Diversity in evidence

Editor-in-Chief, BioScience Editorial Board, BioScience The August issue of BioScience expansively addresses concerns of our community. As such, this issue reflects a diverse population of authors with input from our equally adept editorial board and knowledgeable and committed reviewers. Apropos of the haze that currently drifts over the Prairie Coteau from the forest fires in Manitoba is a Book Review by Pausas, “Fires in the Petrocene” (https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf007) of Valiant's Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World. The book is a narrative of the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire in Alberta, Canada, which burned 600,000 hectares of boreal forest and caused great damage to the oil town. The book serves as a salient reminder of the great cost we face if we ignore the exploitation and overuse of crude oil. Another human-caused environmental catastrophe in the making is the misuse of the Colorado River. In their Letter, “Reimagining river governance: Insights from the Colorado river crisis”(https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf037), Fernandes and colleagues discuss the challenges of and potential solutions to addressing transboundary riparian systems. The type specimen defines a species, and Azevedo-Santos and colleagues in their Viewpoint, “Conserving the type locality hotspots” (https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf024), assert the importance of conserving the type locality, especially where the first types of many species were collected. They make a strong case for the preservation of type localities, which, among other reasons for conservation, can “provide additional material to assist in determining the identity of a species.” Continuing with collections, it is certainly the case that new tools for more efficiently accessing the immense data stored in biological collections are critical for our interpretation of changes to life on Earth. In their Biologist's Toolbox article, “Hespi: A pipeline for automatically detecting information from herbarium specimen sheets” (https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf042), Turnbull and colleagues describe a new tool they have developed for detecting and digitizing information contained on herbarium sheets. Considering extinction, Wallach and Lundgren, in their Overview article, “Review of evidence that foxes and cats cause extinctions of Australia's endemic mammals” (https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf046), make a strong case that these invasive species have played a limited role in the loss of Australia's charismatic mammals. In another Biologist's Toolbox, Anderson and colleagues explore the “key developments in ecological drone science since 2013” and offer “a critical evaluation of drone futures for ecologists” in “Drones in ecology: Ten years back and forth” (https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf069). They discuss “how the next decade of experimentation by ecologists will shift further into the volumetric (i.e., three-dimensional [3D] sampling or sensing) domain.” The importance of nature to human health is the focus of Soga and Gaston's Overview, “Health benefits of viewing nature through windows: A meta-analysis” (https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf089). This article describes the broad swath of effects that can be afforded by a well-placed window, and one of us has a fundamental, innate, and intimate connection to the topic. Turning to how we teach and conduct science, we have an Education contribution “The Graph Construction Competency Model for Biology (GCCM-Bio): A framework for instruction and assessment of graph construction” (https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf060) by Abraham and colleagues. Although graph construction is fundament to how we conduct and present science, they cogently argue the importance of graph construction for education and describe a framework of the components and classroom activities associated with graph construction. By doing so, they hope to advance competence in reading and building graphs for students of all ages. In a Professional Biologist contribution, “Beyond diversity initiatives: Building a community of care in scientific societies” (https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf065), Tanner and Wilsterman provide a critique of academic society DEIJ (diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice) activities. Although these activities have been helpful, they discuss that often “the specific cultural values that are problematic and need changing are rarely made explicit” and that doing so would facilitate DEIJ goals. One of the continuing challenges to DEI is sexism, as is discussed by del Giogio and colleagues in their Viewpoint, “Systemic sexism in academia: An early-career viewpoint” (https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf076). Based on personal experience, they share the main hurdles that early-career women researchers face across institutions and continents. They also discuss these issues in the BioScience Talks podcast, https://bioscience-talks.aibs.org/episodes/systemic-sexism-in-academia-with-olivia-del-giorgio-maria-piquer-rodriguez-and-silvia-lomascolo. We must do better.

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