Tackling ongoing crises with collective evolutionary knowledge

Living organisms and their communities are evolving through time as a result of adaptation to stressors like competition or environmental change. While species also today compete for habitable space and adapt to temperature changes, stressors like antibiotic resistance and climate change can be desc...

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Main Authors: Emma U. Hammarlund, Liselotte Jauffred, Nicole R. Posth, Karina K. Sand
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2024-01-01
Series:Evolving Earth
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S295011722400013X
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author Emma U. Hammarlund
Liselotte Jauffred
Nicole R. Posth
Karina K. Sand
author_facet Emma U. Hammarlund
Liselotte Jauffred
Nicole R. Posth
Karina K. Sand
author_sort Emma U. Hammarlund
collection DOAJ
description Living organisms and their communities are evolving through time as a result of adaptation to stressors like competition or environmental change. While species also today compete for habitable space and adapt to temperature changes, stressors like antibiotic resistance and climate change can be described as grand challenges to our current human communities. However, humans are also the species that uniquely and actively can influence its own fate by leveraging knowledge of challenges ahead. What hinders us from a unified approach through research is that our understanding of grand challenges and how to meet them remains fragmented and curated within distinct disciplines. Developing a collective framework, requires breaking down disciplinary barriers, which comes at a cost to the research productivity of individual researchers. Here, we discuss how collective evolutionary insights are essential to identify, characterize, and tackle three emergent grand challenges and what lies beyond. We also assess solutions to ease the productivity burden to the individual researcher and propose a path forward to transform current siloed knowledge into impactful tools for tackling the oncoming global challenges.
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series Evolving Earth
spelling doaj-art-da0f5cb1f34646bc8c3839afbb8b05552024-12-12T05:25:00ZengElsevierEvolving Earth2950-11722024-01-012100043Tackling ongoing crises with collective evolutionary knowledgeEmma U. Hammarlund0Liselotte Jauffred1Nicole R. Posth2Karina K. Sand3Evolutionary Geobiology Consortium, Sweden; Tissue Development and Evolution (TiDE) Group, Department of Experimental Medical Sciences, Lund University, Sölvegatan 19, 223 83, Lund, Sweden; Corresponding author. Evolutionary Geobiology Consortium, Lund University, Sweden.Evolutionary Geobiology Consortium, Sweden; Jauffred Lab, The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 17, 2100, Copenhagen Ø, DenmarkEvolutionary Geobiology Consortium, Sweden; Geomicrobiology Lab, Sedimentary Systems, Department of Geosciences & Natural Resource Management (IGN), University of Copenhagen, Øster Voldgade 10, 1350, Copenhagen K, DenmarkEvolutionary Geobiology Consortium, Sweden; Molecular Geobiology Group, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, Øster Voldgade 7, 1350, Copenhagen K, DenmarkLiving organisms and their communities are evolving through time as a result of adaptation to stressors like competition or environmental change. While species also today compete for habitable space and adapt to temperature changes, stressors like antibiotic resistance and climate change can be described as grand challenges to our current human communities. However, humans are also the species that uniquely and actively can influence its own fate by leveraging knowledge of challenges ahead. What hinders us from a unified approach through research is that our understanding of grand challenges and how to meet them remains fragmented and curated within distinct disciplines. Developing a collective framework, requires breaking down disciplinary barriers, which comes at a cost to the research productivity of individual researchers. Here, we discuss how collective evolutionary insights are essential to identify, characterize, and tackle three emergent grand challenges and what lies beyond. We also assess solutions to ease the productivity burden to the individual researcher and propose a path forward to transform current siloed knowledge into impactful tools for tackling the oncoming global challenges.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S295011722400013X
spellingShingle Emma U. Hammarlund
Liselotte Jauffred
Nicole R. Posth
Karina K. Sand
Tackling ongoing crises with collective evolutionary knowledge
Evolving Earth
title Tackling ongoing crises with collective evolutionary knowledge
title_full Tackling ongoing crises with collective evolutionary knowledge
title_fullStr Tackling ongoing crises with collective evolutionary knowledge
title_full_unstemmed Tackling ongoing crises with collective evolutionary knowledge
title_short Tackling ongoing crises with collective evolutionary knowledge
title_sort tackling ongoing crises with collective evolutionary knowledge
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S295011722400013X
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