Georgina Mace remembered in special edition of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society

The edition arose from a scientific meeting at the Royal Society entitled ‘Recovering nature: building on Georgina Mace’s work to ensure a biodiverse and liveable future’, whose organisers included Professor Jon Bridle, Director of UCL's Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, and Professor Richard Pearson (UCL Genetics, Evolution and Environment).

Published as the Royal Society celebrates 360 years of Philosophical Transactions, the edition brings together sixteen papers by leading researchers that can be traced back to – and were inspired by – Georgina Mace's work.

Contributions include a paper by Joseph Williamson (UCL Genetics, Evolution and Environment) and colleagues which argues that species sharing similar tolerances to rising global temperatures might be expected to decline and disappear at similar levels of warming, causing biodiversity to respond abruptly and potentially catastrophically to a steady rise in temperatures. 

Speaking about these shared thermal tolerances, Joseph Williamson said: "A practical step we can take to buffer systems from biodiversity collapse is to protect a wide-ranging sample of the tree of life through conservation action. If distinct lineages of life are protected, we increase our chances of harbouring a diverse portfolio of responses to warming."

Another paper, co-authored by Professor Jon Bridle, focuses on the impacts of limits to adaptation on population and community persistence in a changing environment. Professor Bridle commented: "Biodiversity within species determines rates of evolution in responses to environmental change. Novel techniques to estimate evolutionary and plastic responses in time and space promise a better understanding of maximum rates of adaptation. Such evolutionary responses are increasingly central to the persistence of ecological communities as climates fall increasingly outside those that these species have experienced before."

Elsewhere, UCL researchers Rory Gibb and Professor Kate Jones argue that the effects of biodiversity loss on infectious diseases cannot be understood and tackled without paying far deeper attention to the ways that humans and ecosystems interact.

Rory Gibb said: "We need to better understand how ecological degradation and climate change influence who gets sick and why, how human landscapes create new opportunities for disease transmission, and the role of humans in transmitting infection to wildlife.

"This points to a critical future role for biodiversity scientists in using ecological monitoring data to better understand and predict how new epidemic and pandemic risks are forming in the Anthropocene. Yet to actually improve people’s health, our scientific practices also need to change to become far more equitable – we need to involve affected communities and ensure their concerns are at the heart of our work."

Summarising the edition, Professor Bridle said: "This special issue celebrates the outstanding contributions Georgina Mace made to understanding biodiversity, and to inspiring and supporting a generation of scientists who are taking her work forward into the coming crucial decades. Georgina championed the inspirational goal of ‘bending the curve of biodiversity loss’. For a nature-positive future, and a rich and biodiverse planet that can support the health, happiness and potential of current and future generations. A future we can get to safely, and one where humanity starts to live on this planet as if we intend to stay here."

Links

• Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (Volume 380, Issue 1917)
• Bending the curve towards nature recovery: building on Georgina Mace's legacy for a biodiverse future
• Clustered warming tolerances and the nonlinear risks of biodiversity loss on a warming planet
• Many species reach their heat limits at similar temperatures, leaving ecosystems at risk of sudden climate-driven collapse – new study
• Impacts of limits to adaptation on population and community persistence in a changing environment
• Towards a ‘people and nature’ paradigm for biodiversity and infectious disease
• Biodiversity: a UCL priority
• Remembering Professor Dame Georgina Mace DBE FRS