I describe my unlikely path into marine science from a childhood in the Arizona desert and Oregon woods. Without realizing it, I developed a sense of place in nature and the value of open interdisciplinary communication among diverse scientists. My undergraduate education emphasized physiological adaptations to the environment or what might now be considered the “fundamental niche”, and my graduate thinking was inspired by a population/community based evolutionary understanding of how strong interactions define a “realized niche”. I have attempted to define strong interactions in three different ecosystems. This difficult problem is confounded by the loss of natural systems resulting from human impacts. I discuss my frustrations with eroding conservation efforts in a society that is rapidly devaluing nature and consider how we might recover our most fundamental values. I conclude that there is an urgent need to improve field-based teaching of undergraduate non-majors about nature and to be much more effective in our interactions with the general public. If we hope to have our legacy include a liveable world with natural places, we urgently need to act unilaterally to shift some of our values and reward systems towards the challenge of educating the undergraduates and especially the general public.

中文翻译：

---

冒险扩展已实现的利基市场，拯救世界并寻找价值

我描述了从童年时代开始在亚利桑那州沙漠和俄勒冈州树林中进入海洋科学的可能性之路。在没有意识到这一点的情况下，我对自然界的位置以及在不同科学家之间进行开放式跨学科交流的价值产生了认识。我的本科教育强调生理适应环境或现在被认为是“基本的利基”，而我的研究生思想受到了基于人口/社区的进化认识的启发，该认识是强相互作用如何定义“已实现的利基”。我试图定义三种不同生态系统中的强相互作用。由于人类影响导致自然系统的丧失，使这一难题变得困惑。我讨论了在一个正在迅速贬值自然的社会中不断侵蚀保护工作而感到沮丧的问题，并思考了如何恢复最基本的价值。我得出的结论是，迫切需要改进非自然科学专业的野外教学，并在与公众的互动中更加有效。如果我们希望让自己的遗产包括一个拥有自然环境的宜居世界，那么我们迫切需要单方面采取行动，以改变我们的一些价值观和奖励体系，以应对教育本科生，尤其是普通大众的挑战。