Daniel Janzen
Encyclopedia
Daniel Hunt Janzen is an evolutionary ecologist
Evolutionary ecology
Evolutionary ecology lies at the intersection of ecology and evolutionary biology. It approaches the study of ecology in a way that explicitly considers the evolutionary histories of species and the interactions between them. Conversely, it can be seen as an approach to the study of evolution that...

, naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

, and conservationist
Conservation movement
The conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental and a social movement that seeks to protect natural resources including animal, fungus and plant species as well as their habitat for the future....

 and the son of a previous Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. He divides his time between his professorship in biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

 at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

 (Philadelphia, USA), where he has been since 1976, and his research and field work in Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

, where he is an ad honorem
Ad honorem
Ad honorem is a Latin phrase that literally can be translated as "to the honor". When used today, it generally means "for the honor of"; that is, not seeking any material reward. It is commonly used in universities for some unpaid teaching positions....

(without remuneration
Remuneration
Remuneration is the total compensation that an employee receives in exchange for the service they perform for their employer. Typically, this consists of monetary rewards, also referred to as wage or salary...

) technical advisor for two long-term and long-range projects, which he conceived and initiated in the early 1970s: Area de Conservación Guanacaste
Area de Conservación Guanacaste World Heritage Site
The Area de Conservación Guanacaste, is a World Heritage Site in the northwestern part of Costa Rica, which comprises Santa Rosa, Guanacaste, Rincón de la Vieja National Parks and the Junquillal Bay Wildlife Refuge...

, one of the oldest, largest and most successful habitat restoration project in the world, 1.430 km², located just south of the Costa Rica-Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

 border, between the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

 and the Cordillera de Tilaran; and the Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad
Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad
The Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad is the national institute for biodiversity and conservation in Costa Rica. Created at the end of the 1980s, and despite having national status, it is a privately-run institution that works closely with various government agencies, universities, business...

 (INBio), a research organisation that has taken the task of inventorying, cataloguing and describing the country's gigantic natural endowment.

Janzen obtained his B.Sc.
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...

 degree from the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

, Minneapolis in 1961, and his Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

, in 1965. In 1963 he attended as a student a two-month course in tropical biology taught in several field sites throughout Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

. This Advanced Science Seminar in Tropical Biology was the purcursor for Fundamentals in Tropical Biology course offered by the Organization for Tropical Studies
Organization for Tropical Studies
The Organization for Tropical Studies is a network of ecological research stations created in Costa Rica in 1963. OTS is run by a non-profit consortium of 63 universities, based in the United States, Australia and Latin America . The corporate headquarters of OTS are at Duke University, in...

 (OTS), a consortium of several North American and Costa Rican universities. He went back in 1965 as an instructor and has lectured in at least one of the three yearly courses every year since. Before joining the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

 he taught at the University of Kansas
University of Kansas
The University of Kansas is a public research university and the largest university in the state of Kansas. KU campuses are located in Lawrence, Wichita, Overland Park, and Kansas City, Kansas with the main campus being located in Lawrence on Mount Oread, the highest point in Lawrence. The...

 (1965–1968), the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 (1969–1972) and at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

  (1972–1976). Janzen has also held teaching positions in Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

 (Universidad de Oriente
Universidad de Oriente
The University of Oriente Venezuela is a university located in Eastern Venezuela.The university has 5 campuses located in the states of Sucre, Anzoátegui, Monagas, Bolívar, and Nueva Esparta....

, Cumaná
Cumaná
Cumaná is the capital of Venezuela's Sucre State. It is located 402 km east of Caracas. It was the first settlement founded by Europeans in the mainland America, in 1501 by Franciscan friars, but due to successful attacks by the indigenous people, it had to be refounded several times...

 in 1965-66; Universidad de los Los Andes, Mérida in 1973), and in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

 (Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, 1969). From these teaching positions, because of his continuous association with OTS, through his numerous publications and mostly from his exemplary dedication, Janzen has been in close contact and influenced the thinking and ideas of just about every researcher and student of tropical ecology and conservation in the western hemisphere during the last 40 years.

His most notable work may be in the creation of a "model" park, the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste in Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

's northern region of Guanacaste
Guanacaste Province
Guanacaste is a province of Costa Rica located in the northwestern part of the country, along the coast of the Pacific Ocean. To the north it borders Nicaragua. To the east is the Alajuela Province, and to the southeast is the Puntarenas Province. It is the most sparsely populated of all the...

. This park exemplifies Dr. Janzen's beliefs about how a park should be run. It is also notable due to its breakthrough research and use of techniques like Forest Restoration and Community outreach
Science outreach
Science outreach, also called Education and Public Outreach or simply Public outreach, is an umbrella term for a variety of activities by research institutes, universities, and institutions such as science museums, aimed at promoting public awareness of science and making informal contributions...

.

Research, from theory to praxis and back to theory

Janzen's work exemplifies the dialectic
Dialectic
Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...

 method of research applied to the biology of the natural world. For him it has not been the passive analysis of documents and data about ecological processes in order to formulate theories, but rather the active creation of life size scenarios of ecological change and their careful and meticulous documentation from which he then formulates theories which inspire new grand experiments in an ever expanding spiral of knowledge based on the keen observation of nature. The following sections are an attempt to synthesise the main themes of his lifelong quest and work.

Coevolution of plants and animals

  • Coevolution of a mutualistic system in New World tropics between species of Acacia
    Acacia
    Acacia is a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, first described in Africa by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1773. Many non-Australian species tend to be thorny, whereas the majority of Australian acacias are not...

    (Mimosoideae
    Mimosoideae
    Mimosoideae is a subfamily of the flowering plant family Fabaceae characterized by flowers with small petals and numerous prominent stamens...

    ; Leguminosae), v. gr., Acacia cornigera
    Acacia cornigera
    Acacia cornigera, commonly known as Bullhorn Acacia , is a swollen-thorn acacia native to Mexico and Central America. The common name of "bullhorn" refers to the enlarged, hollowed-out, swollen thorns that occur in pairs at the base of leaves, and resemble the horns of a steer...

    , and the ant Pseudomyrmex ferruginea
    Pseudomyrmex ferruginea
    The acacia ant is a species of ant of the genus Pseudomyrmex. These arboreal, wasp-like ants have a orange-brown body around 3 cm in length and very large eyes...

    (Formicidae). Acacia spp in the Neotropics are protected by ants against defoliation; for this, the ants are rewarded by means of special organs and physiology that Acacia has evolved.
  • Spondias mombin
    Spondias mombin
    Spondias mombin is a tree, a species of flowering plant in the family Anacardiaceae. It is native to the tropical Americas, including the West Indies. The tree has been naturalized in parts of Africa, India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. It is rarely cultivated.The mature fruit has a leathery skin and a...

    (Anacardiaceae
    Anacardiaceae
    Anacardiaceae are a family of flowering plants bearing fruits that are drupes and in some cases producing urushiol, an irritant. Anacardiaceae include numerous genera with several of economic importance. Notable plants in this family include cashew , mango, poison ivy, sumac, smoke tree, and marula...

    ) lost its megafauna seed dispersors in the Pleistocene
    Pleistocene
    The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....

    . Between fire in open pastures and seed predation
    Seed predation
    Seed predation, often referred to as granivory, is a type of plant-animal interaction in which granivores feed on the seeds of plants as a main or exclusive food source, in many cases leaving the seeds damaged and not viable...

     by bruchid beetles
    Bean weevil
    The bean weevils or seed beetles are a subfamily of beetles, now placed in the family Chrysomelidae, though they have historically been treated as a separate family. They are granivores, and typically infest various kinds of seeds or beans, living for most of their lives inside a single seed...

     in closed-canopy forest, S. mombin does not stand a chance. But, today, in Guanacaste, seeds are dispersed by White-tailed deer
    White-tailed Deer
    The white-tailed deer , also known as the Virginia deer or simply as the whitetail, is a medium-sized deer native to the United States , Canada, Mexico, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru...

     (Odocoileus virginianus) and some 15 other mammals, that feed mostly in forest edges, where bruchids are less likely to find the seeds and fires are not so frequent.

Tropical habitat restoration

Tropical dry forests
Tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests
The tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forest biome, also known as tropical dry forest, is located at tropical and subtropical latitudes. Though these forests occur in climates that are warm year-round, and may receive several hundred centimeters of rain per year, they have long dry seasons...

 are the world most threatened of forest ecosystems. In middle America there were 550.000 km² of dry forests at the beginning of the 16th century; today, less than 0,08% (440 km² ) remains, they have been cleared, burnt and replaced by pastures for cattle raising, at an ever faster rate during the last 500 years. However, beginning in the early 1970s, Janzen dreamed a project to grow back some 700 km² of natural, pre-Columbian
Pre-Columbian era
The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during...

 habitat in Guanacaste, in order to integrate four different national parks which together house at least 15 different biotope
Biotope
Biotope is an area of uniform environmental conditions providing a living place for a specific assemblage of plants and animals. Biotope is almost synonymous with the term habitat, but while the subject of a habitat is a species or a population, the subject of a biotope is a biological community.It...

s, viz (mangroves, dry forest and shrubs, ephemeral, rainy season, and permanent streams, fresh water
Swamp
A swamp is a wetland with some flooding of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water. A swamp generally has a large number of hammocks, or dry-land protrusions, covered by aquatic vegetation, or vegetation that tolerates periodical inundation. The two main types of swamp are "true" or swamp...

 and littoral swamps
Salt marsh
A salt marsh is an environment in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and salt water or brackish water, it is dominated by dense stands of halophytic plants such as herbs, grasses, or low shrubs. These plants are terrestrial in origin and are essential to the stability of the salt marsh...

, evergreen rain- and cloud forests…) and ca. 4% from world's plant, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes and insects diversity, all within an area less than 1.500 km². This is Área de Conservación Guanacaste
Guanacaste National Park (Costa Rica)
Guanacaste National Park, in Spanish , is part of the Area de Conservación Guanacaste World Heritage Site, is a National Park in the northern part of Costa Rica, from the slopes of the Orosí and Cacao volcanoes west to the Interamerican Highway where it is adjacent to the Santa Rosa National Park....

 (ACG).

Habitat restoration is not a simple matter, not only must one fight against hundreds of years of ecological degradation, manifested in the form of altered drainage patterns, hard to eradicate pastures, compacted soils
Soil compaction
In Geotechnical engineering, soil compaction is the process in which a stress applied to a soil causes densification as air is displaced from the pores between the soil grains. When stress is applied that causes densification due to water being displaced from between the soil grains then...

, exhausted seed banks, diminished adult and propagule
Propagule
In horticulture, a propagule is any plant material used for the purpose of plant propagation. In asexual reproduction, a propagule may be a woody, semi-hardwood, or softwood cutting, leaf section, or any number of other plant parts. In sexual reproduction, a propagule is a seed or spore...

 stocks, proliferation of fire-resistant and unpalatable weeds from the old world tropics and sub-tropics, et cetera, but also one is faced with the difficulties of changing a culture which coevolved with, profited from and can become miserable with such a system. For this reason ACG was conceived as a cultural restoration project as well, which, to paraphrase its natural counterpart, ought to be grown as well. ACG rests on three complementary processes that integrate experimentation, habitat restoration
Restoration ecology
-Definition:Restoration ecology is the scientific study and practice of renewing and restoring degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems and habitats in the environment by active human intervention and action, within a short time frame...

 and cultural development, to speed up succession:
  • Active restoration, artificial dispersal of propagules from plant species native to the Guanacaste habitats
  • Passive restoration by means of fire, poaching and hervivory control
  • Ecological education and sensibilisation

Honorary distinctions

Janzen has been subject to recognition many times in the USA, as well as in Europe and Latin America; the monetary endowments of these prizes have been invested in the trust fund of the ACG or another of his conservation's projects in Costa Rica; amongst the 19 prizes and distinctions, the following are the most important:
  • 1975 Gleason Award, American Botanical Society
  • 1984 Crafoord Prize
    Crafoord Prize
    The Crafoord Prize is an annual science prize established in 1980 by Holger Crafoord, a Swedish industrialist, and his wife Anna-Greta Crafoord...

    : Coevolutionary ecology. Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
    Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
    The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...

  • 1985 Distinguished Teaching Award, University of Pennsylvania
    University of Pennsylvania
    The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

  • 1987 The Berkeley
    University of California, Berkeley
    The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

     Citation for Distinguished Achievement and Notable Service to the university
  • 1987 Hijo Ilustre de Guanacaste (awarded by the Governor of Guanacaste province
    Guanacaste Province
    Guanacaste is a province of Costa Rica located in the northwestern part of the country, along the coast of the Pacific Ocean. To the north it borders Nicaragua. To the east is the Alajuela Province, and to the southeast is the Puntarenas Province. It is the most sparsely populated of all the...

    )
  • 1987 "Global 500" Roll of Honour, UNEP
  • 1989 MacArthur Fellowship
  • 1989 Joseph Leidy Medal, Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences
  • 1991 Founder's Council Award of Merit, Field Museum of Natural History
    Field Museum of Natural History
    The Field Museum of Natural History is located in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It sits on Lake Shore Drive next to Lake Michigan, part of a scenic complex known as the Museum Campus Chicago...

  • 1992 Member, National Academy of Sciences
    United States National Academy of Sciences
    The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

    , USA
  • 1993 Award for Improvement of Costa Rican Quality of Life, Universidad de Costa Rica (co award with W. Hallwachs).
  • 1994 Silver Medal Award, International Society of Chemical Ecology.
  • 1995 Conservation Society Award.
  • 1996 Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Minnesota
    University of Minnesota
    The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

    .
  • 1996 Thomas G. and Louise E. DiMaura Endowed Term Chair, University of Pennsylvania
    University of Pennsylvania
    The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

  • 1997 Kyoto Prize
    Kyoto Prize
    The has been awarded annually since 1985 by the Inamori Foundation, founded by Kazuo Inamori. The prize is a Japanese award similar in intent to the Nobel Prize, as it recognizes outstanding works in the fields of philosophy, arts, science and technology...

     (Basic Sciences Field), Inimori Foundation
  • 2002 Albert Einstein World Award for Science
    Albert Einstein World Award of Science
    The Albert Einstein World Award for Science is a yearly award given by the World Cultural Council "as a means of recognition, and as an incentive to scientific and technological research and development", with special consideration for researches which "have brought true benefit and well being to...

    , Consejo Cultural Mundial, (Mexico
    Mexico
    The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

    )
  • 2002 Honorary Fellow of the Association for Tropical Biology (and Conservation) ATBC
  • 2006 National Outdoor Book Award
    National Outdoor Book Award
    The National Outdoor Book Award was formed in 1997 as a US-based non-profit program which each year honors the best in outdoor writing and publishing. It is housed at Idaho State University and chaired by Ron Watters. Awards are presented in ten categories. The award is announced in early November...

    (Design and Artistic Merit), 100 Caterpillars

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK