Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Fangyuan Hua

2024; Elsevier BV; Volume: 34; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.cub.2024.04.001

1879-0445

Fangyuan Hua,

Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management

Fangyuan Hua is an Assistant Professor of conservation ecology at Peking University, China. She works on the conservation and restoration of forest biodiversity, particularly in relation to land-use change linked to agricultural and forestry production. Her research follows two broad themes: first, understanding how biodiversity responds to human alterations of forest ecosystems; and second, identifying options for conservation and restoration interventions, particularly by assessing the synergies and trade-offs between biodiversity and other land-use demands. What turned you on to biology in the first place? I was always interested in nature as a kid growing up, as many field biologists were. One childhood experience that I think was conducive — if not instrumental — to this interest was growing up in the countryside, right by a major tributary of the Yangtze River in a gently hilly landscape where, although agriculture dominated, there was also quite a lot of nature left in and around the area. This was during the 1980s and early 1990s, a time when large-scale farming intensification and urbanization — which have now fully transformed this landscape — were yet to unfold. My family was living in a close-knit community formed by the employees of a state-run forestry enterprise, which was in charge of the shipping of logs harvested upstream down the Yangtze River. Practically everybody knew everybody else in this community, and kids of the same age all went to the same and only community schools — conveniently on the community grounds — and had been classmates ever since kindergarten. It was thus part of our lives as kids to run and goof around together after school, and with the city rather far away our playgrounds were naturally the surrounding farm fields, hills, streams, and riverbanks. I still have vivid memories of picking and emptying weedy legume pods from farm fields in the early summer to blow as whistles (and kids would compete to see who could blow the loudest), picking through pebbles in the river to look for crabs, and nervously (because I have a primordial fear of them) observing the colorful, seemingly omnipresent caterpillars of all shapes and sizes appearing through the summer on the school trees — some of them enormous. I think that my interest in living things really started from these early, intuitive exposures to nature, helped by the fact that it was still relatively abundant in the area at the time. (Sadly, the assortment of legumes, crabs, and caterpillars back then has today dramatically slimmed down if not disappeared altogether; also gone is our community, with China's transition away from natural forest logging in the late 1990s, but that is a whole different and actually laudable story.) Then of course there was the watching of nature documentaries — an interest encouraged by my parents — and the reading of magazine articles about nature and its destruction by humans. I remember being deeply disturbed by a magazine article about the deforestation of the Amazon when I was in middle school and feeling strongly about needing to do something about it. By the end of high school, when I was to choose what major to study in college, biology — the discipline about living things — was clearly the sure choice. And what drew you to your specific field of research? This goes back to what drew me to biology in the first place: a natural affinity to the 'seeable' nature, a keen interest in wildlife (not least fostered by documentaries) and being outdoors, and a strong desire to avert and fix the wrongs that humanity are inflicting on nature. My interest — as a researcher — in biology is therefore not so much about the fundamentals of how life works, not for the 'seeable' nature and even less so for that at the microscopic level. Sure, the layperson in me never fails to be fascinated by biological phenomena of all types and scales; the ingenuity with which life has crafted strategies on all levels to exist and flourish is an endless source of amazement. But as a researcher who must be powered by a genuine drive to uncover something, my interest in biology is of a decidedly applied nature, oriented toward doing science to serve the conservation of nature. Do you have a scientific hero? There are so many scientists I greatly admire. So, yes, I have more than one scientific hero, even without counting those who have passed and that are forever great names in my field (Charles Darwin, for one). If I may, I would like to mention two of my scientific heroes, who influenced me at different stages of my career. The first is Thomas Martin at the University of Montana in the US, whose papers on predation risk through a life history lens were lasting inspirations for me when I was doing my PhD. At the time, I was struggling through my dissertation, which attempted to assess if predation risk, as well as its impacts on prey behavior, might be a pathway through which forest degradation negatively affects forest birds. Professor Martin's papers quickly became my staple learning materials. For the parts of my dissertation more 'fundamentally' focused on the impacts of predation risk, the papers provided intriguing illustrations of the power of life history theory as a guiding framework for understanding such impacts, and in doing so elegant examples of how theories such as this can be tested by clever studies designed to span large geographic gradients. As a footnote of how much I am a fan of Professor Martin, I remember being super excited to discover toward the end of my PhD that he was expanding his research system from focusing solely on the western hemisphere to also include the Asian tropics (the region where I undertook a large part of my PhD fieldwork and that I feel very invested in). The second is Matthew Betts at Oregon State University in the US, whom I personally know. There are many reasons why I see Matt as my scientific hero. As a globally impactful conservation scientist with a strong background in landscape ecology, he has an enviable, steady grounding in ecology, including in fundamental theories — the value of which in enabling us to conceptualize ecological phenomena cannot be overstated. As a senior scientist leading a lab, he still routinely leads studies as the first author. His papers are of reliably high quality and importance to the point that one of my professors once said: "Any paper that has Matt Betts on it is a good paper." (I'd love to be seen as a quality badge like that!) His work is of impressive breadth in terms of topics and approaches. He is grounded in fieldwork and has long-term field systems that support in-depth exploration of scientific questions. He is a deep thinker — I felt absolutely enlightened in the one in-person conversation I had with him, where he pointed out the likely inherent differences among ecosystems in how sensitive they may be to human impacts because of their biophysical features (that idea, by the way, was the basis for his 2019 paper in Science titled 'Extinction filters mediate the global effects of habitat fragmentation on animals' — an instant classic). Do you have a favorite paper or science book? One favorite (popular) science book of mine is Bill Bryson's A Short History to Nearly Everything. This topic is simply impossible, except that it was done brilliantly by this book. I remember being totally absorbed and amused when first reading it. The book is highly informative and equally entertaining. I would strongly recommend it to anyone with an interest in science. Then closer to my own field is Douglas Adam and Mark Carwardine's Last Chance to See about the endangered species on the brink of extinction and the efforts to save them. I never knew such a heavy, gloomy topic that often comes across as a lecture could be written into a book that makes the reader feel so engaged and, yes, entertained. It is such a delicious pleasure to read but also deeply thought-provoking in between the laughter that it is sure to bring the reader. What is the best advice that you have been given? I have benefited from the advice — and the kindness it conveys — of so many mentors and fellow scientists. If I had to pick one, it would be that from my PhD co-advisor Robert Fletcher, at the time when I was applying for postdoc positions. As noted above, the field of ecology closest to my heart has always been applied and conservation-oriented. So as I was finishing up my PhD dissertation, which comprised a major component in behavioral ecology, I was torn between what I should do for my postdoc: riding on the momentum that I was building to go deeper into behavioral ecology or 'switching' to conservation ecology to ask questions more directly about addressing the threats to biodiversity. An important trigger for this inner debate was my increasing interest to join the lab of David Wilcove at Princeton University in the US, a leading lab working on conservation issues in Asia that I had come to greatly admire. It was clear to me that their questions and approaches were very different from mine up until then — even if we were both looking at selective logging in Southeast Asia. Put crudely, theirs was less about ecological mechanisms than the patterns underlain by those mechanisms and involved socioeconomic angles key to identifying conservation solutions. To join David's lab would therefore mean a pretty major shift in my research and scientific identity. Obviously, there would also be the cost of this shift in the short term: I would be playing catch-up for a while, and most likely would not have the currency in time for the next (hopefully faculty) job. On the other hand, I had zero doubt that the ability to provide clear, actionable answers to pressing conservation challenges was my true calling, and this was something my work up until then was less equipped to do but seemed exactly what David's work was all about. I took my confusion to Rob. He did not give me a straightforward answer but said that there are two approaches to doing one's (first) postdoc and that both have merit. One is to go deeper along the same directions of one's PhD, with the obvious benefit of a head start in postdoc research and a consistent line of work in one's profile. The other one is to do something rather different — but that one really wants to do and sees as a core part of their future research identity. The next thing that he said on this second approach was what nailed the decision for me (and here I am paraphrasing): arguably, postdoc is the last major stage in one's academic career when one can focus on learning something entirely new, so for all the notable drawbacks there is something to be said about taking the leap. I did in the end undertake my postdoc with David (I was very fortunate to have gotten that opportunity). The drawbacks that I had pondered all turned out to be very real — and very stressful as I was going through the postdoc — but the upside was also extremely rewarding. What is your favorite conference? My favorite type of conference is one that is big enough to attract the leading figures of the field yet small enough such that all talks are 'plenary' talks for everyone to attend (in other words, there is no parallel session). I have personally attended such a conference before (the International Conference on Phenology in 2015, held in Kus¸adası, Turkey), so such things do exist, although they may be an increasing rarity these days. Even though my attendance was just for a side project of passing interest, and I practically had no 'friends' there to reconnect with, this meeting was the most enjoyable conference experience that I have ever had because of the extent to which one got to engage and interact with the other conference attendees. Which aspect of science, your field or in general, do you wish the general public knew more about? I would like the general public to better appreciate that science, while our best attempt at understanding truth, is nonetheless vulnerable to biases and erroneous conclusions related to methodological flaws and human error. Its safety net lies in its spirit of updating — even correcting — itself on the basis of evidence and ensured by the participation and open exchange of the scientific community. It is therefore a core pursuit of science to avoid bias and achieve rigor in its depiction of the objective truth, be it on the level of individual studies or a given field as a whole. Regarding my field and more specifically the applied problem of biodiversity conservation (attenuating the loss and facilitating the recovery of biodiversity), I would like the general public to better connect the visible problems of biodiversity loss — such as species extinctions, deforestation, and so on — with the day-to-day choices and behaviors of each of us. Most of society may readily stand behind the protection of the giant panda or mechanisms to halt the deforestation of the Amazon, including by putting pressure on companies or other entities viewed as perpetrators. But far fewer realize that the force that ultimately puts the giant panda and the Amazon in plight is our demand for timber, agricultural land, and natural resources in general, which is intimately linked to our increasingly resource-intensive lifestyles. The solution to the biodiversity crisis is therefore much more than the 'frontline', often romanticized actions of defending wild nature and lies with all humanity in our choices of what and how much to consume in our daily lives, and ultimately what relationship we see ourselves having with nature. In this regard, ecology and conservation science have major responsibilities to better inform the public — in terms of this understanding and more practically of what a regular person can do in their daily lives to help effect this solution. The author started to serve on the advisory board of Current Biology in January 2024.