Simplifying Complexity Food webs, humans and cod - Part 2
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Aug 19, 2024 Professor Jennifer Dunne, Vice President for Science at the Santa Fe Institute, shares her insights on human-centered interaction networks. She explores the fascinating connections between Indigenous cultures and non-human species, especially in Polynesia. The discussion spans Polynesian navigation, the evolution of food webs, and how canoes shaped Indigenous practices and trade. Jennifer also contrasts whale hunting technologies with sustainable techniques used by the Martu people, highlighting diverse approaches to ecological interactions and resource management.
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Food Web Challenges
- Creating a complete, high-resolution food web requires extensive resources, especially on islands.
- Researchers shifted to studying human-centered interaction networks due to resource limitations in Mo'orea.
Human-Species Interactions
- Dunne's research expanded beyond feeding interactions to encompass 13 categories of human-species interactions.
- These categories include material uses (food, clothing, housing) and non-material uses (companionship, cosmology).
Polynesian Migration
- Polynesians migrated across vast distances, bringing domesticated species (pigs, chickens, dogs) and unintentional hitchhikers (rats, snails).
- They navigated by starlight, establishing small food webs on previously uninhabited islands.