Gabriel Gadsden’s doctoral research on “social-ecological landscapes of fear” wins the 2023 F. Herbert Bormann Prize. The study published in BioScience examines how negative human histories can limit scientific lines of inquiry and challenges environmental scholars to reckon with biases.
Scientists understand that fear of predation affects animal behavior within landscapes. Now, YSE researchers are using a similar hypothesis which they are calling “social-ecological landscapes of fear” to explore the need for conservationists to address negative human histories in their research.
Most people can correctly identify photographs of common animals such as deer, raccoons, skunks and squirrels.
A mink at Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge in Saginaw County, in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Minks are members of the mustelid family of fur-bearing carnivores. In the University of Michigan wildlife study, volunteers had trouble telling apart various mustelids, which also include the fisher, the American marten and weasels. Image credit: University of Michigan Applied Wildlife Ecology Lab.
But can you distinguish a gray wolf from a coyote or correctly identify members of the mustelid family, which includes the American marten, the long-tailed weasel, the fisher and the mink?