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    The Kindle version of my book Spineless Wonders: Strange Tales from the Invertebrate World is currently on sale for just $4.99.  The New York Times Book Review says,  “With wit & elegance [Conniff] persuades the queasiest reader to share his fascination with the extravagant variety of invertebrates & their strategies.”

    Ending Epidemics: A History of Escape from Contagion: “Ending Epidemics is an important book, deeply and lovingly researched, written with precision and elegance, a sweeping story of centuries of human battle with infectious disease. Conniff is a brilliant historian with a jeweler’s eye for detail. I think the book is a masterpiece.” Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone and The Demon in the Freezer

    The Species Seekers:  Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth by Richard Conniff is “a swashbuckling romp” that “brilliantly evokes that just-before Darwin era” (BBC Focus) and “an enduring story bursting at the seams with intriguing, fantastical and disturbing anecdotes” (New Scientist). “This beautifully written book has the verve of an adventure story” (Wall St. Journal)

    Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time by Richard Conniff  is “Hilariously informative…This book will remind you why you always wanted to be a naturalist.” (Outside magazine) “Field naturalist Conniff’s animal adventures … are so amusing and full color that they burst right off the page …  a quick and intensely pleasurable read.” (Seed magazine) “Conniff’s poetic accounts of giraffes drifting past like sail boats, and his feeble attempts to educate Vervet monkeys on the wonders of tissue paper will leave your heart and sides aching.  An excellent read.” (BBC Focus magazine)

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Never Mind Biodiversity. Think Color, Movement, Noise

Posted by Richard Conniff on October 7, 2014

This is a nice description by Chris Helzer, a Nebraska ecologist, about the aftermath of a tour he was giving of some of the prairie habitat he manages for the Nature Conservancy:

As we were finishing the last tour of our site and walking back to the vehicles, Wayne Copp, of the Tall Grass Bison Ranch in Auburn, Kansas, caught up with me.  He told me how much he had enjoyed the tours and that he thought our prairies looked great.  I thanked him, of course – it’s always nice to hear that.  But then he went on…

“A lot of prairies I visit,” he said, “look pretty dead – there’s not much going on. But your prairies are really alive, and they’ve got the three things I always look for in grasslands.”

“Which are?” I asked.

“Color, movement and noise.”

And there you go.  I’ve not heard a more concise, all-encompassing description of a good prairie.  Even better, you don’t have to be a botanist or ecologist to recognize color, movement and noise.  Anyone, regardless of age or background, can walk through a prairie and judge whether or not that prairie has those qualities.

Color is easy to find in many prairies. Wildflowers are an obvious source of color, but not the only one.

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Birds such as this dickcissel can provide color, movement and noise all by themselves...

Of course, some of you are already asking, “How MUCH color, movement and noise should there be?”

But Wayne’s criteria for judging prairies (at least as I understand them) are not meant to be quantitative.  Sure, more is better, but that’s not really the point.  I think he’s just saying that a prairie without color, movement and noise is deficient.  Clean and simple.

Much of the "noise" in prairies is created by insects, though they are far from the only sources, which can include birds, mammals, wind, and many others.

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Sure, we still need other indicators and measures that can help us identify trends in plant diversity or species’ population viability.  We still need to figure out what to look for as we evaluate past management actions and plan the next ones.   And we still need to better understand what factors can indicate whether a prairie is ecologically resilient.

Unfortunately, only those of us who spend the majority of our time working in prairies can get much good out of those highfalutin indicators, measures, and factors.  They are important, but only to a small subset of people.  For everyone else – and us prairie wonks too – Wayne has already figured out the three essential qualities every prairie should have.

Color, movement and noise.

Brilliant.

This entry was posted on October 7, 2014 at 9:05 am and is filed under Environmental Issues. Tagged: . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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