I鈥檝e recently returned from a one-week workshop in Patagonian Argentina, and it鈥檚 been a source of reflection on what it is we do in SERS that seemed well suited to a 鈥淪ERS Story鈥.
The brought together 33 people, from around the world and representing a diverse group of experts in ecology and evolutionary biology, who were lured to this beautiful location for a workshop on 鈥淪pecies range shifts and local adaptation: Challenging ecological and evolutionary ideas and assumptions.鈥 The workshop revolved around four questions, three related to ecological/evolutionary science and a fourth that was of greater interest to me: 鈥淲hat are the implications for conservation practice 鈥 and for society more broadly 鈥 of thinking about species range expansions and local adaptation in the Anthropocene?鈥
This was the fourth in a series of Andina workshops, which share the laudable goal of 鈥渃hallenging assumptions鈥 and of using a different format to help do so. In contrast to the routine of a normal academic conference where you listen to 鈥榩repared鈥 talks in a hotel auditorium, Andina aims to nurture personal connections over the course of a week together in an isolated and beautiful setting with daily walks together each afternoon. I think you鈥檒l agree that the view from the meeting place this year, Hotel Tronador near Bariloche, Argentina, was quite stunning and thus fits the bill.
And for a group of ecologists, this was heaven. Sociologists鈥 interviews have shown that ecologists to a large extent study nature because they love it so much. In the context of this Andina workshop, we were partially drawn to this location for its natural beauty, and the group almost without exception revelled in the daily walks, took innumerable pictures of the birds and the bees and the flowers, and tried to determine whether a distant speck was one bird or another (including local specialties such as the Andean Condor, tapaculos, and huet-huets).
This is the context for something striking that I noticed on the second day, when the group focused discussion for 1.5hrs on the ecological and evolutionary drivers of range shifts. At the end of the discussion, as someone who pays attention to the language we use about the environment, I pointed out that the word 鈥渉uman鈥 had not been mentioned the entire time (nor related words such as people, culture, society, etc.), the closest being two occurrences of the word 鈥渁nthropogenic鈥 (human-caused).
On the one hand, I find it mind-boggling that a group of ecologists 鈥 who care about organisms, often deeply 鈥 could hold a conversation for that long without any explicit consideration of humans. Ecology is increasingly defined by human activity, as christened by the new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, so it makes little sense to bracket humans from the picture. Yet, on the other hand, it鈥檚 not really surprising at all, given ecologists鈥 training and backgrounds (not to mention incentives to promotion and 鈥渟uccess鈥 in their discipline).
This experience serves as a reminder of why it鈥檚 so critical to have places, such as SERS, where students and professors don鈥檛 set artificial bounds around their interests 鈥 defined by traditional disciplines 鈥 but set out to solve actual problems that matter 鈥 especially in the Anthropocene era.