BioScience Talks

In Their Own Words chronicles the stories of scientists who have made great contributions to their fields. These short histories provide our readers a way to learn from and share their experiences. We publish the results of these conversations in the pages of BioScience and on our podcast, BioScience Talks. This history is with Dr. Osvaldo Sala, who is the Julie A. Wrigley and Regents’ and Foundat...

In this episode, we're joined by Scott Plein, Principal of Equinox Investments and Founder and Chairman of the White House Farm Foundation, and Alan Rowsome, Executive Director of the Northern Virginia Conservation Trust, to discuss Leopold's Preserve, a 380-acre natural site nestled within the rapidly growing area of Haymarket, Virginia. We discussed the vision that underlies the preserve, its na...

For this episode, we're joined by Dr. Judith Weis of Rutgers University to discuss her new book, Polluting Textiles: The Problem with Microfibres . Listen to Dr. Weis's In Their Own Words oral history interview. A description of the book follows: This book examines the critical issue of environmental pollutants produced by the textiles industry. Comprised of contributions from environmental scient...

For this episode, we're joined by Thyaga Nandagopal, Division Director for the Division of Innovation and Technology Ecosystems, in the newly launched TIP Directorate at NSF. He discusses the directorate's programs, priorities, and future plans.

COVID-19 has been the first pandemic that has taken place alongside the interconnectivity of the Internet. Consequently, the spread of ideas and information about the disease has been unprecedented—but not always accurate. One of the widely circulated headlines was that of the relationship between land change and the spillover of diseases from wildlife to humans. Writing in BioScience , Andre D. M...

As the effects of climate change mount, ecosystem restoration in the US West has garnered significant public attention, bolstered by President Joe Biden's America the Beautiful plan to conserve 30% of US land and water by 2030. Writing in BioScience , William J. Ripple and 19 colleagues follow up on the Biden plan with a proposal for a "Western Rewilding Network," comprising 11 large reserve areas...

As global warming accelerates, it is increasingly clear that climate change is affecting our planet on every scale, from global shifts in weather patterns to local ecosystem changes. In a special section in BioScience , a group of authors hailing from the US National Science Foundation’s Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network synthesize insights from 40 years of long-term ecological research...

In this episode, we're joined by Alexandre C. Siqueira, a postdoctoral fellow at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, where he works in the lab of Professor David Bellwood. He joined us to talk about his recent BioScience article on reef fish evolution, and how we're learning more about that topic from some recent findings in Mayan temples. The article's abstract follows. During the exc...

In Their Own Words chronicles the stories of scientists who have made great contributions to their fields. These short histories provide our readers a way to learn from and share their experiences. We will publish the results of these conversations in the pages of BioScience and on our podcast, BioScience Talks. This history is with Daniel Simberloff, who is the Gore-Hunger Professor of Environmen...

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials and others have used concepts such as "waves" to convey information about the spread of disease. In this episode, we're joined by Dr. Louise Archer, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laboratory of Quantitative Global Change Ecology at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, who wrote in BioScience  about disease analogies. She and her coauthors fo...

We're joined by Dr. Pam McElwee, Professor of Human Ecology at Rutgers University, and Dr. Sarah Diamond, Associate Professor of Biology at Case Western Reserve University. They were here to discuss their recent BioScience  article , Governing for Transformative Change across the Biodiversity–Climate–Society Nexus, which describes principles for addressing global environmental crises. The abstract...

In this episode, we're joined by Dr. Robert Montgomery, Associate Professor of Biodiversity and Sustainability, Senior Research Fellow in Lady Margaret Hall College, and Senior Researcher in the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, at Oxford University. He's here to talk about his recent BioScience article, Integrating Social Justice into Higher Education Conservation Science .  The abstract of th...

Thomas Larsen and Patrick Roberts of the Max Planck Institute of the Science of Human History join us to discuss how we can learn about early hominins diets using stable isotope analysis. The abstract of their BioScience article follows. Stable isotope analysis of teeth and bones is regularly applied by archeologists and paleoanthropologists seeking to reconstruct diets, ecologies, and environment...

In this episode, we're joined by Liam Zarri, PhD student at Cornell University, and Dr. Eric Palkovacs, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. They discuss their recent BioScience article on evolutionary effects of dams and other anthropogenic water barriers, such as culverts, on riverine fishes. The impacts they highlight include rapid evolution...

In this episode, we're joined by Kim Novick, Associate Professor in the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Richard Phillips, Professor in the Department of Biology at Indiana University, and Justin Maxwell, Associate Professor, Department of Geography at Indiana University. They were here to talk about their recent article in BioScience on the topic of drough...

The positive effects of scientist engagement with the general public are well documented, but most investigations have focused on the benefits to the public rather than on those performing engagement activities. Writing in BioScience , Nalini Nadkarni of the University of Utah and colleagues "reverse the lens" on public engagement with science, discovering numerous benefits for scientists involved...

While numerous studies have described the funding discrepancies faced by scientists at minority-serving institutions (MSIs), there is a relative paucity of information available about MSI-based scientists' participation in grant review, the process used by research funders to allocate their budgets. A new article from the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) sheds further light on gran...

Natural resource managers worldwide face a growing challenge: Global change increasingly propels ecosystems on strong trajectories toward irreversible ecological transformations. As once-familiar historical ecological conditions fade, managers need new approaches to guide decision-making. In a special section in BioScience, three dozen authors, led by National Park Service (NPS) ecologist Gregor S...

The American institute of Biological Sciences, publisher of the BioScience Talks podcast, mourns the loss of visionary ecologist Thomas E. Lovejoy III. Dr. Lovejoy was the AIBS President in 1994. In 2012, he received the AIBS Outstanding Service Award, an award given annually in recognition of individuals’ and organizations’ noteworthy service to the biological sciences. Earlier this year, he join...

In this episode of BioScience Talks, we're joined by Dr. Michael Lesser, Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire. He's here to talk about his recent BioScience  article , which details the ways that coral is affected by nutrients, climate change, and other stressors— and what those interconnected stressors mean for the future of reefs.

The task of training an effective cadre of biodiversity scientists has grown more challenging in recent years, as foundational skills and knowledge in organismal biology have increasingly required complementary data skills and knowledge. Writing in BioScience , Dr. Anna K. Monfils, of Central Michigan University, and colleagues identify one way to address this training conundrum: biodiversity coll...

In this episode of BioScience Talks, we're joined by Liz Browne, who has bachelor of science degree with honors from the University of Tasmania, and Scott Carver, disease ecologist at the University of Tasmania. They discuss the pathogen transmission, and in particular, the way that Sarcoptes scabiei , the mite responsible for mange, passes between members of different species, as well as the impl...

In this episode of BioScience Talks, we're joined by previous guest Paolo D'Odorico, professor of hydrology and the Chair of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. We're also joined by Willis Jenkins, Hollingsworth Professor of Ethics at the University of Virginia, where he is also Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. Our...

Over recent decades, community-based environmental monitoring (often called "citizen science") has exploded in popularity, aided both by smartphones and rapid gains in computing power that make the analysis of large data sets far easier.              Publishing in BioScience , handling editors Rick Bonney, of Cornell University, Finn Danielsen, of the Nordic Foundation for Development and Ecology...

This episode is the next in our oral history series, In Their Own Words. These pieces chronicle the stories of scientists who have made great contributions to their fields, particularly within the biological sciences and often as relates to DEI issues. Each month, we will publish in the pages of BioScience, and on this podcast, the results of these conversations. Nalini Nadkarni is a professor of...