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Wildlife trade represents a major threat to endangered-species populations, especially in Southeast Asia, where trade continues at high levels despite increased efforts to control illegal activities. To identify management strategies that better mitigate the threat of this trade, research must address knowledge gaps about the complexity of established trade networks. This requires a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach that integrates biological, anthropological, socioeconomic, and other kinds of data and involves multiple stakeholders across sectors. We present here an interdisciplinary research framework for developing such an approach. Our integrative framework, based on the social-ecological systems framework by Ostrom, can be used to explore and untangle complex wildlife trade dynamics across scales and test hypotheses derived from different disciplines to provide robust recommendations for trade management. We also discuss the need for developing databases for trade- targeted species and outline steps to build and strengthen technical and interdisciplinary capacity to support the integrative framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synthesis centers offer a unique amalgam of culture, infrastructure, leadership, and support that facilitates creative discovery on issues crucial to science and society. The combination of logistical support, postdoctoral or senior fellowships, complex data management, informatics and computing capability or expertise, and most of all, opportunity for group discussion and reflection lowers the "activation energy" necessary to promote creativity and the cross-fertilization of ideas. Synthesis centers are explicitly created and operated as community-oriented infrastructure, with scholarly directions driven by the ever-changing interests and needs of an open and inclusive scientific community. The last decade has seen a rise in the number of synthesis centers globally but also the end of core federal funding for several, challenging the sustainability of the infrastructure for this key research strategy. Here, we present the history and rationale for supporting synthesis centers, integrate insights arising from two decades of experience, and explore the challenges and opportunities for long-term sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystem-services scholarship has largely focused on monetary valuation and the material contributions of ecosystems to human well-being. Increasingly, research is calling for a deeper understanding of how less tangible, nonmaterial values shape management and stakeholder decisions. We propose a framework that characterizes a suite of sociocultural phenomena rooted in key social science disciplines that are currently underrepresented in the ecosystem-services literature. The results from three example studies are presented to demonstrate how the tenets of this conceptual model can be applied in practice. We consider the findings from these studies in light of three priorities for future research: (1) complexities in individual and social functioning, (2) the salience and specificity of the perceived benefits of nature, and (3) distinctions among value concepts. We also pose a series of questions to stimulate reflection on how ecosystem-services research can adopt more pluralistic viewpoints that accommodate different forms of knowledge and its acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity inventory, monitoring, and species-recovery efforts can be advanced by a dynamic collaboration of Western, citizen, and ethnoscience. Indigenous and local traditional knowledge of place-based biodiversity is perhaps the oldest scientific tradition on earth. We illustrate how an all taxa biodiversity inventory network of projects in collaboration with the Comcaac (Seri people) in northwestern Mexico is advancing not only biosystematics but also species recovery, habitat restoration, language conservation and maintenance, and the maintenance of traditional livelihoods. We encourage scientists to establish collaborations with indigenous and other place-based communities to better understand the wealth of knowledge held in local categorization systems. It is essential to not merely seek out one-to-one correspondences between Western and indigenous knowledge but also to recognize and respect the creative tensions among these different knowledge systems, because this is where the most profound insights and fruitful collaborations emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Payments for watershed services (PWS) as a policy tool for enhancing water quality and supply have gained momentum in recent years, but their ability to lead to sustainable watershed outcomes is uncertain. Consequently, the demand for effective monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of PWS impacts on coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) and their implications for watershed sustainability (WS) is increasing. The theoretical foundations and practical applications of WS frameworks, which integrate biophysical and socioeconomic indicators to assess progress toward WS goals, have been extensively explored but rarely applied to PWS. We develop the PWS-WS framework as an approach for guiding indicator selection to improve knowledge about the complex drivers, interactions, and feedback between PWS and CHANS. A review of the PWS and WS literatures provides a basis for comparing and contrasting indicators. Using two case studies, we illustrate how applying the PWS-WS framework using a place-based, contextualized approach enhances potential for sustainable watershed outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colleges and universities need to provide students with training and experience in (a) interdisciplinary research, (b) the fuzzy areas of responsible conduct of research, and (c) the mentor-mentee relationship. We developed workshops that combine the three content objectives-- interdisciplinary research, responsible conduct of research, and mentor-mentee relationship, therefore promoting explicit reflection on how these topics relate. To provide students with the same framework for their subsequent research collaboration, we conducted the workshops in parallel for the graduate mentors and their undergraduate mentees. For each of the sessions in the workshop for the graduate mentors, the graduate students reported overall gains in their skill levels of 21%, 24%, and 23% for interdisciplinary research, responsible conduct of research, and mentoring skills, respectively. For each of the sessions in the undergraduate workshop, the undergraduates reported overall gains in their skill levels of 33%, 27%, and 31% for interdisciplinary research, responsible conduct of research, and mentee skills, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental challenges are complex and require expertise from multiple disciplines. Consequently, there is growing interest in interdisciplinary environmental research that integrates natural and social science, an often arduous undertaking. We surveyed researchers interested and experienced in research at the human-environment interface to assess perspectives on interdisciplinary research. Integrative interdisciplinary research has eluded many of our respondents, whose efforts are better described as additive multidisciplinary research. The respondents identified many advantages and rewards of interdisciplinary research, including the creation of more-relevant knowledge. However, they also reported significant challenges and obstacles, including tension with departments (49%) or institutions (61%), communication difficulties, and differing disciplinary approaches, as well as institutional barriers (e.g., a lack of credit in promotion and tenure). Most (52%) believed that developing interdisciplinary breadth should begin as early as the undergraduate level. We apply our results to recommendations for successful interdisciplinary endeavors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between inter- and transdisciplinary research and potentially transformative science is poorly understood. We use a case study of a long-term transdisciplinary research effort on hantaviruses combined with findings from studies of team science to generate a hypothesized model that links cross-disciplinary collaboration with transformative scientific outcomes. We show that potentially transformative research depends on the existence of an interesting and worthwhile problem to which participants can contribute in salient ways, human and material foundations within disciplines, collaborative mutualism across disciplines, and a transformative learning process that enables knowledge integration across diverse perspectives. Transformative learning theory suggests that new, integrated conceptual understanding is initiated by disorienting dilemmas. We argue that engagement in cross-disciplinary collaboration produces disorienting dilemmas that initiate transformative learning. Our hypothesized model provides a generalized framework for understanding how transformative learning occurs in cross-disciplinary collaboration and how that can lead to transformative science [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses interdisciplinary research. Topics include an effort to make biocomplexity part of the working vocabulary of science by biologist and former head of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Rita Colwell, called Biocomplexity in the Environment (BE), the objective of the BE program, comments from NSF's program director for geography and regional sciences, Tom Baerwald, on biocomplexity research, and the challenges interdisciplinary biocomplexity research.

Government policies are needed when people's behaviors fail to deliver the public good. Those policies will be most effective if they can stimulate long-term changes in beliefs and norms, creating and reinforcing the behaviors needed to solidify and extend the public good. It is often the short- term acceptability of potential policies, rather than their longer-term efficacy, that determines their scope and deployment. The policy process should include a consideration of both timescales. The academy, however, has provided insufficient insight on the coevolution of social norms and different policy instruments, thus compromising the ability of decisionmakers to craft effective solutions to the society's most intractable environmental problems. Life scientists could make fundamental contributions to this agenda through targeted research on the emergence of social norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1985, Michael Soulé asked, "What is conservation biology?" We revisit this question more than 25 years later and offer a revised set of core principles in light of the changed global context for conservation. Most notably, scientists now widely acknowledge that we live in a world dominated by humans, and therefore, the scientific underpinnings of conservation must include a consideration of the role of humans. Today's conservation science incorporates conservation biology into a broader interdisciplinary field that explicitly recognizes the tight coupling of social and natural systems. Emerging priorities include pursuing conservation within working landscapes, rebuilding public support, working with the corporate sector, and paying better attention to human rights and equity. We argue that in conservation, strategies must be promoted that simultaneously maximize the preservation of biodiversity and the improvement of human well-being. INSET: Box 1. Functional and normative postulates for the field of.... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network (RCN) program broke new ground in funding the development of new research communities of practice. This assessment of RCN supports the conclusion that networking activity was increased for a sample set of projects relative to a comparison group. Journal articles resulting from RCN support are scored as highly interdisciplinary. Moreover, those articles appear as notably influential, being published in high-impact journals and being highly cited. The RCN program does indeed seem to be fostering new biological science research networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview is presented with environmental endocrinologist John C. Wingfield, who was appointed the head of the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO) at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2011. He discusses the importance of interdisciplinary research, plans for managing open access data at the NSF, and strategies to expand the participation of women in the biological sciences.

Environmental problems are generally complex and blind to disciplinary boundaries. Efforts to devise long-term solutions require collaborative research that integrates knowledge across historically disparate fields, yet the traditional model for training new scientists emphasizes personal independence and disciplinary focus. Growing awareness of the limitations of the traditional model has spurred a reexamination of graduate training in the environmental sciences. Many institutions are implementing novel training approaches, with varying degrees of success. In this article, a group of current and former doctoral students evaluates our collective experience in one such program, the Biogeochemistry and Environmental Biocomplexity Program at Cornell University, funded by an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship grant from the National Science Foundation. We identify aspects of the program that contributed to our integrative research training experience, and discuss stumbling blocks that may arise in such programs. We conclude with recommendations for students and faculty interested in facilitating cross-disciplinary interactions at their home institutions. INSET: Box 1. Surveys: Graduate student perceptions of opportunities and. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wavelet transforms (WTs) are finding increasing use in the discovery of the scale-specific properties of complex biological data. Although many efforts have been made to explain the main concepts of WT without advanced mathematics, the implicit reliance on digital signal processing terminology is widespread in many popular articles. This may cause some confusion for many biologists who do not have a dear understanding of the computational mechanisms and computer graphics of WTs. In this article we provide a tutorial on WTs for biologists by walking through two carefully selected examples step-by-step, using freely available software as well as a self-developed computer program. Both discrete WT and continuous WT are discussed, and detailed computational instructions, along with thorough interpretations of the computer outputs (or hand-calculated steps), are provided throughout. We conclude by offering a few directions for further study and several ideas on possible new developments in biological sciences using wavelets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interdisciplinary research programs are needed to address complex medical and scientific issues. Such programs are difficult to launch, however, in part because scientists who might work in interdisciplinary teams often lack shared experiences and shared concepts. In this article, we report on a study that examined the extent of shared experience and understanding among participants in an emerging interdisciplinary medical research field; the study also documented participants' thoughts about changes they considered likely to take place if the interdisciplinary effort succeeded. Subjects generally agreed about the roles of their respective fields in the new effort, but their understanding of the objectives, methods, and language of other fields varied. Data show that subjects envision the new interdisciplinary field primarily as a centralizing and coordinating force. Concept mapping was a particularly successful research method applied to this group. This study yielded useful insights about commonalities among participants and identified areas for future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compared long-term change in two lake districts, one in a forested rural setting and the other in an urbanizing agricultural region, using lakes as sentinel ecosystems. Human population growth and land-use change are important drivers of ecosystem change in both regions. Biotic changes such as habitat loss, species invasions, and poorer fishing were prevalent in the rural region, and lake hydrology and biogeochemistry responded to climate trends and landscape position. Similar biotic changes occurred in the urbanizing agricultural region, where human-caused changes in hydrology and biogeochemistry had conspicuous effects. Feedbacks among ecosystem dynamics, human uses, economics, social dynamics, and policy and practice are fundamental to understanding change in these lake districts. Sustained support for interdisciplinary collaboration is essential to build understanding of regional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated research across disciplines is required to address many of the pressing environmental problems facing human societies. Often the integration involves disparate disciplines, including those in the biological sciences, and demands collaboration from problem formulation through hypothesis development, data analysis, interpretation, and application. Such projects raise conceptual and methodological challenges that are new to many researchers in the biological sciences and to their collaborators in other disciplines. In this article, we develop the theme that many of these challenges are fundamentally philosophical, a dimension that has been largely overlooked in the extensive literature on cross-disciplinary research and education. We present a "toolbox for philosophical dialogue," consisting of a set of questions for self-examination that cross-disciplinary collaborators can use to identify and address their philosophical disparities and commonalities. We provide a brief user's manual for this toolbox and evidence for its effectiveness in promoting successful integration across disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A widely held belief is that only through interdisciplinarity can academics effectively address today's complex ecological problems, because these problems demand cross-disciplinary efforts and specialized knowledge from natural and social scientists. Innovative interdisciplinary research and curricula have been created to train a new generation of scientists to engage with complex issues. It seems critical that those most affected by interdisciplinary education--doctoral students--provide feedback about such innovations. Without understanding students' experiences in interdisciplinary programs, faculty will not know whether they are "getting it right" for future generations of interdisciplinarians. From our experiences as doctoral students, we provide reflections and perspectives on the National Science Foundation-funded Urban Ecology IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship) Program at the University of Washington. We discuss the aspects of the program that provided the most beneficial interdisciplinary experiences, as well as those aspects that could be improved. We identify three stages of intellectual development, present questions encountered during each stage, and develop six core recommendations for interdisciplinary research and training programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the practical difficulties of interdisciplinary research in the context of a regional- or local-scale project. We posit four barriers to interdisciplinarity that are common across many disciplines and draw on our own experience and on other sources to explore how these barriers are manifested. Values enter into scientific theories and data collection through scientists' hidden assumptions about disciplines other than their own, through the differences between quantitative and interpretive social sciences, and through roadblocks created by the organization of academia and the relationship between academics and the larger society. Participants in interdisciplinary projects need to be self-reflective about the value judgments embedded in their choice of variables and models. They should identify and use a core set of shared concerns to motivate the effort, be willing to respect and to learn more about the "other," be able to work with new models and alternative taxonomies, and allow for plurality and incompleteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research in bioscience. Underlying themes in research fields; Increased need for interdisciplinary projects while researchers become more specialized; Recommendation that the mix of disciplines that would be used to conduct a science and technology program should correspond to the multiple discipline requirements of the program; Presentation of a three-step process to determine the required relationships.

Offers observations on the influences that come to bear on the ways scientists and non-scientists communicate. Workings of social influences in defining a scientific term; How a public may guide its interpretation of scientific information through social context rather than science itself; Tacit and emergent dimensions of discourse; Conclusion that both groups benefit from mutual influence, multiple frames of reference and so-called objective information.

The article presents the authors' comments about the need for nutritionists and parasitologists to collaborate with each other. The authors say that strong emphasis is now placed on the biochemical, immunological and physiological mechanisms underlying host-parasite relationships. According to them, an interdisciplinary approach would add to the inadequate knowledge of the relationship between nutrition and parasitic infection.

Discusses the cultural differences among the fields of oceanography, meteorology, and fishery science in the United States. Need for an interdisciplinary solution to the influence of human activity in climatic changes; Limits in the interactions between students of different majors; Differences in the field research methods of various disciplines; Suggestion about improvements that could be made with regard to effective communications and cooperation between oceanographers, meteorologists, and fishery scientists.

The author reflects on the interdisciplinary approach in industrial microbiology, discussing the concepts, challenges and motivations. He offers distinction between the terms interdisciplinary and team. He said that the problem is not in the constraints of the real world of industrial microbiology or science but with the constraints the individual establishes to prevent himself from the quality of work he does.

The author comments on the significance of interdisciplinary tools in biological sciences and not just limit it to species conservation and natural resource management. Topics covered include how the article on the importance of an interdisciplinary research approach to inform wildlife trade management published within the issue shows that questions confronting science require teams that include a mix of expertise, and the need for the scientific community to work in teams.

The author discusses the potential for scientists to influence sustainable environmental policy. She argues that communication of scientific knowledge is not sufficient for the production of actionable outcomes and presents recommendations including interdisciplinary collaborations between natural scientists and social scientists and structuring research with the goal of solving defined socioenvironmental problems instead of studying the processes that cause them.

In this article the author discusses the organization of teaching and research in order to address the challenges of sustainable development. He suggests that U.S. universities need to explore novel paradigms, such as interdisciplinary research, and stop using existing organizational models. He discusses the establishment of the Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS) at Arizona State University as an example of the effectiveness of interdisciplinary research.

The author reflects on the American Institute of Biological Sciences' (AIBS's) advocacy of the investment in core life science disciplines and foster of interdisciplinary research and communication among fields of study. He discusses a contest administered by AIBS with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to create a technology that increases the speed and accuracy of digitization of insect specimens and their associated data , called the Beyond the Box Digitization Competition.

The author reflects on an article within the issue by Eric D. Roy and his colleagues on the challenges facing career scientists who want to pursue interdisciplinary research. He notes that many of the scientists participating in Roy and colleagues' survey cited institutional barriers as the major challenge and discusses the tensions and problems of communicating with prospective colleagues in different disciplines and the impact of interdisciplinary collaboration on productivity assessments.

The author reflects on strain that interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary research puts on scientific communication. She relates her experience of studying science and conducting research, argues that it is easier to work with individuals within one's discipline, and discusses a report within the issue by Deana D. Pennington and colleagues on the disorienting effects of collaboration with scientists from different fields.

The article describes the Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE) research data sharing program launched by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in July 2012. DataONE allows scientists access to databases from multiple disciplines in the biological, environmental, and Earth sciences and promotes the sharing of information among the scientific community. The network has been used for joint projects on topics such as bird migration patterns and climate change.

The author reflects on the need to encourage research that crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries. He acknowledges the difficulty in making the proposition a reality and discusses research within the issue by Todd Crowl and colleagues investigating the outcome of an effort by the U.S. National Science Foundation to boost interdisciplinary research networks through its program Research Coordination Networks in Biological Sciences (RCN).

The author discusses an initiative by the National Science Foundation and the University of Maryland to create the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC); the center will feature the collaboration of natural and social scientists with policymakers in order to develop research goals, environmental policies, and educational outreach programs. He argues that the inclusion of social scientists in the project will help to communicate complex environmental issues to the public.

Argues that scientists in different fields need to become involved in cross-disciplinary studies. Discussion of biocomplexity which integrates concepts from natural and social sciences to make environmental and evolutionary issues clear; How the 2000 conference of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) focused on cooperation among scientists; Attempts of AIBS to bring scientists together, including organizing roundtable discussions.

Editorial. Comments on the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS). The author's term as president of AIBS; How AIBS can maximize its leadership in bioscience; Commitment to a transdisciplinary, integrative approach for member societies and a holistic approach to addressing societal problems; Suggestion that AIBS take the lead in helping to develop emerging concepts.

Discusses integrated peat management. Consortium for Integrated Pest Management (CIPM); Crop development and crop-pest interactions; Interdisciplinary research; California's Agricultural Experiment Station.

The article reports that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has published new guidelines for environmental protection. Former Justice William O. Douglas, and chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said that they will give environmental values equal consideration with economic, social, and engineering factors to insure decisions in the public interest. In its new statement the Corps announces that it will follow an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving and will examine and evaluate environmental values carefully when studying alternative means of meeting the competing demands generated by human needs. The new guidelines update a 1970 version published shortly after enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act.

The author discusses the significance of organizing interinstitutional programs as part and in consideration to an interdisciplinary approach that focuses on specific interest or field of specialization. Interinstitutional programs can provide and give off specific advantage in terms of making each institution more attractive to prospective students, furnished new directions for academic development, limits duplication by making specialties complementary rather than competitive and others. Hence, the basic ingredients for a successful interinstitutional endeavors were adequate planning, prior commitments, clear objectives and realistic schedule in achieving the objectives.

The authors reflect on the call for increased research on population growth and its effects on the environment and world's food supply. They mention that the Institute for Global Dynamics was founded by a group of scientists to address the concern. It comprises interdisciplinary research of accelerating population growth, industrialization, and environmental pollution.