An ecologist and an artist create a children's story on interconnectedness

Featuring:

  • Dr. Steve Franks (plant evolution & climate change; Fordham University)
  • Gustavo Asto (collage)

Introduction

“Humans are drastically altering the face of the earth by changing the climate, converting the landscape, and transporting plants and animals around the globe. In some cases, populations may be able to adapt to changing conditions through the process of evolution by natural selection. In our lab, we study the process of evolution in natural plant populations to better understand responses of plants to global change. The aim of our research is to gain a more complete understanding of the process of evolution and to generate information that can aid the management and protection of natural plant populations confronted with global change.”

Steve Franks team is establishing a seed bank, Project Baseline, which through a competitive proposal process will one day provide the scientific community access to the archived seeds. Those seeds will be used for grand research projects, with immeasurable consequences, such as resurrection studies (diagram, top right) which have shown early flowering in plants as an adaptation to seasonal drought conditions & climate change.

For his work Asto, wanted to have a dialogue through piecing together a short children’s story about a broader theme in his work – interconnectednesss.

The story would inspire the artwork, a collage. Steve mentioned that he had been reading lots of children’s stories to his 3-year old daughter Nina, so we exchanged story ideas, imagining a 3 to 5 year old target audience. Since I work with NYC public school students in grades K through 12 in various arts programs, the story could have the added benefit of allowing me to share, with some of my students, some of what I experienced through meetings with Steve and his team. The story, mostly nonsense and gibberish, is about the misadventures of a leaf, its branch, trunk and root who are each unaware that they are connected to one another. They brag about their natural skills (e.g. The leaf turning the sun’s rays into food), each seeing themselves as the center of the universe. Their buffoonery knows no bounds as they repeatedly sabotage themselves in odd ways because they see themselves as independent of one another.

Steve’s daughter, Nina, served as the model representing the characters development (mischievous, haughty, aware). Her favorite park, Riverside Park, served as the backdrop. Steve sent me photos of Nina. Pages of National Geographic magazines were cut up to create the collage.

Bios

Gustavo Asto

www.smartworksnyc.com

Founder, Smartworks; art education programs in image, visual arts, dance, theater, & music.

Dr. Steve Franks

http://www.sfrankslab.wordpress.com/

www.facebook.com/projectbaselineseedbank

Franks at Fordham

BA in Biology from Brown University; Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Georgia.  He worked as a research biologist at the USDA Invasive Plant Research Lab in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and as a postdoctoral researcher in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of CA, Irvine.  Currently Assistant Professor of Biology at Fordham University in New York.

“Humans are drastically altering the face of the earth by changing the climate, converting the landscape, and transporting plants and animals around the globe.  In some cases, populations may be able to adapt to changing conditions through the process of evolution by natural selection.  In our lab, we study the process of evolution in natural plant populations to better understand responses of plants to global change.  The aim of our research is to gain a more complete understanding of the process of evolution and to generate information that can aid the management and protection of natural plant populations confronted with global change.”