Speaker
Description
Although biodiversity is widely acknowledged as worth conserving, conservation science has long grappled with what, exactly, that diversity comprises and which components should be prioritized. Diversity, by definition, is an aggregate of multiple smaller entities or units, yet those units can be defined in many ways. Are species or populations the relevant building blocks of biodiversity? Should we focus on genetic or functional diversity, or instead on particular sites or ecological processes?
Recently, animal behavioral and cultural variation has begun to be recognized as a further dimension of biodiversity. As a contributor to population persistence and adaptive capacity under environmental change, behavioral and cultural diversity is increasingly viewed as a valuable target for sustainable conservation. However, simply adding “behavior” to existing lists of diversity components does not resolve underlying conservation dilemmas. The question of which elements of behavioral variation should count as conservation targets ultimately shapes how behavioral diversity is delineated, monitored, and judged relevant to conservation success.
In this talk, I draw on emerging work on animal cultural diversity to systematically compare how different ways of defining units and setting priorities affect what is counted, valued, and ultimately conserved across behavioral and more familiar dimensions of biodiversity. I examine how familiar prioritization criteria (e.g., rarity, distinctiveness, contribution to resilience and adaptive potential, feasibility of intervention, risk of loss, and ethical and social values) translate to behavioral diversity, and where this translation exposes tensions between trait‑, diversity‑, and process‑focused strategies, including triage‑like dilemmas when distinctive cultural units face uncertain futures. Ultimately, I argue that making these choices about units and criteria explicit not only enables conservation planning to better integrate animal culture, but also clarifies how analogous decisions shape biodiversity conservation outcomes more generally.
| Status Group | Senior Scientist |
|---|---|
| FOR TALKS: Poster Presentation Option | No, I prefer to present only as a talk. |