biodiversity breaks down. The most recent crisis came about in the early 2000s, the result of warmer winters (colder weather typically keeps the insects in check) and a decades-long increase in dense, mature pine forests along with a decline in vegetation such as montane grassland. Pine reproduce at a terrific rate and fill ecological voids — until the right beetle comes along and devastates half of the trees in a region in the span of a couple of years. “You can have an epidemic of economic and life loss, simply because
you’ve created an excellent place for pests or disease,” explains U of A biology professor Heather Proctor, ’86 BSc(Hons), whose research focuses on the diversity of mites and lice in birds. “There’s not enough variety to avoid susceptibility to that disease.” Or take heritage chickens. Proctor has a personal interest in heritage chickens, which are being studied by some of her U of A colleagues. Industrial farming has bred impressively productive poultry that produce a lot of breast meat, and fast. But the animal
is also genetically depauperate, the opposite of diverse, meaning a single strain of the wrong virus (or the right one, from the virus’s point of view) could wipe out a flock. “Higher biodiversity at the genetic or species level is thought to improve both resistance and resilience,” says Proctor, who sees parallels in the concept of thought diversity. The biology department is an example, she says. The different “subcultures” — a geneticist, ecologist and field biologist, for example — bring different lenses to science. This diversity creates undergraduate students who can see biological systems from many angles. “They’re intellectually flexible,” she says. “If you have a workplace with different types of humans and culture, then it’s analogous to having a nice flock of heritage chickens. People will see things in slightly different ways.” It may not be as efficient, but in the long run the workplace becomes more agile and yields better results. “A more diverse business culture will be able to respond more rapidly because there will be more ideas to draw from,” says Proctor. “You can call it your business genome.” THAT’S DIVERSITY ON THE GENETIC LEVEL. What about on the cognitive level? What happens psychologically, neurologically, when we engage with dissimilar people? A 2013 study involving Katherine W. Phillips, a professor at Columbia Business School, found that when Democrats were told to present an idea to Republicans, participants were far more prepared. Writing for Scientific American, she explains, “Diversity jolts us into cognitive action in ways that homogeneity simply does not.” That’s not to say that diversity doesn’t also complicate environments. It has been shown to cause discomfort, distrust, interpersonal conflict, miscommunication and less cohesion,
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