Workshop: How do we decide the value of a species?

Описание: A fundamental tenet of conservation biology is that all species have intrinsic value, but that does not mean that we all value all species equally. Conservation effort is known to be biased in favor of birds and mammals, especially if they are attractive, impressive or endearing. How can we prepare students to value biodiversity more equitably and ecologically? In this multi-part exercise, I ask undergraduate students in an introductory conservation biology class to consider a) the conservation value they would assign based only on textual descriptions of 'species' natural history, b) how and why their individual valuations may differ from their classmates, and c) how their emotional, or other, biases may cause them to under-value some ecologically important species (e.g., parasites) and intrinsically over-value taxa that are largely irrelevant to the conservation of biodiversity and functioning ecosystems (e.g., individual pets). Activities include an anonymous pre-class online survey to report how they value each species, in-class discussion of the results of the survey and their individual reasons for the valuations, sharing of species images and in-class written reflection on whether species appearance changes perceived value, and before/after written reflections that occur in-class on another day when students are taught about an animal with high ecological service value (before) that is eventually revealed to them to have a parasitic phase of its lifecycle (after).