Design Meets Evolutionary Ecology – Susanne Wieland, Maike Gebker, Michelle Bastian, and Larissa Pschetz

Design Meets Evolutionary Ecology

by Susanne Wieland, Maike Gebker, Michelle Bastian, and Larissa Pschetz

In this blog, we reflect on a practice-based research project that investigated how evolutionary ecology could motivate new design agendas and, conversely, how design explorations could motivate new scientific questions. The project focused particularly on phenology, the study of life-cycle timing in plants, animals, and other living beings; and on issues raised by phenological data, including effects of climate change on rhythms, evolution, and the interconnectedness of multiple species. Through the development of practice-based and digitally supported design concepts that combined disparate datasets, we drew attention to the lack of data on the interaction of specific species, highlighting opportunities for further scientific research. Using a speculative approach, e.g. an artificial hedge that bridges temporalities of ecological remediation, we identified the potential for research to consider the structural needs of different species. Through these examples we reflect on the role of practice-based approaches in expanding scientific discussions through design approaches and how practice-based design methods can be enriched through scientific research.

 

Introduction

Design has often been referred to as a “glue” that can bind disciplines together (Kelley, D., & VanPatter 2005), or as a medium to make complex issues more accessible (Ozkaramanli et al, 2022). In this paper we present a project that departs from a UK based interdisciplinary research project about ‘rethinking design approaches in light of evolutionary ecology research and methods’ in cooperation with the UK Woodland Trust and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. The research team included three designers, Maike Gebker, Susanne Wieland and Larissa Pschetz; a philosopher, Michelle Bastian; and a group of around 10 evolutionary ecology researchers led by Albert Phillimore. The aim of the three-month research collaboration was to explore the potential for evolutionary ecology to inspire new design agendas and, conversely, how design explorations could motivate new scientific questions.

As detailed below, through the development of design concepts that combined disparate phenological datasets, we identified, for instance, the lack of data on the interaction of specific species, drawing attention to opportunities for further scientific research. By developing a speculative concept of an artificial hedge that bridges temporalities of ecological remediation, we identified the potential for scientific research to consider the structural needs of different species.

Through these examples, and as the main question in our project, we reflect on the role of practice-based approaches in expanding scientific and public discussions around climate change temporalities through data contextualisation and how these exploratory data visualisations can, in turn, support practice-based research of phenology.

With the focus of exploring new avenues for understanding climate change and ecological temporalities, we connected methods of creative biology (Pschetz, Ramirez-Figueroa, and Revans 2022) and temporal design (Pschetz & Bastian 2018), with work in the environmental humanities (Bastian & Hawitt 2022) to explore data sets and practices from evolutionary ecology, concerning the scientific study of life-cycle timing in non-human living species. Phenology is recognised as offering a clear way of monitoring the effects of climate change on ecosystems (Menzel 2002, 381). Long-term datasets, particularly, have shown that many species are shifting their timing due to warming (Miller-Rushing & Primack 2008), with worries of possible mismatches regarding food sources or other key factors (Burgess et al. 2018). While interdisciplinary collaborations with geology have raised awareness of the long-term impacts of industrialisation and globalisation, phenology has the potential to direct attention to the shift and adaptation of ecosystems in a changing climate.

Susanne and Maike drew on their practical skill set in environmental design and were supported by Larissa and Michelle to identify openings for designers to engage with phenology, beyond supporting citizen science apps [1] – a tool to collect data of e.g. species nesting behaviour by volunteers – gamification methods [2] and volunteering rewilding programs [3]. With a mutual interest in designing with data (Speed and Oberlander 2016) the first steps focused on visualising phenology data provided by the project partners, ie. Albert Phillimore’s Phenoweb research group [4] and the UK Woodland Trust’s Natures Calendar project [5]. Focusing on the topic of temporal mismatches, Susanne and Maike explored whether increasing changes in the ways species synchronise their rhythms due to warming climate conditions would be revealed.

 

Visualisation of environmental interactions: establishing connections

Our first step in this project was to attempt to visualise the complexity of connections in an ecosystem, based on different phenological datasets. For instance, we brought together data from the mentioned project partners, on how forests are affected by rising temperatures, how these changes affect the variation of insect populations, and how such variations in turn have knock-on effects on the ecology and evolution of species that depend on them for survival, like birds. In this way phenology opens up case studies for designers to visualise complex datasets for contextual understanding.

Ecosystems depend on the often delicate balance of behaviours across a multitude of species. However, looking at papers, numbers and data created by different scientific research efforts, we identified a challenge in establishing these connections, as species tend to be studied in isolation or in relation to one other species. It is indeed rare to see scientific visualisations that reflect the complexity of phenomena in an ecosystem. Our aim was therefore to combine multiple research studies to provide an overview of what is known.

As a result, we created a prototype map [6] of interactions between different species of habitats (Figure 1) and herbivore pollinators (caterpillars and butterflies) and birds. The expectation of the team aimed to use the visualisation to indicate how changes in the population of one species could affect others and the ecosystem more broadly. For instance, raising the population of caterpillars could translate into a healthy population of local birds while reducing foliage of some plants and increasing chances of pollination of others. Mapped across time, it could lead to understanding how the anticipation of foliage of a plant species, e.g. due to warmer conditions, could impact the population of other herbivore species.

The result of our research showed however, mapping these interactions was just a starting point to consider such (a)synchronies as it also demonstrated a lack of data on the interaction of specific species, drawing attention to opportunities for further research. Although the visualisation was initially targeted to a wide public it was quickly recognised as a useful tool for scientists themselves.