Biodiversity means life

Most of the biodiversity that keeps us alive is invisible to the naked eye. Owen’s own way of making that point in public talks and workshops is a lab coat hung with dozens of plush microbes and cells — bacteria, protists, viruses, neurons — worn while explaining just how much of the living world working on our behalf never gets seen, let alone thanked.

That’s also the premise behind “Biodiversity means Life”, an AGORA public-engagement project run by the University Research Priority Programme in Global Change and Biodiversity (URPP GCB) at UZH. The project takes the form of a travelling tent kitted out with interactive, hands-on exhibits, through which GCB scientists and students talk with the general public about the critical roles biodiversity plays in our lives — and about global change and its consequences for that biodiversity — in terms that don’t require a science background to follow.

One concrete outing for this kind of engagement was the MikroMakro Parcours, part of a public exhibition at the Kunsthalle Zürich (Löwenbräu-Areal) running from 25 August to 4 November 2018, where GCB researchers spoke with visitors about their biodiversity and global change research as part of the wider programme. It’s the same spirit as the plush-microbe coat: biodiversity is easiest to care about once you can actually see — or wear — the parts of it that usually stay hidden.