfully exciting things to be learned about how ecosystems work and about the complex relationships between the number of species, species composition, and ecosystem function. Experimental manipulation of ecosystems, in many senses, first undertaken by the Hubbard Brook experiment (Chapter 4), can teach us many important things about natural systems and the human manipulation of them. Investigators at Hubbard Brook taught us much about the consequences of deforestation in a watershed and nutrient cycling (natural and unnatural), as well as team research. Along the way they helped us discover acid rain, or the more recent disturbing result that acid rain precipitation has leached the soil to the point where the forest seems to have stopped growing.
Long Term Ecological Research sites (LTERs), supported by the National Science Foundation, have a wealth of such insights to provide. There are important linkages and processes on even larger scales, such as how the Amazon makes half of its own rainfall, or how the floodplain forests of that greatest of all rivers provide a critical nutrient base for many fish species. These processes range all the way to the planetary scale, where we can see the metabolism of the Earth reflected in the variation in carbon dioxide concentration throughout the year.
The value of broad themes and large-scale investigations such as these is that virtually anyone can understand their needs and potential benefits, and grasp their legitimacy from a public and practical standpoint; in other words, such investigations represent the very best of integrative and applied science. Yet they also encompass a vast array of science that is curiosity-driven. Further, they provide opportunities to enhance scientific and environmental literacy, although that need could clearly stand on its own as a theme (Orr 1991).
The overall point is that by coming together in some such fashion we can be much more effective than in our current mode of operation. At the moment we are too easily dismissed, as if we were a clutch of gilded cowbird nestlings, beaks agape, chirping wildly to be fed with research dollars that we believe are some basic human right.
Organismal biologists have been figuratively “beaten into a corner,” so it does not even occur to them to ask for enough. In a world where Europeans consume $11 billion of ice cream annually and Americans $8 billion of cosmetics, it is surely time to move to a more correct and larger scale for our science. Gary Barrett and Eugene Odum (1998) term this comprehensive approach integrative science.
In many senses ours is the kind of science—at the organismal, species, ecosystem, or landscape level—that people can most relate to. It is also obvious that our environmental footprint as a species is so great that our society must depend on joint management of the atmosphere and the biosphere. Such a challenge cannot be met without heavy investment in our (as well as other parts of) science. Consequently, as we enter the new century there is extraordinary congruence between what is right for science and what is critical for society—and it is our responsibility to do nothing less than pursue that congruence.
Barrett, G. W., and E. P. Odum. 1998. From the president: Integrative science. BioScience 48:980.
Gleason, H. A. 1926. The individualistic concept of the plant association. Bull. Torrey Bot. Gard. Club 53:7–26.
Hutchinson, G. E. 1959. Homage to Santa Rosalia; or, Why are there so many kinds of animals? Amer. Nat. 93:145–59.
Levin, S. A. 1999. Fragile dominion: Complexity and the common? Reading, U.K.: Perseus Books.
Odum, E. P. 1969. The strategy of ecosystem development. Science 164:262–70.
Orr, D. W. 1991. Environmental literacy: Education and the transition to a postmodern world. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.
Raven, P. H., and E. O. Wilson. 1992. A fifty-year plan for biodiversity studies. Science 258:1099–1100.
Wilson, E. O. 1992. The diversity of life. New York: W. W. Norton.
———. 2000. A global biodiversity map. Science 289:2279.
Wilson, E. O., ed. 1988. Biodiversity. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.