Multispecies Perspective Research Articles

Critical policy studies in dialogue with multispecies perspectives: should it become a more-than-human endeavor?

ABSTRACT This forum contribution aims to start a conversation about how multispecies perspectives can broaden the scope of critical policy studies. By addressing three key questions – who speaks, whom do we speak for, and how do we speak for those who are silenced – it examines the power dynamics, ethical considerations, and representational challenges in advocating for nonhuman entities in governance. I discuss frameworks that recognize the rights and agency of nonhuman entities, such as animals, ecosystems, and rivers, with a particular focus on epistemic justice and the inclusion of Indigenous cosmologies that acknowledge the interconnectedness of humans and nonhumans. I also consider the methodological and ethical challenges, including issues of power, representation and informed consent, and explore alternative approaches such as multispecies ethnography to better include nonhuman perspectives. I conclude with three key strategies that can broaden the scope of critical policy studies: making visible silences concerning nonhuman entities in policy; rethinking representation of nonhuman entities in policy; and overcoming silences in representation by adopting reflexive, inclusive methodologies that account for nonhuman interests in policy.

An exploratory analysis of the development and implementation of urban animal welfare policy in public spaces for four common species: Cats, dogs, pigeons, and foxes in the Brussels Capital Region

ABSTRACT This study aims to understand urban animal welfare policy development and implementation for four species in public spaces: cats (Felis catus), dogs (Canis familiaris), pigeons (Columbia livia domestica), and foxes (Vulpes vulpes). Our exploratory research offers an overview of the perspectives of all involved municipal and police officers and their challenges in a metropolitan urban context, the Brussels Capital Region in Belgium. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 35 participants from 19 municipalities and six police zones of the region. Additionally, we organized two focus groups consisting of representatives from municipalities, police zones, and nongovernmental organizations. Afterward, we analyzed the data thematically, leading to the identification of six policy and six practice recommendations. These recommendations can help advance the notion of urban animal welfare for the four species from a multispecies perspective.

Ten steps towards integrated decision making for ecological restoration in cities: Rewilding the European beaver (Castor fiber) in Berlin, Germany

Ensuring a livable city for all within the more-than-human discourse, restoration of urban ecosystems requires careful consideration of both human and non-human needs. However, traditional assessments and therefore most management plans usually fail to include the latter as a core planning requirement. This article presents and explains a 10-step method which simultaneously and actively considers both to identify potential restoration areas within urban ecosystems. To do so, a Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) analysis for the multispecies needs identification is combined with a Multicriteria Spatial Decision Support System (MCSDSS) for the spatial assessment. To validate this method, a case study of Berlin, Germany, an explicitly urban case, is presented. The aim of the study was to evaluate the ecosystem restoration (rewilding) potential of the city's riparian and riverine ecosystems through the enhancement of Eurasian beaver habitats.•Method combining SWOT analysis with MCSDSS for an integrated spatial assessment•Well-suited for multispecies (human and non-human) perspective on urban nature restoration

Comparative transcriptomic analysis provides insights into the genetic networks regulating oil differential production in oil crops

BackgroundPlants differ more than threefold in seed oil contents (SOCs). Soybean (Glycine max), cotton (Gossypium hirsutum), rapeseed (Brassica napus), and sesame (Sesamum indicum) are four important oil crops with markedly different SOCs and fatty acid compositions.ResultsCompared to grain crops like maize and rice, expanded acyl-lipid metabolism genes and relatively higher expression levels of genes involved in seed oil synthesis (SOS) in the oil crops contributed to the oil accumulation in seeds. Here, we conducted comparative transcriptomics on oil crops with two different SOC materials. In common, DIHYDROLIPOAMIDE DEHYDROGENASE, STEAROYL-ACYL CARRIER PROTEIN DESATURASE, PHOSPHOLIPID:DIACYLGLYCEROL ACYLTRANSFERASE, and oil-body protein genes were both differentially expressed between the high- and low-oil materials of each crop. By comparing functional components of SOS networks, we found that the strong correlations between genes in “glycolysis/gluconeogenesis” and “fatty acid synthesis” were conserved in both grain and oil crops, with PYRUVATE KINASE being the common factor affecting starch and lipid accumulation. Network alignment also found a conserved clique among oil crops affecting seed oil accumulation, which has been validated in Arabidopsis. Differently, secondary and protein metabolism affected oil synthesis to different degrees in different crops, and high SOC was due to less competition of the same precursors. The comparison of Arabidopsis mutants and wild type showed that CINNAMYL ALCOHOL DEHYDROGENASE 9, the conserved regulator we identified, was a factor resulting in different relative contents of lignins to oil in seeds. The interconnection of lipids and proteins was common but in different ways among crops, which partly led to differential oil production.ConclusionsThis study goes beyond the observations made in studies of individual species to provide new insights into which genes and networks may be fundamental to seed oil accumulation from a multispecies perspective.

Knowing with Microalgae: On the Maintenance of a Wastewater Treatment Prototype in an Ecovillage

In this article, we present a case study of an experimental set up of a microalgae-based wastewater treatment prototype in an ecovillage requiring many maintenance operations to function. Taking our cue from maintenance and repair studies, we focus on the embodied engagements by which caring for wastewater unfolds. We examine how aquatic ecologists, environmental engineers and villagers use their senses as instruments of inquiry when handling wastewater, as they observe its colour and smell its occupants, and manually check the connections between tubes and pumps. A multispecies body of microbial wastewater figures prominently, as the metabolism of three species of microalgae dwelling in the wastewater is key to the functioning of the prototype. Turning to insights from multispecies ethnographies of laboratory studies, we expand our focus on embodied engagements across the species barrier while maintenance unfolds. We show how ecologists, engineers and villagers engage in ‘knowing with microalgae’ as the algal community invokes and adapts its metabolism in surprising ways to the interferences stirred by their human caretakers. By juxtaposing three ethnographic stories about knowing (1) with hungry, (2) with stressed, and (3) with dying microalgae, we show how algal bodies are both object and instrument of inquiry. Unexpectedly, they also become, tools of repair, liaising with their human caretakers, with other microorganisms and with added chemicals in the wastewater, as well as natural forces such as heat, sunshine, and frost. Considering the maintenance of and by living matter such as microalgae, we raise questions about life and death as the object of maintenance shifts. In so doing, we urge for a multispecies perspective on maintenance that acknowledges that ‘the inclusion of nonhuman others from the animal/organic world produces a different set of ethical concerns than the engagement with technological entities’ (Puig de la Bellacasa 210, 159). This is needed as societies advance towards ecologically sustainable modes of living in which humans will progressively cohabitate with a wide variety of species as well as the technologies that house and facilitate them.

Co-Designing Multispecies Speculations Through Biofuturing

Amid growing environmental concerns, there is an increasing demand for creative research approaches that address impending crises while simultaneously imagining sustainable modes for humans to coexist with nature. In response, we introduce the concept/practice of “biofuturing,” a creative research approach concerned with the co-design of multispecies speculations of worlds to come. We engaged 21 scholars in a 3-day biofuturing event, combining a living lab methodology with futures studies techniques and creative practices. In this article, we present biofuturing in theory and practice, and we discuss how the co-designed futures speculations address existing and emerging challenges from a multispecies perspective.

Addressing leisure interest conflicts surrounding the transgressive human-animal relationships of unhoused people and their pets

ABSTRACT Pet ownership is an important leisure activity for unhoused people, yet housed people at leisure often disapprove. Reviewing literature from leisure studies and beyond, I consider the tension surrounding this practice through the lenses of critical leisure, multi-species perspectives, and the capabilities approach. I examine (1) how people at leisure react to unhoused pet owners, (2) how pet ownership impacts wellbeing and leisure activities while unhoused, (3) whether the human leisure benefits produced also serve the animals involved, and (4) what actions and attitudes are necessary to alleviate the conflicting leisure interests produced by unhoused pet ownership. Housed people at leisure assume the unhoused cannot care for a pet when they “cannot even take care of themselves.” However, these pets generally receive good care, and unhoused pet owners also perceive practical and emotional benefits, though empirical evidence for these benefits is still lacking. While the everyday challenges faced by unhoused pet owners are apparent, more research is needed to assess the physical, psychological, and social benefits they experience by participating in leisure through pet ownership. To address this leisure conflict, animal-accommodating shelter services must be provided, and the public must better understand the relationship between unhoused people and their pets.

Drunken Mountains: Analysis of the Bennett and Ponce Monoliths of Tiwanaku (AD 500–1100) from a Multispecies Perspective

Abstract Archaeological research on the architecture and sculpture of Tiwanaku society in the south-central Andes follows two separate paths: one emphasizes iconographic interpretation, whereas the other studies lithic materials’ origin and spatial relations. This separation, stemming from dualistic modern thought, is an obstacle to a comprehensive understanding of lithic sculptures and their role in Tiwanaku society. This article focuses on the Ponce and Bennett monoliths, the two largest and most complex sculptures of the Tiwanaku ceremonial center. It presents the results of an iconographic analysis identifying minimal design components ordered in a three-level nested hierarchy and their distribution over the spatial structures of both sculptures. This analysis incorporates existing information about lithic materials and quarries, the monoliths’ locations, and spatial relationships. All those data are interpreted in the light of Aymara and Quechua ontologies about the relationships between mountains, stones, and images. Characterizing aspects of the Tiwanaku site and its role in lithic production, this article extends the limits of Tiwanaku society to include nonhuman agents and suggests that we overcome anthropocentric biases.

The Organic Monocrop

Under the banner of green growth, a number of theories currently promote new models that seek to decouple economic growth from excessive resource use and its adverse ecological impacts. But how exactly can one generate profit without disturbing ecologies? Drawing on ethnographic data from Indian tea plantations that are in the process of being converted to organic agriculture, this article examines specific attempts to alter the intersection of vegetal and financial growth. As a cultivation system, plantations intensify the manipulation of plant growth for monetary ends; they seek to mass produce and standardize valuable vegetal materials and radically simplify the ecologies that surround these monocrops. Taking a multispecies perspective, this article traces how green growth experiments seek to change the forms, rhythms, and ecological alliances that characterize the tea plant’s growth. The article argues that, on organic tea plantations, green growth aspires to harness the unruly aspects of nonhuman life to make monocultures more productive. In the process, the nonscalable impulses of vegetal growth, unpredictable interactions with wildlife, and even the potentially harmful metabolisms of insects and fungi become integral parts of plantation cultivation—though not always successfully. The article widens our understanding of how green production methods are envisioned not as alternatives to but rather as support for industrial cultivation systems.

“Muslim Environmentalisms and Environmental Ethics: Theory and Practice for Rights and Justice”

This presentation was the Biennial Willem A. Bijlefeld Lecture at Hartford International University in 2023. Muslim religious responses to environmental change highlight the importance of multispecies perspectives, rights of nature and environmental justice. These areas are also the most central to the development of current environmental engagement and advocacy. Muslim moral teachings and praxis of the past and present in just these areas are communal in focus, blend law and ethics around rights‐based notions, and they also scale horizons meaningfully in the area of justice. Additionally, relative autonomy from post‐Christian philosophical tradition allows such Muslim perspectives to re‐ground to ethics away from investments in neoliberal and colonial heritage. Islamic theory and practice addressing concerns at the forefront of environmental studies thereby shape the future of environmental ethics beyond the Anthropocene.

Co‐Creatively Producing Knowledge With Other‐Than‐Human Organisms in a (Bio)Technology‐Controlled Artistic Environment

Along with the increasing awareness about the destructive force of humankind on nature, existential questions about how to create a more sustainable relationship with the natural world have emerged. To acquire a more eco‐friendly attitude, we need to go beyond the well‐established knowledge cultures that highlight a nature versus culture dichotomy. This study focuses on bio art as an epistemic vehicle to re‐imagine our understanding of and connection to the natural world. Drawing on the theoretical stance of philosophical posthumanism, we discuss how artistic co‐creation processes involving humans and other‐than‐humans hold the potential to introduce a shift in our worldview from anthropocentric to ecocentric. We further question what this shift might imply for how we approach the complex relationship between humans and other‐than‐humans in our own research. We conducted a within‐case and cross‐case analysis of five bio art projects that previously won the Bio Art & Design Award (2018–2020). To analyze the data, we used a combined approach of visual and context analysis and material semiotics. Qualitative interviews were used as a data collection technique to investigate the lived experiences of both artists and scientists involved in the projects. Our findings suggest that bio art’s epistemic significance can primarily be found in its multispecies perspective: By following the wills and ways of bio‐organisms, bio art makes the invisible connection between nature and culture visible. Bio art can provoke our thinking about how to include and approach other‐than‐human agency in the context of socially engaged research practices.

Multispecies design: 3D-printed biomimetic structures to enhance humidity levels

The paper changes the focus of the design debate from a human-centered design methodology to a posthuman design that takes both human and nonhuman agents into account. It examines how designers might use a multispecies perspective to produce projects with distinguished intelligence and performance. To illustrate this, we describe a project of structures for plants that started on a course in an academic setting. The project methodology begins with “Thing Ethnography”, investigating the movement of a water bottle inside a house and its interaction with other objects. The correlation between water and plants was decided to be further expanded, considering how water might enhance the environmental humidity and create a cooler microclimate for indoor plants. According to their effectiveness, 3D-printed biomimetic structures were designed and manufactured as water droplet supports considering different materials, and positioned in various configurations around a plant. Humidity levels and temperature of the structures were measured. As a result, this created a novel method for mass customization and working with plants. The paper discusses the resultant evidence-based design and the environmental values related to it.

Quantifying annual spatial consistency in chick-rearing seabirds to inform important site identification

Animal tracking has afforded insights into patterns of space use in numerous species and thereby informed area-based conservation planning. A crucial consideration when estimating spatial distributions from tracking data is whether the sample of tracked animals is representative of the wider population. However, it may also be important to track animals in multiple years to capture changes in distribution in response to varying environmental conditions. Using GPS-tracking data from 23 seabird species, we assessed the importance of multi-year sampling for identifying important sites for conservation during the chick-rearing period, when seabirds are most spatially constrained. We found a high degree of spatial overlap among distributions from different years in most species. Multi-year sampling often captured a significantly higher portion of reference distributions (based on all data for a population) than sampling in a single year. However, we estimated that data from a single year would on average miss only 5 % less of the full distribution of a population compared to equal-sized samples collected across three years (min: −0.3 %, max: 17.7 %, n = 23). Our results suggest a key consideration for identifying important sites from tracking data is whether enough individuals were tracked to provide a representative estimate of the population distribution during the sampling period, rather than that tracking necessarily take place in multiple years. By providing an unprecedented multi-species perspective on annual spatial consistency, this work has relevance for the application of tracking data to informing the conservation of seabirds.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Multispecies security and personhood

AbstractThe contributions to this Special Issue examine multispecies perspectives on the political dynamics of international life. Building on this theme, I consider the complex and manifold ways in which the subject of security can be understood in terms of more-than-human personhood. First, by thinking of more-than-human animals as phenomenally conscious persons, we might better appreciate the multispecies complexity of security as an agentic and affective experience. Second, attending to the spiritual character of certain indigenous articulations of personhood presses us to decipher how spiritual claims might inform moral and legal dimensions of multispecies security-seeking behaviour. To illustrate the significance of these moves, I first draw on more-than-human experiences of war, pathogenic viruses, and the global factory farm. I then explore conceptions of spiritual personhood in the context of Ojibwe responsibilities to protect wolves. These perspectives on personhood demonstrate possibilities for cultivating greater interest in the multispecies experience of security.

“For whom? By whom?”: critical perspectives of participation in ecological citizen science

This paper is a search for common ground between two natural scientists, two childhood studies and education scholars and two human–animal studies or critical animal studies scholars all working within a shared citizen science project. The search takes the form of a thematic mapping of existing literature on ecological citizen science, with two questions: “Participation on whose terms?”, and “Participation for whose benefit?”. First, we draw from the field of childhood studies to show how the concept of participation can be theorized further. Second, we recontextualize ecological citizen science research from a multispecies perspective, following the non-anthropocentric turn in human and social sciences which has so far drawn limited attention both in educational research and in citizen science projects. We proceed by critically treading the blurry line between predetermined or science-led participation and emergent or participant-led research, forming a fruitful space for examining and reconceptualizing the prevailing human/nature distinction in science and pedagogy. What we end up proposing is not so much a solution to the issues we have located, but rather an invitation to consider participation as a possibility for engaging with the ongoing tensions regarding the apparatuses of power that guide the research practices, researchers’ thinking and ethics. For the democratic ethos of citizen science projects, these observations can result in an ongoing process of asking how would it be possible to make space for various knowledges to be regarded as such: How could different kinds of knowledge co-exist, potentially generating more just worlds?

Co-Creation Beyond Humans: The Arts of Multispecies Placemaking

Placemaking, as a form of urban development often focusing on arts- and community-based approaches, is becoming a key site for responding to pressing social and environmental concerns around the development of sustainable urban futures. This article explores the potential of arts-based methods to develop a “multispecies placemaking” in which “the community” is expanded to also include non-human species. Drawing on a performative event aiming to put the idea of multispecies placemaking into practice, the article brings together theories and practices of the evolving field of multispecies art with the more established field of socially engaged art to discuss challenges of co-creation and participation from a multispecies perspective. It concludes with a reflection on the possibilities of arts-based methods to foster not only methodological innovation within the field of placemaking but also to suggest a re-thinking of what placemaking is and could be.

Rethinking environmental justice in the Anthropocene: An anthropological perspective

This article encourages a closer dialogue between contemporary anthropological reflections on nature and the environment and environmental justice (EJ). We can revise the environment concept by adopting a more nuanced view of the ontological relations between humans and non‐humans. The idea of ‘assemblage’ as reworked in the Anthropocene debate enriches EJ with a multispecies perspective and a new ‘temporal awareness’. Ethnography grounded in the confluence of human/geophysical agency and temporality can help us understand past eco‐social dynamics and possible futures and overcome environmental inequalities and discrimination.

Ruderal Resilience: Applying a Ruderal Lens to Advance Multispecies Urbanism and Social-Ecological Systems Theory

As global urbanization accelerates, cities have become increasingly complex and hybridized, and host to novel urban landscape forms such as informal greenspaces or novel ecosystems that support ruderal and spontaneous vegetation. Researchers have documented the ecosystem services or benefits these systems provide, as well as the tradeoffs or disservices associated with biotic globalization. Despite evidence of their co-benefits, fragmented knowledge and biased views of these novel ecological forms contributes to an underestimation of their social-ecological role and potential for serving as a model for resilient and nature-based urban design and planning. The social-ecological systems discourse has improved understanding of these emerging conditions, yet may benefit from an attunement to a multispecies perspective, an ecosystem-based approach to urban planning and governance that recognizes the interdependencies of humans and other organisms. This article explores the potential social-ecological role of ruderal landscapes in facilitating this transition, referred to as ruderal resilience, as well as recent research in SES and resilience theory that may help advance concepts such as multispecies urbanism and planning. The aim is to consider the potential for spontaneous ecological self-organization to serve as a device for reinvigorating relationships with urban ecological commons and advancing social-ecological systems theory.

Probing the functions of friedelane-type triterpene cyclases from four celastrol-producing plants.

Triterpenes are among the most diverse plant natural products, and their diversity is closely related to various triterpene skeletons catalyzed by different 2,3-oxidosqualene cyclases (OSCs). Celastrol, a friedelane-type triterpene with significant bioactivities, is specifically distributed in higher plants, such as Celastraceae species. Friedelin is an important precursor for the biosynthesis of celastrol, and it is synthesized through the cyclization of 2,3-oxidosqualene, with the highest number of rearrangements being catalyzed by friedelane-type triterpene cyclases. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the catalysis of friedelin production by friedelane-type triterpene cyclases have not yet been fully elucidated. In this study, transcriptome data of four celastrol-producing plants from Celastraceae were used to identify a total of 21 putative OSCs. Through functional characterization, the friedelane-type triterpene cyclases were separately verified in the four plants. Analysis of the selection pressure showed that purifying selection acted on these OSCs, and the friedelane-type triterpene cyclases may undergo weaker selective restriction during evolution. Molecular docking and site-directed mutagenesis revealed that changes in some amino acids that are unique to friedelane-type triterpene cyclases may lead to variations in catalytic specificity or efficiency, thereby affecting the synthesis of friedelin. Our research explored the functional diversity of triterpene synthases from a multispecies perspective. It also provides some references for further research on the relative mechanisms of friedelin biosynthesis.

Multi-species dementia studies: Contours, contributions and controversies

Developed via an online collaborative writing project involving members of the Multi-species Dementia International Research Network, this article seeks to refocus “the lens of the dementia debate” (Bartlett & O’Connor, 2007) by bringing dementia's complicated relations with the more-than-human world into sharper relief. Specifically, the article explores four thematic areas (contours) within contemporary dementia studies (Care & Caring; Illness Experience & Disease Pathology; Environment, Self & Sustainability; Power, Rights & Social Justice) where the application of multi-species theories and concepts has potential to foster innovation and lead to new ways of thinking and working. Whilst incorporating multi-species perspectives within dementia studies can create new ways of responding and new spaces of response-ability, the potential for conflict and controversy remains high. It is imperative, therefore, that the field of dementia studies not only becomes a site within which multi-species perspectives can flourish, but that dementia studies also becomes a vehicle through which multi-species concepts may be refined.