For most biologists, inhabiting the Anthropocene also means working in it. There are very few topics in the life sciences that are not confronted with the impacts of the Anthropocene. The prestigious journal Current Biology has recently published a special volume that shows how many biological disciplines are affected by and respond to the changes that the Anthropocene is bringing. Some of the topics are very close to home for me, but more on that later.

The almost two dozen articles cover many different topics. Some of the papers are editorials by staff scientists working for Current Biology, but most are scholarly articles by experts in the field.  These are a great resource for the public. For example, a short feature by Martin provides an overview of plastics and microplastics in the environment. We have looked at plastic from a number of perspectives in recent posts on this blog. Another feature by Gross is on urbanization, a topic that this blog has covered extensively.

Unsurprisingly, several papers deal with extinction. This topic has received a lot of attention recently, at least partly to the coverage of the massive decline in insects and birds documented by several studies. The essay by Goulson provides a great discussion of the topic. A more general paper by Turvey and Crees looks at ways humans have caused or facilitated extinctions. This is deeply rooted in human history with early humans starting to modify their environments, but the pace of extinction has accelerated to an unbelievable speed since the beginning of the Anthropocene. As we tear through the fabric of ecological networks, I wonder if and when we will reach a tipping point and enter a death spiral of species extinction. The concept of tipping points and rapid change is covered in another review paper in the volume by Botta and colleagues from a Danish group.

Another article, by Edwards and colleagues, focuses especially on tropical rainforests and what we need to do to conserve them and their amazing biodiversity. They point to the complexity of conservation in the political and socio-economic arena and make it clear that conservation must be done with the local people, not against them.

At the same time, there is an evolutionary response to human-induced change, but we know very little about it. Using a case study of an Australian lizard, Catullo and colleagues discuss mechanisms by which plants and animals might be able to respond to changing temperatures. They also urge more experimental studies on the topic.

Maybe one of the most pressing issues in the Anthropocene is that we will have to change the ways we feed ourselves. This is covered in several articles, in particular, a great essay by Poppy and Baverstock. They reflect on the Food-Water nexus and connect food production and economics. They also urge quick action and point to a few solutions that need to be researched soon, including the role of CRISPR Cas9 in the manipulation of food plants.

Finally, two papers cross over into neighboring fields. One is by Clayton who flips the question and asks not how do humans affect the living world, but how the Anthropocene (and the news about it) affect us humans? The other one is by Lamba, who connects AI and machine learning with conservation in a pretty novel way.

The one paper that is very close to my own work is the one on threats to freshwater biodiversity by Dudgeon. This is what I work on in the Caribbean and one of the many frustrations is that once invasive species are established, they are there to stay. Among other things I work on invasive guppies (yes, the ones you know from the pet store) and how they alter communities in tropical rivers. Guppies are very pretty, lovely pets, but also very successful invaders. In a short primer Mara also draws the line from pet to ecological disaster, but his examples are crasser: he explains the catastrophic role the Burmese python has in Florida. He also discussed what cats do to the local fauna by killing birds, amphibians, reptiles, and other wildlife.

I want to end with a bow to Alexander von Humboldt, the famous scientist from Prussia. He was born 250 years ago, and warned already in 1819 against the negative impact of deforestation (and, according to his latest biographer, Andrea Wulf, he foresaw the dangers of climate change). His observations from Lake Valencia in Venezuela showed that cutting down the surrounding trees had many bad consequences. Nowadays the lake serves as a reservoir and suffers from massive algae blooms.

Maybe we should have listened to these early warnings. But it seems that greed got in the way….

Ingo Schlupp (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2460-5667) is a Professor of Biology at the University of Oklahoma.