Academy scientist Brian Fisher looks at life on a different scale than most people. And his unique perspective has had a profound influence on his approach to species conservation in some of the world’s most critically endangered biodiversity hotspots.

Fisher, an entomologist who specializes in the study of ants, was recently appointed the Academy’s first Patterson Scholar in Science and Sustainability. The honor comes in recognition of his tireless work in Madagascar and other remote regions of the world, as well as the innovative methods he uses to find and study the creatures he calls “the glue that holds ecosystems together.”

“Ants are one of the most important members of ecosystems,” says Fisher. “They turn over more soil than earthworms.” But they’re also some of the most overlooked, he says. “If they were bigger, they would be the most studied type of organism, but people don’t see them.”

Fisher does see ants of course, lots of them. He and his team have identified more than 900 new species of ants in Madagascar alone. So obviously, he spends a lot of time looking closely at patches of ground where ants might live. Some of his other methods, however, are decidedly higher-tech and provide a much more detailed view of these organisms, their habitats, and what their presence or absence might indicate about ecosystem health.

Surprisingly, one of these detailed views comes from space. Fisher has teamed up with satellite companies and engineers from Google to deliver high-resolution satellite images of some of the least explored areas of Madagascar. Fisher can reference these images in the field, even when no network access is available.

The amount of information this places at his fingertips is not unlike what we’ve come to expect from our smartphones while we’re navigating city streets. But Fisher uses these technologies as he explores some of the world’s most remote regions. It’s an unprecedented view and it’s invaluable to his research. Equipped with a GPS-enabled tablet with customized software and high-res satellite images taken only weeks prior, he can not only see where to camp and find water, but he can also tell which patches of forest are most likely to contain new species of ants.

Fisher has learned from years of field experience in Madagascar to focus his search for ants on forests that are wet, situated at 800 meters (2,600 feet) of elevation or below, and isolated from other such patches. Those are the forests that tend to have the greatest species richness—of ants and many other arthropods. They’re also the types of forest that Fisher thinks should be our highest priority in terms of habitat conservation for these species.

Some habitat conservation analyses suggest that deforestation has stabilized in Madagascar, but the percentage of deforestation is not the important measure, Fisher says. “The important question is: Where are we losing the most species due to deforestation?” he says. “What patch of forest is under threat that should be our highest conservation priority right now?”

Of course, ants shouldn’t be our only focus, according to Fisher, but the perspective that research on these types of animals provides is helping to correct a bias in habitat conservation. “If you base conservation on vertebrates alone,” he says, “it leads you to conclude that only the largest forests are important. Ants and other insects provide a better map of true biodiversity.” It’s a more holistic approach.

Based on this approach, Fisher is developing new models that are helping him provide effective conservation recommendations as well as plan future research efforts. He’s currently working with conservation organizations like the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) to identify patches of forest that should be highest priority for protection. So far, he’s identified five areas that CEPF has under review, and he’s always in search of more. “Most of the forests in the lowlands are already gone, so we’re really focused on trying to find the remaining lowland patches of great conservation value,” Fisher says.

Of course, protecting biodiversity requires a solid understanding of the species that are actually out there. This is a huge job in places as species-rich as Madagascar—even if you’re focused only on ants. Fisher and his team of 20 Malagasy scientists and students, as well as five postdocs here in San Francisco, are busy trying to identify and describe the hundreds of new species of ants they’ve discovered in Madagascar. The thinking is that the more species they document, the stronger the efforts will be to save the habitats where these organisms live.

Gathering and sharing information about ants—not to mention generating an appreciation for these creatures—was the primary motivation behind AntWeb, the online database that Fisher created. The site contains records of more than 10,000 ant species collected from around the world, and the perspective it provides on these tiny creatures is unlike most scientific databases. In addition to the tremendous amount of data that AntWeb contains about each species, Fisher says the site’s high-resolution composite images are helping to put a face on these tiny creatures and getting people to appreciate ants and their significance to the health of our planet.

And yet there are so many more ants to find and document—and Fisher and his team feel like they’re in a race against time. Their methods, he says, are “too, too slow. We’re struggling to speed it up.”

Staring at a satellite image of rugged, roadless Malagasy terrain, Fisher says there’s one piece of technology he and his team need more than any other. “We could really use a helicopter,” he says, only half joking.

He’ll continue his exploration of the unexplored when he returns to Madagascar in January 2014—by helicopter or on foot… probably on foot.

Steven Bedard is editor of the Academy website. A recent Bay Area transplant, he now understands what all the fuss is about.

That’s what a recent paper in PLoS Biology asks—and doesn’t really answer.

Instead, it lays out a great argument, giving the pros and cons of using the controversial technique in addressing conservation issues. It also urges the two parties—synthetic biologists and conservation biologists—to get in the same room and talk about the possibilities and problems with open minds. In fact, the authors of paper organized a meeting this week in the United Kingdom, bringing the two groups of scientists together. (Ed Yong has an article about the meeting at National Geographic.)

The paper describes several examples of how synthetic biology could work to help conservation efforts—restoring habitats, supporting endangered species, and even reviving extinct species. It also lays out several examples of how synthetic biology could wreak havoc on the natural world. (The open-access article is very readable. We encourage you to review it or at least take a look at the examples in Table 1.)

The paper and meeting come on the heels of huge media coverage on de-extinction. National Geographic’s April issue on the topic garnered a lot of press and generated public interest. In some cases, these articles say, de-extinction could be just a few years away, if not closer.

The PLoS paper and de-extinction topic seemed to be a great opportunity to speak to Terry Gosliner, the Academy’s Dean of Science and Research, about the subject.

“Do you really want to encounter a saber-toothed cat in Muir Woods?” Terry joked when we sat down.

He sees huge potential risks in using synthetic biology for conservation, but admits that the meeting and discussion are a great idea. “Open dialogue is the only way to explore the topic, see the potential and understand what the concerns and dangers are,” he says. “Bad things happen when there isn’t discussion. Informed dialogue is the best way to deal with controversial issues.”

Terry believes some aspects of synthetic biology in the natural world could work, with appropriate regulation.

But he also sees that synthetic biology may not be the right approach. When thinking about threatened species, the problem is usually “habitat loss, not necessarily genetic constraints.” He uses the re-emergence of California condors as an example of this.

And in some cases, extinction is a natural process, Terry reminds us. Synthetic biology could just be more of humans interfering with nature, and not in a good way.

The resources going toward de-extinction could be better used to protect life before it goes extinct, Terry thinks. “If we use the same resources to address climate change and how we use energy,” Terry says, “We literally could save hundreds and thousands of species.”

And those energy and climate resources could be from synthetic biology. The PLoS paper cites a 2009 report on synthetic biology: “Many believe that synthetic biology will be one of the transformative technologies necessary to combat climate change, energy shortages, food security issues and water deficits.”

What do you think? Can synthetic biology save wildlife? Where do you stand on the issue?

Protecting biodiversity is essential to our health and longevity on this planet. But can we quantify that value? Especially the economic value?

Late last year, researchers from the US and France attempted to put dollar amounts on the importance of biodiversity by correlating it to the prevalence of tropical disease in developing countries. According to their introduction in PLoS Biology:

Along with 93% of the global burden of vector-borne and parasitic diseases (VBPDs), the tropics host 41 of the 48 “least developed countries” and only two of 34 “advanced economies.”

They contend that economic growth falters when people get sick. (Seems reasonable.) And the spread of disease among humans, many scientists argue, can increase or decrease depending on factors in the natural environment, including biodiversity.

The more diverse an ecosystem, the greater the chance that a pathogen is diluted among numerous and potentially less-than-ideal host species and, therefore, the less abundant the disease. In 2002, researchers found this to be true with Lyme disease. NPR sums it up well:

If you have a rich community of tick hosts, like squirrels, mice and other small mammals, the disease is diluted among them. But if the habitat is degraded, and ticks carrying Lyme have only white-footed mice as hosts, the disease risk to humans can rise dramatically.

The Academy’s microbiologist, Shannon Bennett, weighed in on biodiversity’s impact on human diseases. In a recent email, she wrote:

I am sure biodiversity influences the transmission of infectious diseases one way or another.  Over 75% of new, emerging or re-emerging human diseases are caused by pathogens from animals, according to the World Health Organization. That means that the ecological communities we live in, and how pathogens cycle through the different players, are key to human health. Biodiversity is one way that we measure the complexity of these communities. In what way biodiversity is important, or how these communities specifically affect infectious diseases and risk, depends on the pathogen ecology and life history, and host species relationships.

Stanford researchers brought up this same point last month—“depends on the particulars,” as Bennett put it—in a study in Ecology Letters. A summary from the Stanford Report states:

The researchers found that the links between biodiversity and disease prevalence are variable and dependent on the disease system, local ecology and probably human social context.

The role of individual host species and their interactions with other hosts, vectors and pathogens are more influential in determining local disease risk, the analysis found.

That dovetails exactly with the research Bennett and Academy entomologist Durrell Kapan are conducting. They’re currently studying mosquito vector communities and the relationships between their biodiversity, the diversity of their microbes, and the presence of pathogens.

As for putting a price tag on biodiversity, Bennett encourages the PLoS study’s authors:

I find the authors’ argument intriguing and certainly a significant angle to consider in support of the health value of biodiversity, and one that is unique—no one has teased out the financial correlations between biodiversity and human societies. That it includes human health and infectious diseases is the angle I find particularly intriguing and worth following up on with empirical studies.

And on these studies of human disease and biodiversity in general? Bennett is excited about the possibilities of further research, including her own:

Increasingly we are recognizing and appreciating that humans are members of complex communities of other species, and that the make-up of these communities, whether they live inside of us or outside, can be very important to human health, as well as the health of all life. Human health and the health of life on this planet are coupled. We need to understand those coupling mechanisms better to ensure sustainability of that life, and the best way to understand those coupling mechanisms is with a multi-disciplinary approach, bringing together human health researchers with ecologists and evolutionary biologists, to name a few!

Some organizations have sprung up to do just that. Bennett points to two examples: the One Health Initiative and the EcoHealth Association. Whatever dollar value we assign to biodiversity and other ecosystem services, let’s wish these organizations luck in improving human health and well-being.

Image: CDC