The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology has been awarded in its 16th edition to two Mexican scientists who have contributed to documenting and quantifying the magnitude of the so-called sixth great extinction, that is, the massive loss of biodiversity caused by human activity. Gerardo Ceballos (National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM) and Rodolfo Dirzo (Stanford University) are “researchers at the forefront of ecology and conservation sciences,” in the words of the jury, whose joint work in Latin America and Africa “has “It has been shown that current extinction rates for many organisms are much higher than those over the preceding two million years.”
In this way, by documenting the rampant disappearance of animals and plants in some of the most biodiverse habitats on Earth, both have contributed to revealing that the current biodiversity crisis is – as the ruling minutes highlight – “a period of special acceleration in the loss of species that is taking place around the world and for all groups of organisms, and the first that is directly linked to the impact of a single species: ours.
Specifically, the two award-winning ecologists are leaders in the study of so-called defaunation, a term coined by Dirzo to describe the alterations that cause the disappearance of animals in the structure and functioning of ecosystems. Their work – the award document highlights – has revealed the destructive “chain effects” that the elimination of a species can generate, by disturbing the network of interactions it maintains with other organisms, as well as its impacts on the human population, due to to the loss of the goods and services they provide. His research has contributed to providing “the necessary scientific basis” to promote the adoption of conservation measures based on evidence.
“The experimental works of professors Ceballos and Dirzo have quantified the rate of species loss,” explains Pedro Jordano, research professor at the Department of Integrative Ecology at the Doñana-CSIC Biological Station and secretary of the jury. “And what is truly surprising about their results is how this rate of species extinction, what is called the defaunation process, is happening today at a speed several orders of magnitude above the rate documented over the last two million. of years. “This shows that we are facing a truly alarming situation that award-winning researchers have documented and quantified in thousands of species of vertebrates, invertebrates and plants.”
For his part, Miguel Bastos Araújo, research professor in the department of Biogeography and Global Change at the National Museum of Natural Sciences-CSIC in Madrid and member of the jury, uses an analogy to underline the importance of the work of the winners: “ Let’s imagine that we travel by plane and we sit by the window. Looking through it, we see how pieces of the plane come off. This does not rush instantly, but the first thought that crosses the passenger’s mind is: what is the capacity of this plane to continue flying without the parts that make it up? Something similar happens with ecosystems. As species are lost, vital functions are also lost, and these functions are those that provide essential services.”
The work of Dirzo and Ceballos – Araújo continues – “contributes significantly to the understanding of how these losses affect the resilience and sustainability of our ecosystems, shedding light on the urgent need for conservation actions to preserve the integrity of these systems. vital for our survival.
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards, endowed with 400,000 euros in each of its eight categories, recognize and encourage contributions of singular impact in science, technology, humanities and music, especially those that significantly expand the scope of knowledge. known in a discipline, they make new fields emerge or build bridges between various disciplinary areas. The objective of the awards, since their creation in 2008, is to celebrate and promote the value of knowledge as a public good without borders, which benefits all humanity because it is the best tool we have to face the great global challenges of our time. time and expand each individual’s worldview.
Its eight categories address the knowledge map of the 21st century, from basic knowledge to fields dedicated to understanding and interacting with the natural environment, passing through closely connected areas, such as biology and medicine or economics, information technologies. , the social sciences and humanities, and a universal area of ??art such as music.
