A few years ago, Sharon Baruch-Mordo posted a provocative challenge. She called it the biodiversity challenge and offered it as an opportunity to write about the importance of your research in the context of biodiversity and conservation. The biodiversity challenge was a tough one. Not many graduate students are given training in science communication, and when we are, it’s usually targeted towards generating concise scientific prose that can be published in peer-reviewed journals. But the challenge is an important one. If we want to disseminate our knowledge, we have to be able to communicate it effectively. Well, you rose up to the challenge, and we were amazed by the quality and breadth of the results.

Today, BioDiverse Perspectives is emerging from a months-long torpor to issue a new challenge. We still want you to tell us what makes your research topic relevant. But we want you to evaluate the importance of your research from a different angle. What would happen if the thing you study were to disappear off of the face of the earth tomorrow? How would the world change if your research topic simply ceased to exist?

Tomorrow, your favorite focal biological unit of research (molecule, gene, organelle, organ, organism, ecosystem, general law of nature) will be deleted from the face of the earth. What are the implications?

We took the challenge. Next week we’ll be posting our results, and we challenge you to join in, too. You can upload your posts here. We will publish them all, in full, as we receive them, unedited, in all their glory.

May 9, 2016