John Vandermeer
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JOHN VANDERMEER - THE DIALECTICS OF ECOLOGY: BIOLOGICAL, HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL INTERSECTIONS PUBLICATIONS OF ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SPECIAL PUBLICATION NO. 1 GERALD SMITH, Editor LINDA GARCIA, Managing Editor ELIZABETH WASON AND KATHERINE LOUGHNEY, Proofreaders GORDON FITCH AND MACKENZIE SCHONDLEMAYER, Cover graphics The publications of the Museum of Zoology, The University of Michigan, consist primarily of two series—the Miscellaneous Publications and the Occasional Papers. Both series were founded by Dr. Bryant Walker, Mr. Bradshaw H. Swales, and Dr. W. W. Newcomb. Occasionally the Museum publishes contributions outside of these series. Beginning in 1990 these are titled Special Publications and Circulars and each are sequentially numbered. All submitted manuscripts to any of the Museum’s publications receive external peer review. The Occasional Papers, begun in 1913, serve as a medium for original studies based principally upon the collections in the Museum. They are issued separately. When a sufficient number of pages has been printed to make a volume, a title page, table of contents, and an index are supplied to libraries and individuals on the mailing list for the series. The Miscellaneous Publications, initiated in 1916, include monographic studies, papers on field and museum techniques, and other contributions not within the scope of the Occasional Papers, and are published separately. Each number has a title page and, when necessary, a table of contents. A complete list of publications on Mammals, Birds, Reptiles and Amphibians, Fishes, Insects, Mollusks, and other topics is available. Address inquiries to Publications, Museum of Zoology, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109–1079. RECENT MISCELLANEOUS PUBLICATIONS Smith, G. R., and J. Van Tassell. 2019. Keating, Always Welcome Inn, and Imbler Fish Paleofaunas, NE Oregon: Tests of miocene- pliocene drainage connections. pp. 1-34, figs. 20. In: Fishes of the Mio-Pliocene Western Snake River Plain and Vicinity. Misc. Publ. Mus. Zool., Univ. Michigan, No. 204, no. 5. Smith, G. R., Martin, J.E., and Carpenter, N.E. 2018. Fossil fishes from the miocene Ellensburg formation, South Central Wash- inton. pp.1-19, figs. 11. In: Fishes of the Mio-Pliocene Western Snake River Plain and Vicinity. Misc. Publ. Mus. Zool., Univ. Michigan, No. 204, no. 4. Smith, G. R., Zaroban, D. W., High, B., Sigler, J. W., Schilling, J., Krabbenhoft, T. J. and Dowling, T. J. 2018. Introgressive mtDNA Transfer in Hybrid Lake Suckers (Teleostei, Catostomidae) In Western United States. pp. 87-118, figs. 14, 7 tables. In : Fishes of the Mio-Pliocene Western Snake River Plain and Vicinity. Misc. Publ. Mus. Zool., Univ. Michigan, No. 204, no. 3. Smith, G. R., Chow, J., Unmack, P.J., Markle, D.F. and Dowling, T.E. 2017. Evolution of the Rhinicthys Osculus Complex (Te- leostei: Cyprinidae) in Western North America. pp. i-vi, 44-83, figs. 17, 4 tables, 1 appendice. In: Fishes of the Mio-Pliocene Western Snake River Plain and Vicinity. Misc. Publ. Mus. Zool., Univ. Michigan, No. 204, no. 2. Stearley, R. F. and G. R. Smith, 2016. Salmonid fishes from Mio-Pliocene lake sediments in the Western Snake River Plain and the Great Basin. pp. 1-43, 17 figs., 4 tables, 3 maps. In: Fishes of the Mio-Pliocene Western Snake River Plain and Vicinity. Misc. Publ. Mus. Zool., Univ. Michigan, No. 204. RECENT OCCASIONAL PAPERS Kraus, Fred. 2015. A new species of the miniaturized frog genus Paedophryne (Anura: Microhylidae) from Papua New Guinea. Occ. Pap. Mus. Zool., Univ. Michigan, No. 745, pp. 1-11, 2 figs., 1 table, 1 map. Wilkinson, M., A. O’Connor, R.A. Nussbaum. 2013. Taxonomic status of the neotropical Caeciliam genera Brasilotyphlus Taylor, 1968, Microcaeilia Taylor, 1968 and Parvicaecilia Taylor, 1968 (Amphibia: Gymnophiona: Siphonopidae) Occ. Pap. Mus. Zool., Univ. Michigan, No. 744, pp. 1-10, 2 figs., 1 table. Smith, G.R., J.D. Stewart & N.E. Carpenter. 2013. Fossil and Recent mountain suckers, Pantosteus, and significance of introgression in catostomin fishes of the western United States. Occ. Pap. Mus. Zool., Univ. Michigan, No. 743, pp. 1-59, 12 figs., 2 appendices, supplementary material. Lindsay, A.R. & S.C.G. Haas. 2013. DNA from feces and museum specimens confirms a first state record bird. Occ. Pap. Mus. Zool., Univ. Michigan, No. 742, pp. 1-10, 4 figs., 1 table. THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY Jordan B. Acker, Southfield Paul W. Brown, Ann Arbor Ron Weiser, Ann Arbor Michael J. Behm, Flint Shauna Ryder Diggs, Grosse Pointe Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor Mark J. Bernstein, Farmington Hills Denise Ilitch, Birmingham Mark S. Schlissel, ex officio ©Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan, 2020 Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1079, U.S.A. JOHN VANDERMEER THE DIALECTICS OF ECOLOGY: BIOLOGICAL, HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL INTERSECTIONS Ann Arbor, February 21, 2020 ISSN 0076-8405 PREFACE For many years, I have found John Vandermeer’s leadership rewarding to study and follow for his commitment to ecology, evolution, social justice, and teaching. This collection of essays and tributes demonstrates these commitments and his breadth of influence over five decades. When we were graduate students, John’s analysis of geographic variation in a freshwater fish was so superior to anything that had been done before that many of us were compelled to follow his quantitative perspective. His imagination and productivity as a zoology graduate student at Kansas and Michi- gan marked him as someone to watch, and followers were immediately attracted to his science and his revolutionary spirit. Among the scores of essays and tributes here, we see the extent of John’s fostering of originality in the pursuit of social justice, agroecology, and ecology. I mention a few of these to illustrate the breadth of his influence. No action was more exemplary of John’s moral compass than his gathering of a group of stu- dents to travel to Nicaragua to help the new Sandinista revolution rebuild education after the Samosa dictatorship and later after hurricane Joan, as recounted here by Katherine Yih, one of the 1970s students working with him. Katherine also introduces John to readers of this collection of essays by his students and followers. “The struggle between those who possess social power and those who do not … is a war fought with many and varied weapons.” This paraphrasing of Marx and Engels from Richard Lewontin’s: ‘Biological Determinism as a Social Weapon,’ is quoted here in the essay by Dr. Joseph Graves, an early student of John. Dr. Graves is now a major force in the fight against the misuse of genetics by racists and biological determinists. Doug Boucher’s thoughtful essay on ‘theory of change’ expands on Einstein’s warning that “all of us who are concerned for peace and the triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good-will exert upon events in the political field.” Doug presents a refreshing and compelling view of the way ahead. Helda Morales documents the promise of John’s fight against sexism. ‘Following his example, we will continue to build an agroecological science that is more consistent with our principles--- a more socially sensitive, diverse, and resilient agroecology.’ In the spirit of the New World Agriculture and Ecology Group (NWAEG), Luis Fernando Chaves describes a model he developed to couple land-use dynamics and land tenure, reproducing the patterns of latifundia formation described by Celli for the Roman Empire. Here, he describes a basic message from the model --- inequities in access to health care can create poverty. Things always become more dynamic, entangled, and full of contradictions, requiring new dialectical synthesis. A group of John’s agroecology activists, Senay Yitbarek, Theresa Ong, Doug Jackson, and Dave Allen, members of the Out-of-the-Box Collective, highlights a fundamental NWAEG theme quoting Chomsky: “citizens in democratic societies should protect themselves from manipulation and control by their leaders.” “Chomsky’s views are deeply entrenched in the Enlightenment tradi- tion, out of which a humanistic conception of education developed to cultivate creativity, indepen- dent inquiry, and solidarity with others.” In his essay “teaching sustainable agriculture,” Brian Schultz presents a host of ideas important to agroecology: ‘A farm is an ecological system where the crops are part of a dynamic community of living organisms that interact in food webs and evolve, plus nonliving components such as soil, water, air, and energy, all connected to the rest of the world. ‘Agriculture teaches lessons about economics and politics in both directions: To do agriculture right we need social change, and sus- tainable agriculture could then become rather easy; agriculture is a great case study for why we need that larger social change.’ Catherine Badgley casts her hopeful gaze into the future to see where today’s exciting trajectory toward agroecology could lead. The coming collision between feed-grain, meat, and dairy indus- tries with shortages of water, fossil fuel, and healthy soil is forecast to favor small, soil-building farms, healthier citizens, and enriched, more just farm employment. Peter Rossett is always concerned with social movements, agroecology, and food sovereignty. Here he describes John’s early guidance and where that path leads: What is the question you are trying to answer? Your questions come from the people that you hang out with. Peter’s powerful message is that if we want to do socially relevant research that has the capacity to transform real- ity, we have to do it together with, and if possible, within, movements that have the confluence of forces and the mobilizing capacity to actually make change. Change doesn’t come from scientific papers, it often comes from the number of people that you can put in the streets. John Soluri documents the migration of agroecology across disciplinary boundaries and into fields of biology, political economy, history, agronomy, forestry, and anthropology, along with his own development across disciplines from NWAEG to history.