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History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences
Elena Casetta
Jorge Marques da Silva
Davide Vecchi Editors
From Assessing
to Conserving
Biodiversity
Conceptual and Practical Challenges
History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life
Sciences
Volume 24
Editors
Charles T. Wolfe, Ghent University, Belgium
Philippe Huneman, IHPST (CNRS/Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne), France
Thomas A. C. Reydon, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany
Editorial Board
Marshall Abrams, (University of Alabama at Birmingham)
Andre Ariew (Missouri)
Minus van Baalen (UPMC, Paris)
Domenico Bertoloni Meli (Indiana)
Richard Burian (Virginia Tech)
Pietro Corsi (EHESS, Paris)
François Duchesneau (Université de Montréal)
John Dupré (Exeter)
Paul Farber (Oregon State)
Lisa Gannett (Saint Mary’s University, Halifax)
Andy Gardner (Oxford)
Paul Griffi ths (Sydney)
Jean Gayon (IHPST, Paris)
Guido Giglioni (Warburg Institute, London)
Thomas Heams (INRA, AgroParisTech, Paris)
James Lennox (Pittsburgh)
Annick Lesne (CNRS, UPMC, Paris)
Tim Lewens (Cambridge)
Edouard Machery (Pittsburgh)
Alexandre Métraux (Archives Poincaré, Nancy)
Hans Metz (Leiden)
Roberta Millstein (Davis)
Staffan Müller-Wille (Exeter)
Dominic Murphy (Sydney)
François Munoz (Université Montpellier 2)
Stuart Newman (New York Medical College)
Frederik Nijhout (Duke)
Samir Okasha (Bristol)
Susan Oyama (CUNY)
Kevin Padian (Berkeley)
David Queller (Washington University, St Louis)
Stéphane Schmitt (SPHERE, CNRS, Paris)
Phillip Sloan (Notre Dame)
Jacqueline Sullivan (Western University, London, ON)
Giuseppe Testa (IFOM-IEA, Milano)
J. Scott Turner (Syracuse)
Denis Walsh (Toronto)
Marcel Weber (Geneva)
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8916
Elena Casetta • Jorge Marques da Silva
Davide Vecchi
Editors
From Assessing
to Conserving Biodiversity
Conceptual and Practical Challenges
Editors
Elena Casetta Jorge Marques da Silva
Department of Philosophy and Education BioISI – Biosystems and Integrative
University of Turin Sciences Institute and Department of
Turin, Italy Plant Biology, Faculdade de Ciências
Universidade de Lisboa
Davide Vecchi Lisboa, Portugal
Centro de Filosofia das Ciências,
Departamento de História e Filosofia das
Ciências, Faculdade de Ciências
Universidade de Lisboa
Lisboa, Portugal
ISSN 2211-1948 ISSN 2211-1956 (electronic)

History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences
ISBN 978-3-030-10990-5 ISBN 978-3-030-10991-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10991-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019936165
This book is an open access publication.
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

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Contents
1 Biodiversity Healing�� 1

Elena Casetta, Jorge Marques da Silva, and Davide Vecchi
Part I Estimating Biodiversity: Data Collection

and Monitoring Challenges
2 The Hidden Biodiversity Data Retained in Pre-Linnaean
Works: A Case Study with Two Important XVII Century
Italian Entomologists �� 21
Francesco Andrietti and Carlo Polidori
3 Marine Biodiversity Databanks�� 55
Anouk Barberousse and Sophie Bary
4 Problems and Questions Posed by Cryptic Species.
A Framework to Guide Future Studies�� 77
Anne Chenuil, Abigail E. Cahill, Numa Délémontey,
Elrick Du Salliant du Luc, and Hadrien Fanton
5 The Importance of Scaling in Biodiversity�� 107
Luís Borda-de-Água
6 Measures of Biological Diversity: Overview and Unified
Framework �� 123
Vincenzo Crupi
7 Essential Biodiversity Change Indicators for Evaluating
the Effects of Anthropocene in Ecosystems at a Global Scale�� 137
Cristina Branquinho, Helena Cristina Serrano, Alice Nunes,
Pedro Pinho, and Paula Matos
v
vi Contents
Part II Characterizing Biodiversity: Beyond the Species Approach

8 Are Species Good Units for Biodiversity Studies
and Conservation Efforts?�� 167
Thomas A. C. Reydon
9 Why a Species-Based Approach to Biodiversity
Is Not Enough. Lessons from Multispecies Biofilms�� 195
Jorge Marques da Silva and Elena Casetta
10 Considering Intra-individual Genetic Heterogeneity
to Understand Biodiversity �� 219
Eva Boon
11 Biodiversity, Disparity and Evolvability�� 233
Alessandro Minelli
12 Probing the Process-Based Approach to Biodiversity:
Can Plasticity Lead to the Emergence of Novel
Units of Biodiversity?�� 247
Davide Vecchi and Rob Mills
13 Between Explanans and Explanandum: Biodiversity
and the Unity of Theoretical Ecology �� 269
Philippe Huneman
14 Functional Biodiversity and the Concept of Ecological Function �� 297
Antoine C. Dussault
15 Integrating Ecology and Evolutionary Theory:
A Game Changer for Biodiversity Conservation?�� 317
Silvia Di Marco
Part III Conserving Biodiversity: From Science to Policies

16 On the Impossibility and Dispensability
of Defining ‘‘Biodiversity’’�� 341
Georg Toepfer
17 The Vagueness of “Biodiversity” and Its Implications
in Conservation Practice �� 353
Yves Meinard, Sylvain Coq, and Bernhard Schmid
18 What Should “Biodiversity” Be?�� 375
Sahotra Sarkar
Contents vii
19 Natural Diversity: How Taking the Bio- out

of Biodiversity Aligns with Conservation Priorities�� 401
Carlos Santana
20 Ordinary Biodiversity. The Case of Food�� 415
Andrea Borghini
21 Conservation Sovereignty and Biodiversity�� 435
Markku Oksanen and Timo Vuorisalo
About the Contributors
Francesco Andrietti is a zoologist interested in insect ethology and biomechanics,

as well as in history of biology. He graduated in Biology in 1968 and has carried out
his career at the University of Milan (Italy) until retirement. He was a Professor of
animal physiology and history of biology. He is actively collaborating in different
teaching activities and research projects on bee and wasp behavioural ecology,
including from a historical perspective.
Anouk Barberousse is Professor of philosophy of science at Sorbonne Université,

Paris (France), where she teaches general philosophy of science, philosophy of biol-
ogy, and philosophy of scientific expertise. She has recently written on the episte-
mology of computer simulation, the philosophy of probability, and the role of
natural history collections in our knowledge of biodiversity.
Sophie Bary is Doctor in “interdisciplinary biology”, working at the National

Museum of Natural History of Paris (France). Her thesis is about the analysis of
scientific representations of the biodiversity of the seabed. Her approach is taking
into account the societal, technical, and economic context. She has recently written
on the role of collections in our knowledge of biodiversity, on the place of shell
amateurs in the taxonomic knowledge on mollusc, and on the use of a statistical
method, i.e. two-mode network, for the exploration of big data set.
Eva Boon Eva Boon’s research addresses questions in molecular ecology as well as
in philosophy of science. Her biological investigations focused on the use of gene
and genome information to delineate and study biological entities. Under these
broad questions, she has worked in an array of biological disciplines such as marine
biology, speciation and population genetics, fungal genomics, microbial ecology,
and human microbiomics. At present, she is applying this expertise to the question
of how epistemic and ontological constraints shape inferences in biological and
cultural evolution theory.
ix
x About the Contributors
Luís Borda-de-Água is a Researcher in ecology and conservation biology at

CIBIO-InBIO, University of Porto (Portugal). He took his PhD in Ecology at
Imperial College London, UK, having studied before electrical engineering and
physics. His background had led him to work mainly on theoretical and computa-
tional aspects of ecology. Presently, he divides his research activity between studies
on global biodiversity patterns and the impacts of linear infrastructures on
wildlife.
Andrea Borghini is Associate Professor of philosophy at the University of Milan,

Italy, and he previously taught at the College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts
(2007–2017). His research focuses on metaphysical issues in the general areas of
metaphysics, philosophy of biology, and philosophy of food. The three main topics
he is currently studying are hunger, recipes, and domestication. These topics have
ramifications that extend to pressing issues, including food biodiversity, geographi-
cal indications, the future of agriculture, food labelling, gender and food, and the
ethics and politics of dieting.
Cristina Branquinho is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the

University of Lisbon (Portugal), in the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and
Environmental Changes – cE3c. Her main aim is improving human well-being
through the understanding of the effects of anthropogenic factors (e.g. pollution,
eutrophication, climate change) on the provision of ecosystem services. She moni-
tors the structure and functioning of natural, semi-natural and urban ecosystems,
and the development and implementation of strategies to mitigate, adapt, and restore
ecosystems facing global change.
Abigail E. Cahill is an evolutionary ecologist who uses both traditional and molec-
ular tools to understand marine invertebrates, particularly questions relating to dis-
persal and early life stages. She has also conducted multiple systematic reviews of
questions relating to ecology and evolution. She is currently Assistant Professor at
Albion College in Albion, Michigan (USA).
Elena Casetta is Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Education

at the University of Turin (Italy), where she teaches philosophy of nature. Trained
in theoretical philosophy, she then specialized in philosophy of biology at the
IHPST (Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques),
CNRS/Paris 1/ENS, Paris, and at the Center for the Philosophy of Sciences of the
University of Lisbon. Currently, her main research field is the philosophy of
biodiversity.
Anne Chenuil is an evolutionary biologist who studied a variety of marine species

with population genetics tools. She found numerous cases of cryptic species with-
out seeking them, which convinced her that the phenomenon needed a closer
look and that a theoretical and practical framework was needed before undertaking
a comprehensive meta-analysis to better understand morphological evolution,
About the Contributors xi
biological diversification, and their relationships. She is a Senior Researcher at the

CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in France.
Sylvain Coq is Assistant Professor at the University of Montpellier (France) and in

the Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology. His research interests are at the
junction between functional and community ecology. He is particularly interested in
soil-plant interactions and more broadly on the role of biotic interactions for ecosys-
tem functioning, in particular at the plant-soil interface.
Vincenzo Crupi is Associate Professor of logic and philosophy of science in the

Department of Philosophy and Education and director of the Center for Logic,
Language, and Cognition at the University of Turin (Italy). He has been working
and teaching in London, Trento, Marseille, Venice, Florence, and Munich. His
research interests concern classical issues in general philosophy of science (patterns
of scientific inference and scientific rationality) as well a number of interdisciplin-
ary topics in the special sciences (including medicine and the study of human
cognition).
Silvia Di Marco is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centro de Filosofia das Ciências da

Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal) and a member of the FCT research project
“BIODECON: Which Biodiversity Definition for Biodiversity Conservation?” She
is interested in the analysis of life sciences’ concepts, with a focus on conservation
biology and biomedicine.
Antoine C. Dussault is a Researcher at the Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche

sur la Science et la Technologie (Montréal, Québec) and philosophy instructor at
Collège Lionel-Groulx (Sainte-Thérèse, Québec). His work focuses on philosophi-
cal issues related to the science of ecology and the practice of environmental con-
servation. His current focus is on issues related to the use of functional classifications
in ecology, the concept of ecosystem health, and the holism/reductionism debate in
ecology. He also pursues research in the fields of environmental ethics and the phi-
losophy of medicine.
Philippe Huneman After having worked and published on the constitution of the
concept of organism and Kantian metaphysics, he currently investigates philosophi-
cal issues in evolutionary theory and ecology, such as the emergence of individual-
ity, the relations between variation and natural selection in evolutionary theory, the
role of the concept of organism, and the varieties of explanations in ecology, as well
as the neutral theories in ecology and evolution and the history of the Modern
Synthesis. He edited seven books on history and philosophy of biology – among
them are Functions: Selection and Mechanisms (Synthese Library, Springer, 2012),
From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality (MIT Press,
2013, with F. Bouchard), and Challenging the Modern Synthesis: Adaptation,
Development, and Inheritance (Oxford UP, 2017, with D. Walsh) – and authored
two.
xii About the Contributors
Jorge Marques da Silva is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the

University of Lisbon (Portugal). He is a plant physiologist interested on the mecha-
nisms of response to stress, chiefly on the effects of drought stress on photosynthetic
metabolism. His main scientific interest is on understanding how interactions of
abiotic stresses with photosynthetic metabolism impair primary productivity.
Currently, Jorge is working in high-throughput plant phenotyping, aiming to unravel
environment-genetic interactions in phenotype development, with the ultimate goal
of improving crop responses to climate change. Jorge also developed a parallel
interest in teaching and research in global bioethics, mainly environmental ethics.
Paula Matos is a Postdoc at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of

Lisbon (Portugal), in the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental
Changes – cE3c. She focusses on understanding the ecological patterns in response
to global change to develop, test, and model ecological indicators. Her goal is to
develop early warning ecological indicators of the effects of global change that can
be applied globally, contributing to a more sustainable future.
Yves Meinard is a Researcher in environmental decision analysis at the CNRS

(French National Center for Scientific Research) and PSL Research University,
Paris (France). His works aim at developing strategies to make the best of scientific
advances in conservation biology, economics, and decision sciences to improve
environmental management practices.
Rob Mills is a Postdoctoral scientist and member of the BioISI Institute at the
University of Lisbon (Portugal). His research takes synthetic and analytical forms to
better understand complex biological systems at various scales in time and
space. This work spans the domains of evolutionary computing, theoretical biology,
and bio-hybrid systems, with a focus on information-processing capabilities in bio-
logical systems. Research interests include collective behaviour, evolutionary simu-
lation modelling, and natural and artificial intelligence.
Alessandro Minelli Full Professor of Zoology at the University of Padova until his
retirement in 2011, he has been president of the International Commission on
Zoological Nomenclature and vice president of the European Society for
Evolutionary Biology and received in 2008 the Sherborn Award for his service to
biodiversity informatics, which includes editorship of the Checklist of the Italian
Fauna. Since the mid-1990s, his research interests have turned towards evolutionary
developmental biology. Among his publications are Biological Systematics (1993),
The Development of Animal Form (2003), Perspectives in Animal Phylogeny and
Evolution (2009), and Plant Evolutionary Developmental Biology (2018).
Alice Nunes is a Postdoc at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of

Lisbon (Portugal), in the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental
Changes – cE3c. She is interested in ecosystems’ response to global change drivers,
particularly of dryland ecosystems. She focused on trait-based ecology to develop
About the Contributors xiii
ecological indicators of the effects of environmental changes on ecosystem func-

tioning and ecosystem services delivery and as a tool to improve strategies to miti-
gate, adapt, and restore ecosystems affected by global change.
Markku Oksanen is Senior Lecturer in philosophy at the University of Eastern

Finland, Kuopio (Finland). He gained his PhD in philosophy from the University of
Turku in 1998. In the year 2000, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Lancaster
University, UK. Oksanen’s current research interests are environmental philosophy,
environmental political theory, animal ethics, and human rights. He has coedited
several books, such as Philosophy and Biodiversity (Cambridge University Press,
2004, edited with Juhani Pietarinen) and The Ethics of Animal Re-creation and
Modification (Palgrave 2014, edited with Helena Siipi).
Pedro Pinho is an Invited Researcher in the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and
Environmental Changes – cE3c – at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of
Lisbon (Portugal). He currently works in the study of the effect of environmental
changes on ecosystems’ functioning and provision of services, considering changes
with both natural and human origin: urbanization, desertification and land degrada-
tion, climate alterations, eutrophication and land use/cover, using vegetation func-
tional groups, remote sensing and ecological indicators, and spatial characteristics
of ecological data.
Carlo Polidori is a zoologist interested in behavioural ecology and evolution of

wasps and bees, with special focus on resource use, social evolution, and functional
morphology. He completed a PhD degree in natural and environmental sciences at
the University of Milan (Italy) in 2007, and then obtained a series of positions as
researcher at Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese institutions. He is currently working
at the Institute of Environmental Sciences of the University of Castilla-La Mancha
(Spain).
Thomas A. C. Reydon is Professor of philosophy of biology in the Institute of

Philosophy and in the Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences (CELLS),
Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. His research focuses on biological classifi-
cation, core concepts in biology (“species”, “gene”, etc.), the metaphysics of natural
kinds, the ontological status of chimeric beings and genetically engineered organ-
isms, and evolutionary explanations within and outside biology (“generalized
Darwinism”). He also has research interests in responsibility in science and the
integration of philosophy of biology and theoretical biology. He is joint editor in
chief of the Journal for General Philosophy of Science as well as the Springer book
series History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences.
Sahotra Sarkar is Professor in the Departments of Integrative Biology and

Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin (USA). His work spans conservation
science, disease epidemiology, and the philosophy of science. Along with Chris
Margules, he is the co-author of Systematic Conservation Planning (Cambridge,
xiv About the Contributors
2007) and the author of five other books in environmental philosophy and philoso-
phy of biology. He is currently completing a book on the concept of biodiversity.
Bernhard Schmid is Professor of environmental sciences and Dean of the Faculty

of Sciences at the University of Zürich (Switzerland). His research interests encom-
pass many aspects of plant sciences and ecosystem ecology, including plant growth
and competition, biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships, plant-animals
interactions, and community genetics and evolution.
Helena Cristina Serrano is a Postdoc Researcher at the Faculty of Sciences of the

University of Lisbon (Portugal), in the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and
Environmental Changes – cE3c. She is interested in environmental changes, either
natural or anthropogenic, associated with ecological conservation and mitigation,
towards a more sustainable future.
Georg Toepfer is Head of the Department “Knowledge of Life” at the Centre for
Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin (Germany). His principal area of
research is the history and philosophy of the life sciences, with a special focus on
the history of biological concepts and their transfer between biology and other
fields. His major publication is Historisches Wörterbuch der Biologie. Geschichte
und Theorie der biologischen Grundbegriffe (3 vols., 2011).
Davide Vecchi is a philosopher of biology working in the Department of History

and Philosophy of Sciences of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon
(Portugal). Formed philosophically at Bologna University (Italy) and the LSE (UK)
and biologically at the KLI (Austria) and the University of Santiago (Chile),
Davide’s research interests span historical, philosophical, and theoretical issues in
the life sciences, particularly molecular and evolutionary biology. At the moment,
his research focuses on making sense of the causal role of DNA, genes, and genomes
in development and evolution.
Timo Vuorisalo is Adjunct Professor and Senior Lecturer in environmental science

at the University of Turku, Finland, since 1992. In 1989–1990, he was a Postdoctoral
Fellow at Indiana University, Bloomington. Vuorisalo’s main research interests are
evolutionary ecology, urban ecology, and environmental history, and he has coed-
ited/authored several books, including The Long Shadows: A Global Environmental
History of the Second World War (Oregon State University Press, 2017).
Chapter 1
Biodiversity Healing
Elena Casetta, Jorge Marques da Silva, and Davide Vecchi
With the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) that entered into force in 1993,
the conservation of biodiversity was recognized for the first time in international
law as “a common concern of humankind” and almost the entire world committed
to it. Conserving biodiversity, however, is far from being an easy task, as shown by
the difficulties to reach the conservation targets articulated in the strategic plans
connected to the CBD. The failure of the 2010 Biodiversity Target “to achieve by
2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global,
regional and national level” has been explicitly recognized (Butchart et al. 2010).
Moreover, there is a widespread scepticism, at present, concerning the possibility of
achieving the Aichi Biodiversity Targets by 2020 (Tittensor et al. 2014), i.e., 20
time-bound targets included into the CBD strategic plan 2011–2020 (such as, for
instance, making people aware of the values of biodiversity and the steps they can
take to conserve it (Target 1) or identifying and eradicating invasive species (Target
9)).1 Despite increasing communication, accelerating policy and management
responses, and notwithstanding improving ecosystem assessment and endangered
species knowledge, conserving biodiversity continues to be more a concern than an
1
For the comprehensive list, see the CBD website: https://www.cbd.int/sp/targets/default.shtml
E. Casetta (*)
Department of Philosophy and Education, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
e-mail: elena.casetta@unito.it
J. Marques da Silva
BioISI – Biosystems and Integrative Sciences Institute and Department of Plant Biology,
Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
D. Vecchi
Centro de Filosofia das Ciências, Departamento de História e Filosofia das Ciências,
Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
© The Author(s) 2019 1

E. Casetta et al. (eds.), From Assessing to Conserving Biodiversity,
History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences 24,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10991-2_1
2 E. Casetta et al.
accomplished task. Why is it so? The overexploitation of natural resources by our

species is a frequently recognised factor,2 while the short-term economic interests of
governments and stakeholders typically clash with the burdens that implementing
conservation actions imply. But this is not the whole story. This book develops a
different perspective on the problem by exploring the conceptual and practical chal-
lenges posed by conserving biodiversity. By conceptual challenges, we mean the
difficulties in defining what biodiversity is and characterising that “thing” to which
the word “biodiversity’’ refers to. By practical challenges, we mean the reasons why
assessing biodiversity and putting in place effective conservation actions is arduous.
In order to situate the multi-farious conceptual and practical challenges faced when
trying to outline the path From Assessing to Conserving Biodiversity, we think an
interpretive device is useful.
An analogy is generally recognised (see, for instance, Soulé 1985; Sarkar 2002;
Casetta and Marques da Silva 2015) between medicine—the discipline whose main
mission is human health preservation—and conservation biology—the discipline
whose main mission is biodiversity conservation. Unusually for sciences, both have
a normative dimension. According to this analogy,
Conservation biology differs from most other biological sciences in one important way: it
is often a crisis discipline. Its relation to biology … is analogous to that of surgery to physi-
ology and war to political science. In crisis disciplines, one must act before knowing all the
facts. Crisis disciplines are then a mixture of science and art, and their pursuit requires
intuition as well as information. (Soulé 1985: 727)
When biodiversity conservation is at issue, theoretical and practical matters go hand

in hand, and practical challenges are intertwined with conceptual ones, requiring the
cooperation of the natural sciences and of the humanities in a concerted effort. This
book, including contributions from biologists and philosophers from different fields
and traditions, reflects this necessary multidisciplinarity.
1.1 ssessing and Diagnosing the Patient. Estimating

A
Biodiversity: Data Collection and Monitoring Challenges
Consider a first aspect of the analogy between medicine and conservation biology.
The first thing medical doctors have to do when dealing with patients is to assess
their general health state and the severity of the condition affecting them. Diagnosis
on the basis of the collection of patients’ data and their classification, as well as on
the measurement and monitoring of symptoms, comes before treatment prescription
and provision. In the case of biodiversity, two main kinds of diagnostic challenges
2
In this sense, Diamond (1989) refers to the “Evil Quartet”, the four horsemen of the apocalypse:
habitat loss and fragmentation, overharvesting, introduced predators and competitors, and second-
ary extinction, while E.O. Wilson (2002) expresses similar concerns by characterizing the HIPPO
(i.e., Habitat destruction, Invasive species, Pollution, (human) Population growth and
Overharvesting).
1 Biodiversity Healing 3
have to be addressed: on the one hand, the difficulties concerning data collection
and systematisation (Chaps. 2, 3 and 4); on the other hand, the choice of the appro-
priate measurement techniques and ways of monitoring (Chaps. 5, 6 and 7).
Starting with the first challenge, probably the most striking aspect of the living
world is its amazing variety, so immense that it eludes even our hardest s ystematisation
attempts. Buffon, in the First discourse of his Histoire Naturelle (1749) already
highlighted this aspect of the natural world:
… it takes a peculiar kind of genius and courage of spirit to be able to envisage nature in the
innumerable multitude of its productions without losing one’s orientation, and to believe
oneself capable of understanding and comparing such productions… The first obstacle
encountered in the study of natural history comes from this great multiplicity of objects. But
the variety of these same objects, and the difficulty of bringing together the various produc-
tions of different climates, is another apparently insurmountable obstacle to the advance-
ment of our understanding, an obstacle which in fact work alone is unable to surmount. It is
only by dint of time, care, expenditure of money, and often by lucky accidents, that one is
able to obtain well-preserved specimens of each species of animal, plant, or mineral, and
thus form a well-ordered collection of all the works of nature. (Buffon, First discourse,
quoted in Lyon 1976: 145)
Things have not become easier over time. Taxonomic knowledge, as all empirical
knowledge, is hypothetical in nature, hence always susceptible to revision as new
data become available and new theoretical frameworks replace old ones. In such a
context, the challenge posed by taxonomic revisions is a fil rouge connecting the
first three chapters of this part of the book. The puzzle these contributions pose is
effectively a taxonomic version of Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis: are the data
collected and systematised according to a certain taxonomy translatable, so to
speak, into another? Notice that taxonomic revisions, either caused by a change in
the theoretical framework or by the availability of new data, have important conse-
quences for biodiversity conservation. As Agapow et al. (2004) argued, for instance,
a reclassification of endangered species adopting a phylogenetic species concept
(which defines a species as a group of organisms that share at least one uniquely
derived character) could increase the cost of recovering all species currently listed
in the Endangered Species Act from $4.6 billion to $7.6 billion.3 Counting species,
and their members, is not only fundamental for assessing the patient’s general health
state, but it is also for assessing the severity of the condition affecting the patient
and, hence, for determining treatments prioritisation.
Chapter 2, The hidden biodiversity data retained in pre-Linnaean works: a case
study with two important XVII century Italian entomologists by Francesco Andrietti
3
In their article, Agapow and colleagues surveyed the primary literature searching for examples of
sets of organisms that had been classified by both the phylogenetic species concept and non-phy-
logenetic concepts (typically defined, at least for animal species, by means of the biological spe-
cies concept, according to which species are groups of populations that are reproductively isolated).
Reclassifying species under the phylogenetic species concept would lead, this is their conclusion,
to an apparent rise in the number of endangered species for two main reasons: the detection of
“new” species (for instance by the splitting of “old” ones) and the subsequent reduction in geo-
graphic range (a frequently used diagnostic indicator in establishing whether a species is
threatened).
4 E. Casetta et al.
and Carlo Polidori, and Chap. 3, Marine biodiversity databanks by Anouk

Barberousse and Sophie Bary focus respectively on pre-and post-Linnean archi-
val data on biodiversity: what was the pre-Linnean knowledge on the extent of bio-
diversity? And how to systematise, today, in digital databanks, the incredible—and
at the same time insufficient—amount of information on biodiversity in order to
help both researchers and conservationists in their respective endeavors? While in
Chap. 2 Francesco Andrietti and Carlo Polidori tackle the issue by analysing a case
study, i.e., the classification of Hymenoptera in the pre- and post-Linnean taxo-
nomic frameworks (how to make available today data “on species” collected before
those species were given their contemporary name?), Anouk Barberousse and
Sophie Bary bring to attention the taxonomic vicissitudes of earthworms, from
Linnaeus’ description to the Barcoding earthworms programme. Notice that these
two case studies are particularly significant for biodiversity conservation. Several
members of the Hymenoptera order (bees, wasps, ants, and parasitoids) are major
pollinators, and several members of the family Lumbricidae play a fundamental role
within the natural soil ecosystem, as Darwin already recognized in his 1881 book,
The formation of vegetable mould. In Chap. 4, Anne Chenuil and colleagues dis-
cuss the Problems and questions posed by cryptic species: to what extent do nomi-
nal species (identified through morphological characters and referred to by Linnean
binominal names) and biological species (identified instead typically through repro-
ductive isolation) overlap? In this contribution, a rational and practical classification
of cryptic species is proposed, based on the crossing of distinct levels of reproduc-
tive isolation with distinct levels of morphological differentiation. The focus is on
marine biodiversity, and the conceptual challenge of establishing the possible com-
mensurability between morphological and biological species is taken up with the
help of genetic tools, such as genome sequencing and the use of genetic markers,
whose impressive development (and rapidly decreasing cost) is allowing identifica-
tion at an increasing rate of cryptic species, i.e., biological species “hidden” within
nominal species.
The second challenge addressed in the first part of the book concerns the choice
of the appropriate biodiversity measurements and the ways of monitoring the condi-
tion of the patient. Measuring biodiversity is a fundamental operation in biodiver-
sity conservation, for instance because, when we need to choose and implement
conservation actions, financial resources are usually limited; accordingly, ecologi-
cals systems and/or places—i.e., specific regions on Earth’s surface “filled with the
particular results of [their] individual story” (Sarkar 2002)—have to be prioritised
and, to do so, biodiversity must be measured. There is widespread agreement that
biodiversity cannot be measured directly:
…conservation biologists almost never measure directly the full range of phenomena that
they take to constitute the biodiversity of a system. Rather, they … rely on measurable signs
that vary (they believe) with biodiversity itself. Samples and signs are biodiversity surro-
gates. (Maclaurin and Sterelny 2008, p. 133)4
4
On the “surrogacy problem”, see for instance Sarkar (2002).
In a similar way as temperature can be measured by means of a substance, mercury,

whose characteristics are particularly sensitive to heat fluctuations and easily mea-
surable, a biodiversity surrogate is thought to be a sort of biological thermometer
that would allow to measure biodiversity, even though indirectly. Intuitively, the
surrogate par excellence seems to be species richness:
Eliminate one species, and another increases in number to take its place. Eliminate a great
many species, and the local ecosystem starts to decay visibly. Productivity drops as the
channels of the nutrient cycles are clogged. More of the biomass is sequestered in the form
of dead vegetation and slowly metabolizing, oxygen starved mud, or is simply washed away
… Fewer seeds fall, fewer seedlings sprout. Herbivores decline, and their predators die
away in close concert. (E.O. Wilson 1992, p. 14)
As it can be grasped from the above quote, species richness is considered to be

important because it is supposed to be related with the well-functioning or the sta-
bility of an ecosystem. But it can be argued that the number of species is not the
only surrogate to be taken into account when estimating biodiversity. Another
important feature is so-called evenness: a biological community, an ecosystem, or a
geographical area are said to have evenness when the abundance of all species pres-
ent is similar. However, establishing whether and how surrogates such as species
richness and evenness are correlated with one another as well as with patterns of
species abundance remains an open theoretical problem that has, moreover, impor-
tant practical repercussions (for instance, how to infer, from the data collected from
an actually sampled area via such surrogates, a possible general estimation of its
diagnostic status). Chapter 5, by Luís Borda-de-Água, The importance of scaling
in biodiversity, is devoted to these topics, focusing on the species-area relationship
(a mathematical expression relating how the number of species changes as a func-
tion of the size of the sampled area) and the scaling of species abundance distribu-
tions (i.e., the relative abundance of species). Chapter 6, Measures of biological
diversity: Overview and unified framework by Vincenzo Crupi is dedicated to
diversity indexes, more precisely to the challenge of integrating them in a unified
formalism. Here, Crupi presents a unified framework, taken from generalised infor-
mation theory, to measure biological diversity embedding a variety of statistical
measures. While Chaps. 5 and 6 mainly rely on insights coming from information
theory, mathematics and statistics to address specific problems primarily related
with the choice of the appropriate biodiversity estimation techniques necessary to
assess the status of the patient, Chap. 7, Essential biodiversity change indicators for
evaluating the effects of Anthropocene in ecosystems at a global scale by Cristina
Branquinho and colleagues tackles, from a conservationist point of view, the prob-
lem of monitoring the condition of the patient. Once conceded that measuring all
forms of biodiversity everywhere and over time is an impossible task, this chapter
proposes to broaden the outlook from species diversity to the “essential biodiversity
variables” proposed by the Group on Earth Observations—Biodiversity Observation
6 E. Casetta et al.
Network.5 These include: genetic composition, species populations, species traits,

community composition, ecosystem structure and ecosystem function. Putting into
practice a global monitoring network to track biodiversity change is far from being
an easy endeavour, and the chapter discusses these difficulties as well as suggesting
possible solutions.
1.2 re We Taking Care of the Right Patient?

A
Characterising Biodiversity: Beyond the Species
Approach
If measuring biodiversity poses a series of mainly practical challenges, it also opens

a Pandora’s box of conceptual ones, which are dealt with in the second part of the
book. Consider a second aspect of the analogy between medicine and conservation
biology. Diagnosis depends on the appropriate characterisation of the biological
organism as a unit of medical intervention. Organisms can be decomposed in a vari-
ety of entities such as organs, tissues, cells, proteins, genes, microbiotas etc. that
interact in the context of metabolic, developmental, immunological, neurological
etc. processes. The intervention on the medical patient is thus dependent on the way
in which the biological organism is characterised. For instance, we might character-
ise the organism as made of proteins, and we will be right in treating mad cow dis-
ease and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. However, not all illnesses are linked to protein
abnormalities. Analogously, the biosphere is composed of a variety of entities clas-
sifiable in many different ways and interacting in the context of a variety of ecologi-
cal and evolutionary processes. Species are just one of these entities. To conserve
biodiversity by focusing merely on species loss is analogous, let us say, to maintain-
ing the health of an organism intervening on protein deficiencies only.
In this part, two main kinds of foundational issues for diagnosis will be considered:
on the one hand, the conceptual challenges in individuating the salient units of biodi-
versity (Chaps. 8, 9 and 10); on the other, the contrast between entity-based vs. pro-
cess-based and function-based approaches to biodiversity (Chaps. 11, 12, 13 and 14).
Except for Chap. 7, the implicit underlying assumption of the contributions of the
first part of the book is that assessing and measuring biodiversity ultimately amounts
to counting species or, at most, taxa. This is probably the most traditional and widely
used strategy: counting taxonomic groups and estimating their frequency (Maclaurin
and Sterelny 2008, p. 135 ff.). This should come as no surprise. In fact, when it made
its appearance in 1986, the term “biodiversity” was, implicitly or explicitly, intended
to refer to species diversity. Assessing biodiversity was considered as one and the
same thing as inventorying species, and conserving biodiversity consisted in main-
taining the inventory. In the words of E.O. Wilson (1992, p. 38):
5
See: https://geobon.org/ebvs/what-are-ebvs/
… the species concept is crucial to the study of biodiversity. It is the grail of systematic
biology. Not to have a natural unit such as the species would be to abandon a large part of
biology into free fall, all the way from the ecosystem down to the organism.
Counting species is relatively easy in practice and theoretically well motivated. In

fact, we already possess good (even though neither complete nor fully coherent, as
particularly emphasised in Chaps. 2 and 3) species inventories, some fairly reliable
ways to recognize them in practice as well as methodologically solid ways of count-
ing them. Moreover, there is a widespread agreement that the concept of species
refers to a fundamental unit of biological organisation (Mayr 1988) and that species,
by speciating, produce new biodiversity. However, two major problems remain: on
the one hand, the concept of species is severely flawed (as the persistency of the so-
called “Species Problem” shows, cf. Richards 2010; Zachos 2016) and, on the other,
it is questionable whether it can be applied across all branches of the tree of life, for
instance to bacterial biodiversity.
Given this state of affairs, a question is in order: if biodiversity has to be con-
served, are we describing and treating the right patient when we focus on species or,
more largely, on other taxonomic groups? If we give a negative answer to this ques-
tion, then the conceptual challenge consists in proposing a viable characterisation of
biodiversity able at the same time to go beyond a mere species-centred approach
(whose merits and limits have been mentioned above) and to account for the variety
of entities other than species, and of processes other than speciation, that might be
considered targets of conservation practice. But then, an entirely new set of basic
challenges, both theoretical and practical, opens up: how can we individuate the
salient units of biodiversity? How do such units interact among them within the
same and other levels, and how can this interaction give rise to novel diversity? Is it
possible to keep together, in an ideally comprehensive account, this enormously
complex interplay of units belonging to different levels and describable and evalu-
able at different temporal and spatial scales? How to bridge epistemologies con-
cerning biodiversity conservation? And how to link these epistemologies with the
practical concern of conserving biodiversity? These and similar questions are
addressed in the second part of the book.
Notice that, to go back to the medicine analogy, in discussing how the patient
should be better characterised, and which of its parts, properties and functions should
be emphasised, the chapters in this section do not miss to keeping an eye on the rela-
tion between diagnosis and treatment, i.e., on the issue of what it would mean, for
conservation purposes, to characterise biodiversity in one way rather than another.
The three initial chapters in this part couple evolutionary with conservationist con-
siderations in order to go beyond a species-centred approach by individuating differ-
ent salient units of biodiversity. In Chap. 8, Thomas Reydon suggests an answer to
the question: Are species good units for biodiversity studies and conservation
efforts?, embracing a radical approach: species are not good units of biodiversity;
yet, a pragmatic notion of species can be used as an epistemic tool in the context of
biodiversity studies. Two other contributions try to characterise biodiversity in a
more encompassing way by including other entities. In Chap. 9, Why a species-
8 E. Casetta et al.
based approach to biodiversity is not enough. Lessons from multispecies biofilms,

Jorge Marques da Silva and Elena Casetta take a look at the microbial world,
where the application of the concept of species is particularly controversial. This
chapter suggests that entities such as multispecies biofilms, where interaction among
parts gives rise to a putative multispecies individual, might play a crucial role in the
generation of biodiversity and that, as a consequence, could be adequate targets of
conservation. In a similar spirit, in Chap. 10, Considering intra-individual genetic
heterogeneity to understand biodiversity, Eva Boon aims at enlightening an unex-
plored dimension of biodiversity, again focusing on entities other than species, i.e.,
multicellular life forms characterized by intra-individual genetic heterogeneity (such
as, for instance, genetically mosaic and chimeric entities). This chapter argues that
studying biodiversity through the lens of intra-individual genetic heterogeneity facil-
itates thinking in terms of interactions between biological entities rather than in
terms of organismal function, allowing a new light on the ecological and evolution-
ary significance of biological diversity.
The other chapters in this part also couple evolutionary with conservationist con-
cerns. In order to go beyond a species-centred approach, they focus on the role of
processes (other than speciation) and functions (such as, for instance, evolvability,
evolutionary potential, plasticity). In Chap. 11, Biodiversity, disparity and evolv-
ability, Alessandro Minelli argues that taxic diversity is not necessarily the most
important aspect of biodiversity if what most matters is maintenance of ecosystem
function. This chapter articulates a rationale for prioritising focus on those species
providing the largest contribution to overall phylogenetic diversity, thus proceeding
towards an evo-devo approach to conservation focused on evolvability, robustness
and phenotypic plasticity. The potential role of the process of phenotypic plasticity
in the production of new diversity is also stressed by Davide Vecchi and Rob Mills
in Chap. 12, Probing the process-based approach to biodiversity: Can plasticity
lead to the emergence of novel units of biodiversity? This contribution aims to pro-
vide a model to test the hypothesis that plastic populations of a species might be
considered evolutionary significant units amenable to conservation. In addition to
Chaps. 11 and 12, Chaps. 13 and 14 also propose a characterisation of biodiversity
based on process and function that reveals a common ontological ground. The ratio-
nale of a process-based approach to biodiversity is that a mere focus on entities does
not address the issue concerning whether evolutionary and ecological processes
have the capacity to create novel, salient units of biodiversity. The suggestion is that
a process-based approach should integrate an entity-based one. Process-based and
function-based approaches are, as a matter of fact, strictly related to the historical
roots of the concept of biodiversity. In fact, while it might be argued that the term
“biodiversity” only entered the scientific and public discourse the mid-1980s—i.e.,
on the occasion of the National Forum on Biodiversity that took place in Washington
DC in September 1986 (Takacs 1996)—the concept goes back at least to the diver-
sity-stability debate that animated ecology in the middle of the twentieth century
(McCann 2000). Yet, at least in its beginning, conservation biology displayed little
interest to previous research in ecology, addressing instead the more pragmatic
aspects of conservation. It seemed, in other words, that, as it often happens, two
scientific disciplines working on the same subject from different perspectives were
talking past each other. This stand-off started to unlock with the Harvard Forest
Symposium in 1991, where it was explicitly recognised that, in order to effectively
conserve biodiversity, a more precise knowledge of the functioning of ecosystems
would be needed (Blandin 2014). In this perspective, it becomes clear that a charac-
terisation merely in terms of species diversity does not seem to fully capture the
multitude of dynamical interactions at different levels and scales from which biodi-
versity results. Again, neither do all species play the same role in a community or in
an ecosystem, nor do they have the same evolutionary history and potential.
However, when species are counted through indexes, they are treated as being
equivalent conservation units; in fact, indexes are not easily able to mirror the pos-
sibility that a species may be more important than another for the functioning of the
ecosystem. Moreover, in biodiversity conservation, it is not sufficient to preserve
current biodiversity, but what is also ideally needed is to maintain diversity in the
face of possible future losses; but to do so, a metric able to indicate whether diver-
sity in a certain place is mostly constituted by rare species (that are more likely to
go extinct) would be needed. Chapters 13, 14 and 15 are mainly dedicated to eco-
logical theoretical perspectives on biodiversity and to the challenge of connecting
evolutionary, ecological, and conservation considerations. Through Chap. 13,
Between explanans and explanandum: Biodiversity and the unity of theoretical
ecology, Philippe Huneman clarifies the key-role of the concept of biodiversity in
ecology as both an explanans and an explanandum, while Antoine Dussault, in
Chap. 14, Functional biodiversity and the concept of ecological function, eluci-
dates some aspects of the concept of functional diversity. Starting from the assump-
tion that measures of biodiversity based on species richness have epistemological
limitations, this chapter explores the notion of “ecological function” and character-
ises it in non-selectionist terms. Finally, in Chap. 15, Integrating ecology and evo-
lutionary theory: A game changer for biodiversity conservation?, Silvia Di Marco
spells out the interaction between conservation science, evolutionary biology, and
ecology in order to understand whether a stronger integration between evolutionary
and ecological studies might help clarifying the interactions between biodiversity,
ecosystem functions and ecosystem services.
1.3 reating the Patient. Conserving Biodiversity:

T
From Science to Policies
In the light of the ongoing complex work of characterisation of the patient articu-
lated in the various contributions of the previous part, it is not surprising that we do
not possess a final, universally agreed upon, definition of “biodiversity”. The crucial
question is therefore whether putting in place effective conservation actions without
a satisfactory definition of “biodiversity” makes sense at all. The third part of the
book deals with this issue. Consider a third aspect of the analogy between medicine
10 E. Casetta et al.
and conservation biology. After diagnosis and proper characterisation of the unit of
medical intervention, medical doctors prescribe treatment. The aim of dispensing
treatment is always the benefit of the patient as an organism, however successful
treatment is. In the case of biodiversity, there exist incompatible ways to character-
ise the aim of conservation policies. Part of the treatment problem, to which some
contributions of this part are dedicated (Chaps. 16 and 17) is that the term “biodiver-
sity”, not being well defined, is potentially used differently by the various actors
(e.g., scientists, policy-makers and conservationists) devising and implementing
conservation policies. A flipside of the treatment problem can be understood if we
take into consideration another facet of the definitional conundrum: the term “bio-
diversity” might have inherited, from the intentions of its original proponents
(Takacs 1996), an intrinsic normative element that has to do with biodiversity pro-
tection and preservation. However, normativity poses a series of challenges to which
the rest of the contributions of this part is dedicated: the first ones (Chaps. 18 and
19) have to do with the characterisation of normativity while the others (Chaps. 20
and 21) concern the global-local tension of conservation aims and constraints.
In his often-quoted review of definitions of “biodiversity”, DeLong (1996) listed
no less than 85 definitions. It is thus not surprising that the term is recognised by
some authors as remarkably vague (Sarkar 2002). Other authors think that the term
is clearly defined or, at least, that conservation science possesses perfectly workable
operational definitions to prescribe treatments (Bunnell 1998). The role of defini-
tions in science is controversial. On the one hand, it can be said that “definition is
one of the most crucial issues in any science; an improper understanding of it can
vitiate the success of the whole enterprise” (Caws 1959). On the other hand, it can
be claimed that scientific enterprises can proceed quite well even without having
clear, univocal and unambiguous definitions of their key terms. After all, focusing
on disciplines like biology and ecology, it is widely recognized that no univocal,
universally agreed upon, definitions of terms such as ‘life’ (Benner 2010), ‘organ-
ism’ (J. Wilson 2000), ‘species’ (Richards 2010), and ‘ecosystem’ (Sarkar 2002)
can be provided. Still, biologists and ecologists successfully go on with their work.
Why would the situation be different in the case of the term “biodiversity”?
Following Bunnell’s (1998) suggestion, whether a definition plays a crucial role or
not in scientific endeavours probably depends on the nature of the specific enter-
prise at issue. For instance, when J. Wilson (2000) wrote that “Biology lacks a cen-
tral organism concept that unambiguously marks the distinction between organism
and non-organism because the most important questions about organisms do not
depend on this concept”, he was clearly not making reference to conservationist
needs. But where the theoretical enterprise is strictly intertwined with pragmatic
objectives, as it is the case with biodiversity studies, things are different.
In particular, two main reasons may be given for why a definition of the term
“biodiversity” is needed, together with some reasons for why not having it would be
a source of impediments in finding agreed-upon methods to evaluate management
and conservation strategies and in the implementation of conservation actions. The
first reason is that, unlike other scientific terms, “biodiversity” is supposed to play a
unifying role for the plethora of discourses (Haila and Kouki 1994) produced by the
different disciplines and actors involved in facing the so-called biodiversity crisis.
On the one hand, the term performs a unifying function for the scientific disciplines
involved in estimating biodiversity and those studying how it is generated (evolu-
tionary biology, genetics, ecology, biogeography, systematics, and so on), for the
disciplines involved in its management and conservation (from environmental eco-
nomics to conservation biology) as well as for all those socio-political disciplines
concerned with the interactions between our species and biodiversity exploitation
and conservation (from the social sciences to political philosophy and ethics).6
Furthermore—but not less importantly—this unifying role serves to make scientific
discourses uniform for a variety of social and political actors: from the general pub-
lic to stakeholders, from governments to policy makers. The term “biodiversity” is
often used as a flagship, with no explicit definition provided. However, if scientist
and the different social and political actors involved in facing the biodiversity crisis
define biodiversity in fundamentally different ways, the agreement necessary to per-
form common actions could be severely impaired and the presumption that common
actions are actually oriented towards the same goal could be false. Accordingly, “to
create solutions for biodiversity loss, it is essential for natural and social scientists
to overcome such language barriers” (Holt 2006).
Georg Toepfer embraces a different view. In Chap. 16, On the impossibility and
dispensability of defining “biodiversity”, Toepfer argues that it is exactly because
the term is vague that the concept of biodiversity is able to tie together many differ-
ent discourses from the fields of biology and bioethics, aesthetics and economics,
law and global justice. Chapter 17, The vagueness of “biodiversity” and its impli-
cations in conservation practice, by Yves Meinard, Sylvain Coq and Bernhard
Schmid, articulates a different argument. A tension emerges here between the theo-
retical function of the concept and its pragmatic use: providing concrete case studies
to support their argument, the authors suggest that the lack of transparency in using
the word “biodiversity” can hide profound disagreements on the nature of conserva-
tion issues, impairing the coordination of conservation actions, hiding the need to
improve management knowledge, and covering up incompatibilities between disci-
plinary assumptions.
Sarkar (2002) highlighted a second reason for why a definition of “biodiversity”
is needed. It concerns the “sociologically synergistic interaction between the use of
“biodiversity” and the growth of conservation biology [that] led to the re-
configuration of environmental studies that we see today”. In other words, the term
would convey the necessity of conserving something we are losing and we care
about. In this respect, the vagueness of the term “biodiversity” implies a lack of
clarity as to what has to be conserved. At this juncture, a particularly thorny issue is
whether a good definition should reflect the normativity that—according to several
6
Many concepts may play a similar unifying role in biology and science at large. For instance, the
concept of gene is definable in multifarious ways and has undergone a series of profound concep-
tual transformations. Nonetheless, it has continued to play an important theoretical and heuristic
role in classical and molecular genetics as well as in genomics, constraining and directing both the
thoughts and actions of biologists (Kay 2000).
philosophers (Callicott et al. 1999; Norton 2008)—is embedded into the concept of
biodiversity. Such normativity was presumed in the early literature on biodiversity,
like Soulé’s (1985) manifesto of conservation biology, which included explicit nor-
mative postulates besides scientific ones. In Chap. 18, Sahotra Sarkar asks: What
should “biodiversity” be?, and distinguishes between “scientistic”, “normativist”,
and “eliminativist” approaches to biodiversity. In direct dialogue with Chap. 19,
Natural diversity: how taking the bio- out of biodiversity aligns with conservation
priorities, in which Carlos Santana embraces a strongly eliminativist approach
according to which the concept of biodiversity should just be dismissed and replaced
by the more encompassing concept of natural diversity, Sarkar instead advocates a
strongly normativist position: biodiversity should be understood as a normative
concept, although constrained by a set of adequacy conditions that reflect scientific
analyses of biological diversity. The main problem with normativism is, of course,
as the chapter underlines, that values are usually culture-dependent: global values
ranging across cultures are probably a myth, and local norms (supposedly revealed
by the local commitments of people living in their habitats) can be in conflict with
each other as well as with alleged global values (Vermeulen and Koziell 2002). The
last two chapters of the book are devoted to this tension between local and global
values. Andrea Borghini in Chap. 20, Ordinary biodiversity. The case of food,
focuses on an often-neglected aspect of biodiversity, which might be called “the
edible environment”. This chapter poses a series of questions concerning the nature
of the criteria for inclusion in conservation effort. The way this contribution tries to
answer this question is by asking whether these criteria are global or local, whether
they are applicable equally to all living entities, for instance to wild and domesti-
cated species alike. Finally, Markku Oksanen and Timo Vuorisalo, in Chap. 21,
Conservation sovereignty and biodiversity, look at the “owners” of wild and domes-
ticated biodiversity: on the one hand, states are self-determining actors and the prin-
cipal possessors of biological resources in their territories but, on the other hand, the
actual fragmentation of conservation labour is not always efficient from the conser-
vation perspective. This contribution tries to address this stand-off.
1.4 he Way Ahead: Interdisciplinary Solutions

T
to Biodiversity Healing
Aiming to cover the entire conceptual and practical pathway that leads from assess-
ing to conserving biodiversity, this book highlights some critical issues that must be
addressed to foster effective biodiversity conservation. These include both concep-
tual and philosophical issues as well as scientific and technological challenges. In
Part I, concerned with the assessment of biodiversity, it becomes clear that technical
and practical advances are needed. From its origins, the study of living beings was
mainly concerned with their phenotypes. The main systematic classification efforts,
from Buffon to Linnaeus, were built under a phenotypic paradigm. The concept of
gene, formally introduced by the Danish botanist W. L. Johannsen in 1909, started

its slow way into biology with Mendel’s work in the nineteenth century, received a
significant boost in the middle of the twentieth century with the unravelling of DNA
structure, ultimately becoming dominant in the 1980s, with the development of the
polymerase chain reaction and other molecular techniques. This prevalent role of
genes in the conceptual corpus of biology was accompanied by the rapid develop-
ment of gene sequencing technologies. This had a positive effect on the pursuit of
biodiversity inventories—think of the use of DNA barcoding—but at the expense of
a decrease on the original focus on the description and characterisation of pheno-
types. In fact, the number of “classical” (i.e., non-molecular) taxonomists among
professional biologists is sharply decreasing (Coleman 2015). Nonetheless, pheno-
typic studies are still crucial for the inventory of biodiversity—think about the need
to correctly identify cryptic species—and for understanding evolutionary trends,
given that selective pressures act on individual phenotypes. Fortunately, in the last
few years, the scientific community became aware of the imbalance between geno-
typing and phenotyping efforts and started an international interdisciplinary venture
to fix it (Dayrat 2005; Fiorani and Schurr 2013). Adding machine learning and/or
multivariate statistics to digital image and/or spectroscopic analysis led to high
throughput phenotyping and the new discipline of phenomics (Houle et al. 2010).
High throughput phenotyping has so far been used in biotechnology contexts—both
medical (Maier et al. 2017) and agricultural (Crain et al. 2018)—but not yet applied
to the inventory of biodiversity, except for the artificial biodiversity of agronomic
traditional plant landraces (Costa et al. 2015). For instance, the recent global initia-
tive (Soltis 2017) to digitalize the 350.000.000 specimen stored in 3.500 herbaria all
over the world may provide the conditions for automated pipeline image analysis
and therefore high throughput phenotyping, fostering the understanding of plant bio-
diversity. Altogether, these emerging trends suggest that a combination of digital
image analysis and artificial intelligence techniques has the potential to boost the
phenotypic characterisation of the species inventory.
The use of air-born and satellite images for biodiversity studies is not new, but
also here the application of automated artificial intelligence-supported image analy-
sis (Keramitsoglou et al. 2004) may help making operational biodiversity units
other than species (communities, habitats), as suggested by some contributions to
Part II. Also, the new generation of earth observation satellites, with their increased
capacity for remotely estimating ecosystem functions (e.g., photosynthetic produc-
tion, Joiner et al. 2011) may help making operational the concepts of process-based
and function-based approaches to biodiversity conservation defended in other con-
tributions to Part II. Moreover, the emerging extension of bioinformatics to pheno-
typic analysis, through the development of controlled phenotypic ontologies
(Mungall et al. 2010), led to the novel concept of “computable phenotypes” (Lussier
and Liu 2007; Deans et al. 2015). Phenotypic ontologies, in conjunction with eco-
logical ontologies (Madin et al. 2007), open new avenues to unravel evolutionary
trends. This putative in-depth understanding of phenotypes might contribute to the
integration between ecology and evolution, a need emphasized in several contribu-
tions to Part II. All these new approaches are strongly interdisciplinary.
Interdisciplinary science still faces, however, a series of constraints (institutional,

financial, sociological, epistemological, Vasbinder et al. 2010; Marques da Silva
and Casetta 2015) that must be overcome to foster biodiversity knowledge.
Part III discusses the problem of biodiversity definition and its consequences for
conservation policies, also addressing the possible relation between mainly episte-
mological issues (such as measuring, inventorying and, indeed, defining biodiver-
sity) and mainly axiological and moral issues (i.e., concerning, respectively, the
possible value of biodiversity and our correct behaviour towards it). This discussion
is not new. In the early 1970s Arne Naess developed the concept of “methodological
vagueness” (Glasser 1998). The aim was to broaden the support basis of his deep
ecology political project. Arguably, the vagueness of the biodiversity concept might
play a similar role in biodiversity conservation. The incapacity to clearly identify
the object to be conserved might not be an unbearable burden, since targeting a set
of closely related objects might have an additive positive effect on biodiversity con-
servation (albeit this could be a problem when resources are scarce and a prioritisa-
tion of conservation targets is needed). Even if we come to a universally shared
definition of biodiversity, the ethical question whether we should be committed to
biodiversity conservation remains, and the axiological problem persists. Some con-
tributions to Part III address the tension between local and global values. In this
respect, moral and political philosophy, for instance theoretical bioethics and envi-
ronmental ethics, may provide useful resources to enlighten conservation policies.
At the same time, part of moral philosophy provides compelling arguments against
cultural relativism. This is not to deny, however, that there are cultural differences
between societies and that these differences might dictate different biodiversity con-
servation policies. In fact, institutions such as as the Indigenous Peoples’ Biodiversity
Network are deeply concerned with this issue. Here, theoretical bioethics might
help. For instance, Engelhardt Jr. (1986), working in a medical bioethics context,
argued that in multicultural societies there are fundamental incommensurable moral
tenets. His bioethical system, therefore, renounces to achieve the ultimate bioethical
“truth” and, instead, provides a framework to reach “minimum operational agree-
ments” between multicultural stakeholders, i.e., it becomes a framework for “moral
diplomacy”. Efforts to clarify the intrinsic value of natural diversity, however, still
persist in environmental ethics. Departing from peculiar systems of environmental
aesthetics, contemporary authors such as Allen Carlson (2000) and Holmes Rolston
III (2002) aim to provide a universal system of recognition of the intrinsic value of
natural diversity. Ongoing global scientific, technological, conceptual and norma-
tive efforts aim to provide better policies and programs for biodiversity c onservation.
The success in preventing the so called Big Sixth mass extinction is dependent on
this global interdisciplinary collective effort.
Needless to say, the aim of this book is neither to provide a set of contributions
that are exhaustive of the virtually unlimited issues raised by biodiversity studies
and conservation, nor to solve problems once and for all. The attempt is rather to
provide a tool for teaching and for research on a topic that by its own nature is
hugely complex and multidisciplinary, without falling into the temptation of simpli-
fying the conceptual and practical challenges involved. On the contrary, we think
that bringing such challenges to the fore and thematising them might be a fruitful
research approach. We hope the reader will enjoy the book and, above all, find it
stimulating and useful.
Acknowledgements We acknowledge the financial support of the Fundação para a Ciência e

Tecnologia (BIODECON R&D Project. Grant PTDC/IVC-HFC/1817/2014), which also made
possible the open-access publication of the book.
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—Tiens, il est mort, ce farceur-là! s’écria le grenadier en
dépouillant le premier auquel il s’adressa. Ah! c’te farce, ils sont
morts!
—Tous?
—Oui, tous! Il paraît que le cheval est indigeste quand on le
mange à la neige.
Ces paroles firent trembler Philippe. Le froid avait redoublé.
—Dieu! perdre une femme que j’ai déjà sauvée vingt fois.
Le major secoua la comtesse en criant:—Stéphanie, Stéphanie!
La jeune femme ouvrit les yeux.
—Madame! nous sommes sauvés.
—Sauvés, répéta-t-elle en retombant.
Les chevaux furent attelés tant bien que mal. Le major, tenant
son sabre de sa meilleure main, gardant les guides de l’autre, armé
de ses pistolets, monta sur un des chevaux, et le grenadier sur le
second. Le vieux soldat, dont les pieds étaient gelés, avait été jeté
en travers de la voiture, sur le général et sur la comtesse. Excités à
coups de sabre, les chevaux emportèrent l’équipage avec une sorte
de furie dans la plaine, où d’innombrables difficultés attendaient le
major. Bientôt il fut impossible d’avancer sans risquer d’écraser des
hommes, des femmes, et jusqu’à des enfants endormis, qui tous
refusaient de bouger quand le grenadier les éveillait. En vain
monsieur de Sucy chercha-t-il la route que l’arrière-garde s’était
frayée naguère au milieu de cette masse d’hommes, elle s’était
effacée comme s’efface le sillage du vaisseau sur la mer; il n’allait
qu’au pas, le plus souvent arrêté par des soldats qui le menaçaient
de tuer ses chevaux.
—Voulez-vous arriver? lui dit le grenadier.
—Au prix de tout mon sang, au prix du monde entier, répondit le
major.
—Marche! On ne fait pas d’omelettes sans casser des œufs.
Et le grenadier de la garde poussa les chevaux sur les hommes,
ensanglanta les roues, renversa les bivouacs, en se traçant un
double sillon de morts à travers ce champ de têtes. Mais rendons-lui
la justice de dire qu’il ne se fit jamais faute de crier d’une voix
tonnante:—Gare donc, charognes.
—Les malheureux! s’écria le major.
—Bah! ça ou le froid, ça ou le canon! dit le grenadier en animant
les chevaux et les piquant avec la pointe de son briquet.
Une catastrophe qui aurait dû leur arriver bien plus tôt, et dont un
hasard fabuleux les avait préservés jusque-là, vint tout à coup les
arrêter dans leur marche. La voiture versa.
—Je m’y attendais, s’écria l’imperturbable grenadier. Oh! oh! le
camarade est mort.
—Pauvre Laurent, dit le major.
—Laurent! N’est-il pas du 5e chasseurs?
—Oui.
—C’est mon cousin. Bah! la chienne de vie n’est pas assez
heureuse pour qu’on la regrette par le temps qu’il fait.
La voiture ne fut pas relevée, les chevaux ne furent pas dégagés
sans une perte de temps immense, irréparable. Le choc avait été si
violent que la jeune comtesse, réveillée et tirée de son
engourdissement par la commotion, se débarrassa de ses
vêtements et se leva.
—Philippe, où sommes-nous? s’écria-t-elle d’une voix douce, en
regardant autour d’elle.
—A cinq cents pas du pont. Nous allons passer la Bérésina. De
l’autre côté de la rivière, Stéphanie, je ne vous tourmenterai plus, je
vous laisserai dormir, nous serons en sûreté, nous gagnerons
tranquillement Wilna. Dieu veuille que vous ne sachiez jamais ce
que votre vie aura coûté!
—Tu es blessé?
—Ce n’est rien.
L’heure de la catastrophe était venue. Le canon des Russes
annonça le jour. Maîtres de Studzianka, ils foudroyèrent la plaine; et
aux premières lueurs du matin, le major aperçut leurs colonnes se
mouvoir et se former sur les hauteurs. Un cri d’alarme s’éleva du
sein de la multitude, qui fut debout en un moment. Chacun comprit
instinctivement son péril, et tous se dirigèrent vers le pont par un
mouvement de vague. Les Russes descendaient avec la rapidité de
l’incendie. Hommes, femmes, enfants, chevaux, tout marcha sur le
pont. Heureusement le major et la comtesse se trouvaient encore
éloignés de la rive. Le général Éblé venait de mettre le feu aux
chevalets de l’autre bord. Malgré les avertissements donnés à ceux
qui envahissaient cette planche de salut, personne ne voulut reculer.
Non-seulement le pont s’abîma chargé de monde; mais l’impétuosité
du flot d’hommes lancés vers cette fatale berge était si furieuse,
qu’une masse humaine fut précipitée dans les eaux comme une
avalanche. On n’entendit pas un cri, mais le bruit sourd d’une pierre
qui tombe à l’eau; puis la Bérésina fut couverte de cadavres. Le
mouvement rétrograde de ceux qui se reculèrent dans la plaine pour
échapper à cette mort, fut si violent, et leur choc contre ceux qui
marchaient en avant fut si terrible, qu’un grand nombre de gens
moururent étouffés. Le comte et la comtesse de Vandières durent la
vie à leur voiture. Les chevaux, après avoir écrasé, pétri une masse
de mourants, périrent écrasés, foulés aux pieds par une trombe
humaine qui se porta sur la rive. Le major et le grenadier trouvèrent
leur salut dans leur force. Ils tuaient pour n’être pas tués. Cet
ouragan de faces humaines, ce flux et reflux de corps animés par un
même mouvement eut pour résultat de laisser pendant quelques
moments la rive de la Bérésina déserte. La multitude s’était rejetée
dans la plaine. Si quelques hommes se lancèrent à la rivière du haut
de la berge, ce fut moins dans l’espoir d’atteindre l’autre rive qui,
pour eux, était la France, que pour éviter les déserts de la Sibérie.
Le désespoir devint une égide pour quelques gens hardis. Un officier
sauta de glaçon en glaçon jusqu’à l’autre bord; un soldat rampa
miraculeusement sur un amas de cadavres et de glaçons. Cette
immense population finit par comprendre que les Russes ne
tueraient pas vingt mille hommes sans armes, engourdis, stupides,
qui ne se défendaient pas, et chacun attendit son sort avec une
horrible résignation. Alors le major, son grenadier, le vieux général et
sa femme restèrent seuls, à quelques pas de l’endroit où était le
pont. Ils étaient là, tous quatre debout, les yeux secs, silencieux,
entourés d’une masse de morts. Quelques soldats valides, quelques
officiers auxquels la circonstance rendait toute leur énergie se
trouvaient avec eux. Ce groupe assez nombreux comptait environ
cinquante hommes. Le major aperçut à deux cents pas de là les
ruines du pont fait pour les voitures, et qui s’était brisé l’avant-veille.
—Construisons un radeau, s’écria-t-il.
A peine avait-il laissé tomber cette parole que le groupe entier
courut vers ces débris. Une foule d’hommes se mit à ramasser des
crampons de fer, à chercher des pièces de bois, des cordes, enfin
tous les matériaux nécessaires à la construction du radeau. Une
vingtaine de soldats et d’officiers armés formèrent une garde
commandée par le major pour protéger les travailleurs contre les
attaques désespérées que pourrait tenter la foule en devinant leur
dessein. Le sentiment de la liberté qui anime les prisonniers et leur
inspire des miracles ne peut pas se comparer à celui qui faisait agir
en ce moment ces malheureux Français.
—Voilà les Russes! voilà les Russes! criaient aux travailleurs
ceux qui les défendaient.
Et les bois criaient, le plancher croissait de largeur, de hauteur,
de profondeur. Généraux, soldats, colonels, tous pliaient sous le
poids des roues, des fers, des cordes, des planches: c’était une
image réelle de la construction de l’arche de Noé. La jeune
comtesse, assise auprès de son mari, contemplait ce spectacle avec
le regret de ne pouvoir contribuer en rien à ce travail; cependant elle
aidait à faire des nœuds pour consolider les cordages. Enfin, le
radeau fut achevé. Quarante hommes le lancèrent dans les eaux de
la rivière, tandis qu’une dizaine de soldats tenaient les cordes qui
devaient servir à l’amarrer près de la berge. Aussitôt que les
constructeurs virent leur embarcation flottant sur la Bérésina, ils s’y
jetèrent du haut de la rive avec un horrible égoïsme. Le major,
craignant la fureur de ce premier mouvement, tenait Stéphanie et le
général par la main; mais il frissonna quand il vit l’embarcation noire
de monde et les hommes pressés dessus comme des spectateurs
au parterre d’un théâtre.
—Sauvages! s’écria-t-il, c’est moi qui vous ai donné l’idée de
faire le radeau; je suis votre sauveur, et vous me refusez une place.
Une rumeur confuse servit de réponse. Les hommes placés au
bord du radeau, et armés de bâtons qu’ils appuyaient sur la berge,
poussaient avec violence le train de bois, pour le lancer vers l’autre
bord et lui faire fendre les glaçons et les cadavres.
—Tonnerre de Dieu! je vous fiche à l’eau si vous ne recevez pas
le major et ses deux compagnons, s’écria le grenadier, qui leva son
sabre, empêcha le départ, et fit serrer les rangs, malgré des cris
horribles.
—Je vais tomber! je tombe! criaient ses compagnons. Partons!
en avant!
Le major regardait d’un œil sec sa maîtresse, qui levait les yeux
au ciel par un sentiment de résignation sublime.
—Mourir avec toi! dit-elle.
Il y avait quelque chose de comique dans la situation des gens
installés sur le radeau. Quoiqu’ils poussassent des rugissements
affreux, aucun d’eux n’osait résister au grenadier; car ils étaient si
pressés, qu’il suffisait de pousser une seule personne pour tout
renverser. Dans ce danger, un capitaine essaya de se débarrasser
du soldat qui aperçut le mouvement hostile de l’officier, le saisit et le
précipita dans l’eau en lui disant:—Ah! ah! canard, tu veux boire! Va!
—Voilà deux places! s’écria-t-il. Allons, major, jetez-nous votre
petite femme et venez! Laissez ce vieux roquentin qui crèvera
demain.
—Dépêchez-vous! cria une voix composée de cent voix.
—Allons, major. Ils grognent, les autres, et ils ont raison.
Le comte de Vandières se débarrassa de ses vêtements, et se
montra debout dans son uniforme de général.
—Sauvons le comte, dit Philippe.
Stéphanie serra la main de son ami, se jeta sur lui et l’embrassa
par une horrible étreinte.
—Adieu! dit-elle.
Ils s’étaient compris. Le comte de Vandières retrouva ses forces
et sa présence d’esprit pour sauter dans l’embarcation, où Stéphanie
le suivit après avoir donné un dernier regard à Philippe.
—Major, voulez-vous ma place? Je me moque de la vie, s’écria
le grenadier. Je n’ai ni femme, ni enfant, ni mère.
—Je te les confie, cria le major en désignant le comte et sa
femme.
—Soyez tranquille, j’en aurai soin comme de mon œil.
Le radeau fut lancé avec tant de violence vers la rive opposée à
celle où Philippe restait immobile, qu’en touchant terre la secousse
ébranla tout. Le comte, qui était au bord, roula dans la rivière. Au
moment où il y tombait, un glaçon lui coupa la tête, et la lança au
loin, comme un boulet.
—Hein! major! cria le grenadier.
—Adieu! cria une femme.
Philippe de Sucy tomba glacé d’horreur, accablé par le froid, par
le regret et par la fatigue.
—Ma pauvre nièce était devenue folle, ajouta le médecin après

un moment de silence. Ah! monsieur, reprit-il en saisissant la main
de monsieur d’Albon, combien la vie a été affreuse pour cette petite
femme, si jeune, si délicate! Après avoir été, par un malheur inouï,
séparée de ce grenadier de la garde, nommé Fleuriot, elle a été
traînée, pendant deux ans, à la suite de l’armée, le jouet d’un tas de
misérables. Elle allait, m’a-t-on dit, pieds nus, mal vêtue, restait des
mois entiers sans soins, sans nourriture; tantôt gardée dans les
hôpitaux, tantôt chassée comme un animal. Dieu seul connaît les
malheurs auxquels cette infortunée a pourtant survécu. Elle était
dans une petite ville d’Allemagne, enfermée avec des fous, pendant
que ses parents, qui la croyaient morte, partageaient ici sa
succession. En 1816, le grenadier Fleuriot la reconnut dans une
auberge de Strasbourg, où elle venait d’arriver après s’être évadée
de sa prison. Quelques paysans racontèrent au grenadier que la
comtesse avait vécu un mois entier dans une forêt, et qu’ils l’avaient
traquée pour s’emparer d’elle, sans pouvoir y parvenir. J’étais alors à
quelques lieues de Strasbourg. En entendant parler d’une fille
sauvage, j’eus le désir de vérifier les faits extraordinaires qui
donnaient matière à des contes ridicules. Que devins-je en
reconnaissant la comtesse? Fleuriot m’apprit tout ce qu’il savait de
cette déplorable histoire. J’emmenai ce pauvre homme avec ma
nièce en Auvergne, où j’eus le malheur de le perdre. Il avait un peu
d’empire sur madame de Vandières. Lui seul a pu obtenir d’elle
qu’elle s’habillât. Adieu! ce mot qui, pour elle, est toute la langue,
elle le disait jadis rarement. Fleuriot avait entrepris de réveiller en
elle quelques idées; mais il a échoué, et n’a gagné que de lui faire
prononcer un peu plus souvent cette triste parole. Le grenadier
savait la distraire et l’occuper en jouant avec elle; et par lui,
j’espérais, mais...
L’oncle de Stéphanie, se tut pendant un moment.
—Ici, reprit-il, elle a trouvé une autre créature avec laquelle elle
paraît s’entendre. C’est une paysanne idiote, qui, malgré sa laideur
et sa stupidité, a aimé un maçon. Ce maçon a voulu l’épouser, parce
qu’elle possède quelques quartiers de terre. La pauvre Geneviève a
été pendant un an la plus heureuse créature qu’il y eût au monde.
Elle se parait, et allait le dimanche danser avec Dallot; elle
comprenait l’amour; il y avait place dans son cœur et dans son esprit
pour un sentiment. Mais Dallot a fait des réflexions. Il a trouvé une
jeune fille qui a son bon sens et deux quartiers de terre de plus que
n’en a Geneviève. Dallot a donc laissé Geneviève. Cette pauvre
créature a perdu le peu d’intelligence que l’amour avait développé
en elle, et ne sait plus que garder les vaches ou faire de l’herbe. Ma
nièce et cette pauvre fille sont en quelque sorte unies par la chaîne
invisible de leur commune destinée, et par le sentiment qui cause
leur folie. Tenez, voyez? dit l’oncle de Stéphanie en conduisant le
marquis d’Albon à la fenêtre.
Le magistrat aperçut en effet la jolie comtesse assise à terre
entre les jambes de Geneviève. La paysanne, armée d’un énorme
peigne d’os, mettait toute son attention à démêler la longue
chevelure noire de Stéphanie, qui se laissait faire en jetant des cris
étouffés dont l’accent trahissait un plaisir instinctivement ressenti.
Monsieur d’Albon frissonna en voyant l’abandon du corps et la
nonchalance animale qui trahissait chez la comtesse une complète
absence de l’âme.
—Philippe! Philippe! s’écria-t-il, les malheurs passés ne sont rien.
—N’y a-t-il donc point d’espoir? demanda-t-il.
Le vieux médecin leva les yeux au ciel.
—Adieu, monsieur, dit monsieur d’Albon en serrant la main du
vieillard. Mon ami m’attend, vous ne tarderez pas à le voir.
—C’est donc bien elle, s’écria Sucy après avoir entendu les
premiers mots du marquis d’Albon. Ah! j’en doutais encore! ajouta-t-
il en laissant tomber quelques larmes de ses yeux noirs, dont
l’expression était habituellement sévère.
—Oui, c’est la comtesse de Vandières, répondit le magistrat.
Le colonel se leva brusquement et s’empressa de s’habiller.
—Hé! bien, Philippe, dit le magistrat stupéfait, deviendrais-tu fou?
—Mais je ne souffre plus, répondit le colonel avec simplicité.
Cette nouvelle a calmé toutes mes douleurs. Et quel mal pourrait se
faire sentir quand je pense à Stéphanie? Je vais aux Bons-Hommes,
la voir, lui parler, la guérir. Elle est libre. Eh! bien, le bonheur nous
sourira, ou il n’y aurait pas de Providence. Crois-tu donc que cette
pauvre femme puisse m’entendre et ne pas recouvrer la raison?
—Elle t’a déjà vu sans te reconnaître, répliqua doucement le
magistrat, qui, s’apercevant de l’espérance exaltée de son ami,
cherchait à lui inspirer des doutes salutaires.
Le colonel tressaillit; mais il se mit à sourire en laissant échapper
un léger mouvement d’incrédulité. Personne n’osa s’opposer au
dessein du colonel. En peu d’heures, il fut établi dans le vieux
prieuré, auprès du médecin et de la comtesse de Vandières.
—Où est-elle? s’écria-t-il en arrivant.
—Chut! lui répondit l’oncle de Stéphanie. Elle dort. Tenez, la
voici.
Philippe vit la pauvre folle accroupie au soleil sur un banc. Sa
tête était protégée contre les ardeurs de l’air par une forêt de
cheveux épars sur son visage; ses bras pendaient avec grâce
jusqu’à terre; son corps gisait élégamment posé comme celui d’une
biche; ses pieds étaient pliés sous elle, sans effort; son sein se
soulevait par intervalles égaux; sa peau, son teint, avaient cette
blancheur de porcelaine qui nous fait tant admirer la figure
transparente des enfants. Immobile auprès d’elle, Geneviève tenait à
la main un rameau que Stéphanie était sans doute allée détacher de
la plus haute cime d’un peuplier, et l’idiote agitait doucement ce
feuillage au-dessus de sa compagne endormie, pour chasser les
mouches et fraîchir l’atmosphère. La paysanne regarda monsieur
Fanjat et le colonel; puis, comme un animal qui a reconnu son
maître, elle retourna lentement la tête vers la comtesse, et continua
de veiller sur elle, sans avoir donné la moindre marque
d’étonnement ou d’intelligence. L’air était brûlant. Le banc de pierre
semblait étinceler, et la prairie élançait vers le ciel ces lutines
vapeurs qui voltigent et flambent au-dessus des herbes comme une
poussière d’or; mais Geneviève paraissait ne pas sentir cette
chaleur dévorante. Le colonel serra violemment les mains du
médecin dans les siennes. Des pleurs échappés des yeux du
militaire roulèrent le long de ses joues mâles, et tombèrent sur le
gazon, aux pieds de Stéphanie.
—Monsieur, dit l’oncle, voilà deux ans que mon cœur se brise
tous les jours. Bientôt vous serez comme moi. Si vous ne pleurez
pas, vous n’en sentirez pas moins votre douleur.
—Vous l’avez soignée, dit le colonel dont les yeux exprimaient
autant de reconnaissance que de jalousie.
Ces deux hommes s’entendirent; et, de nouveau, se pressant
fortement la main, ils restèrent immobiles, en contemplant le calme
admirable que le sommeil répandait sur cette charmante créature.
De temps en temps, Stéphanie poussait un soupir, et ce soupir, qui
avait toutes les apparences de la sensibilité, faisait frissonner d’aise
le malheureux colonel.
—Hélas, lui dit doucement monsieur Fanjat, ne vous abusez pas,
monsieur, vous la voyez en ce moment dans toute sa raison.
Ceux qui sont restés avec délices pendant des heures entières
occupés à voir dormir une personne tendrement aimée, dont les
yeux devaient leur sourire au réveil, comprendront sans doute le
sentiment doux et terrible qui agitait le colonel. Pour lui, ce sommeil
était une illusion; le réveil devait être une mort, et la plus horrible de
toutes les morts. Tout à coup un jeune chevreau accourut en trois
bonds vers le banc, flaira Stéphanie, que ce bruit réveilla; elle se mit
légèrement sur ses pieds, sans que ce mouvement effrayât le
capricieux animal; mais quand elle eut aperçu Philippe, elle se
sauva, suivie de son compagnon quadrupède, jusqu’à une haie de
sureaux; puis, elle jeta ce petit cri d’oiseau effarouché que déjà le
colonel avait entendu près de la grille où la comtesse était apparue à
monsieur d’Albon pour la première fois. Enfin, elle grimpa sur un
faux ébénier, se nicha dans la houppe verte de cet arbre, et se mit à
regarder l’étranger avec l’attention du plus curieux de tous les
rossignols de la forêt.
—Adieu, adieu, adieu! dit-elle sans que l’âme communiquât une
seule inflexion sensible à ce mot.
C’était l’impassibilité de l’oiseau sifflant son air.
—Elle ne me reconnaît pas, s’écria le colonel au désespoir.
Stéphanie! c’est Philippe, ton Philippe, Philippe.
Et le pauvre militaire s’avança vers l’ébénier; mais quand il fut à
trois pas de l’arbre, la comtesse le regarda, comme pour le défier,
quoiqu’une sorte d’expression craintive passât dans son œil; puis,
d’un seul bond, elle se sauva de l’ébénier sur un acacia, et, de là,
sur un sapin du Nord, où elle se balança de branche en branche
avec une légèreté inouïe.
—Ne la poursuivez pas, dit monsieur Fanjat au colonel. Vous
mettriez entre elle et vous une aversion qui pourrait devenir
insurmontable; je vous aiderai à vous en faire connaître et à
l’apprivoiser. Venez sur ce banc. Si vous ne faites point attention à
cette pauvre folle, alors vous ne tarderez pas à la voir s’approcher
insensiblement pour vous examiner.
—Elle! ne pas me reconnaître, et me fuir, répéta le colonel en
s’asseyant le dos contre un arbre dont le feuillage ombrageait un
banc rustique; et sa tête se pencha sur sa poitrine. Le docteur garda
le silence. Bientôt la comtesse descendit doucement du haut de son
sapin, en voltigeant comme un feu follet, en se laissant aller parfois
aux ondulations que le vent imprimait aux arbres. Elle s’arrêtait à
chaque branche pour épier l’étranger; mais, en le voyant immobile,
elle finit par sauter sur l’herbe, se mit debout, et vint à lui d’un pas
lent, à travers la prairie. Quand elle se fut posée contre un arbre qui
se trouvait à dix pieds environ du banc, monsieur Fanjat dit à voix
basse au colonel:—Prenez adroitement, dans ma poche droite,
quelques morceaux de sucre, et montrez-les-lui, elle viendra; je
renoncerai volontiers, en votre faveur, au plaisir de lui donner des
friandises. A l’aide du sucre, qu’elle aime avec passion, vous
l’habituerez à s’approcher de vous et à vous reconnaître.
—Quand elle était femme, répondit tristement Philippe, elle
n’avait aucun goût pour les mets sucrés.
Lorsque le colonel agita vers Stéphanie le morceau de sucre qu’il
tenait entre le pouce et l’index de la main droite, elle poussa de
nouveau son cri sauvage, et s’élança vivement sur Philippe; puis elle
s’arrêta, combattue par la peur instinctive qu’il lui causait; elle
regardait le sucre et détournait la tête alternativement, comme ces
malheureux chiens à qui leurs maîtres défendent de toucher à un
mets avant qu’on ait dit une des dernières lettres de l’alphabet qu’on
récite lentement. Enfin la passion bestiale triompha de la peur;
Stéphanie se précipita sur Philippe, avança timidement sa jolie main
brune pour saisir sa proie, toucha les doigts de son amant, attrapa le
sucre et disparut dans un bouquet de bois. Cette horrible scène
acheva d’accabler le colonel, qui fondit en larmes et s’enfuit dans le
salon.
—L’amour aurait-il donc moins de courage que l’amitié? lui dit
monsieur Fanjat. J’ai de l’espoir, monsieur le baron. Ma pauvre nièce
était dans un état bien plus déplorable que celui où vous la voyez.
—Est-ce possible? s’écria Philippe.
—Elle restait nue, reprit le médecin.
Le colonel fit un geste d’horreur et pâlit; le docteur crut
reconnaître dans cette pâleur quelques fâcheux symptômes, il vint
lui tâter le pouls, et le trouva en proie à une fièvre violente; à force
d’instances, il parvint à le faire mettre au lit, et lui prépara une légère
dose d’opium, afin de lui procurer un sommeil calme.
Huit jours environ s’écoulèrent, pendant lesquels le baron de
Sucy fut souvent aux prises avec des angoisses mortelles; aussi
bientôt ses yeux n’eurent-ils plus de larmes. Son âme, souvent
brisée, ne put s’accoutumer au spectacle que lui présentait la folie
de la comtesse, mais il pactisa, pour ainsi dire, avec cette cruelle
situation, et trouva des adoucissements dans sa douleur. Son
héroïsme ne connut pas de bornes. Il eut le courage d’apprivoiser
Stéphanie, en lui choisissant des friandises; il mit tant de soin à lui
apporter cette nourriture, il sut si bien graduer les modestes
conquêtes qu’il voulait faire sur l’instinct de sa maîtresse, ce dernier
lambeau de son intelligence, qu’il parvint à la rendre plus privée
qu’elle ne l’avait jamais été. Le colonel descendait chaque matin
dans le parc; et si, après avoir longtemps cherché la comtesse, il ne
pouvait deviner sur quel arbre elle se balançait mollement, ni le coin
dans lequel elle s’était tapie pour y jouer avec un oiseau, ni sur quel
toit elle s’était perchée, il sifflait l’air si célèbre de: Partant pour la
Syrie, auquel se rattachait le souvenir d’une scène de leurs amours.
Aussitôt Stéphanie accourait avec la légèreté d’un faon. Elle s’était si
bien habituée à voir le colonel, qu’il ne l’effrayait plus; bientôt elle
s’accoutuma à s’asseoir sur lui, à l’entourer de son bras sec et agile.
Dans cette attitude, si chère aux amants, Philippe donnait lentement
quelques sucreries à la friande comtesse. Après les avoir mangées
toutes, il arrivait souvent à Stéphanie de visiter les poches de son
ami par des gestes qui avaient la vélocité mécanique des
mouvements du singe. Quand elle était bien sûre qu’il n’y avait plus
rien, elle regardait Philippe d’un œil clair, sans idées, sans
reconnaissance; elle jouait alors avec lui; elle essayait de lui ôter ses
bottes pour voir son pied, elle déchirait ses gants, mettait son
chapeau; mais elle lui laissait passer les mains dans sa chevelure,
lui permettait de la prendre dans ses bras, et recevait sans plaisir
des baisers ardents; enfin, elle le regardait silencieusement quand il
versait des larmes; elle comprenait bien le sifflement de: Partant
pour la Syrie; mais il ne put réussir à lui faire prononcer son propre
nom de Stéphanie! Philippe était soutenu dans son horrible
entreprise par un espoir qui ne l’abandonnait jamais. Si, par une
belle matinée d’automne, il voyait la comtesse paisiblement assise
sur un banc, sous un peuplier jauni, le pauvre amant se couchait à
ses pieds, et la regardait dans les yeux aussi longtemps qu’elle
voulait bien se laisser voir, en espérant que la lumière qui s’en
échappait redeviendrait intelligente; parfois, il se faisait illusion, il
croyait avoir aperçu ces rayons durs et immobiles, vibrant de
nouveau, amollis, vivants, et il s’écriait:—Stéphanie! Stéphanie! tu
m’entends, tu me vois! Mais elle écoutait le son de cette voix comme
un bruit, comme l’effort du vent qui agitait les arbres, comme le
mugissement de la vache sur laquelle elle grimpait; et le colonel se
tordait les mains de désespoir, désespoir toujours nouveau. Le
temps et ces vaines épreuves ne faisaient qu’augmenter sa douleur.
Un soir, par un ciel calme, au milieu du silence et de la paix de ce
champêtre asile, le docteur aperçut de loin le baron occupé à
charger un pistolet. Le vieux médecin comprit que Philippe n’avait
plus d’espoir; il sentit tout son sang affluer à son cœur, et s’il résista
au vertige qui s’emparait de lui, c’est qu’il aimait mieux voir sa nièce
vivante et folle que morte. Il accourut.
—Que faites-vous! dit-il.
—Ceci est pour moi, répondit le colonel en montrant sur le banc
un pistolet chargé, et voilà pour elle! ajouta-t-il en achevant de fouler
la bourre au fond de l’arme qu’il tenait.
La comtesse était étendue à terre, et jouait avec les balles.
—Vous ne savez donc pas, reprit froidement le médecin qui
dissimula son épouvante, que cette nuit, en dormant, elle a dit:—
Philippe!
—Elle m’a nommé! s’écria le baron en laissant tomber son
pistolet que Stéphanie ramassa; mais il le lui arracha des mains,
s’empara de celui qui était sur le banc, et se sauva.
—Pauvre petite, s’écria le médecin, heureux du succès qu’avait
eu sa supercherie. Il pressa la folle sur son sein, et dit en continuant:
—Il t’aurait tuée, l’égoïste! il veut te donner la mort, parce qu’il
souffre. Il ne sait pas t’aimer pour toi, mon enfant! Nous lui
pardonnons, n’est-ce pas? il est insensé, et toi? tu n’es que folle. Va!
Dieu seul doit te rappeler près de lui. Nous te croyons malheureuse,
parce que tu ne participes plus à nos misères, sots que nous
sommes!—Mais, dit-il en l’asseyant sur ses genoux, tu es heureuse,
rien ne te gêne; tu vis comme l’oiseau, comme le daim.
Elle s’élança sur un jeune merle qui sautillait, le prit en jetant un
petit cri de satisfaction, l’étouffa, le regarda mort, et le laissa au pied
d’un arbre sans plus y penser.
Le lendemain, aussitôt qu’il fit jour, le colonel descendit dans les
jardins, il chercha Stéphanie, il croyait au bonheur; ne la trouvant
pas, il siffla. Quand sa maîtresse fut venue, il la prit par le bras; et,
marchant pour la première fois ensemble, ils allèrent sous un
berceau d’arbres flétris dont les feuilles tombaient sous la brise
matinale. Le colonel s’assit, et Stéphanie se posa d’elle-même sur
lui. Philippe en trembla d’aise.
—Mon amour, lui dit-il en baisant avec ardeur les mains de la
comtesse, je suis Philippe.
Elle le regarda avec curiosité.
—Viens, ajouta-t-il en la pressant. Sens-tu battre mon cœur? Il
n’a battu que pour toi. Je t’aime toujours. Philippe n’est pas mort, il
est là, tu es sur lui. Tu es ma Stéphanie, et je suis ton Philippe.
—Adieu, dit-elle, adieu.
Le colonel frissonna, car il crut s’apercevoir que son exaltation se
communiquait à sa maîtresse. Son cri déchirant, excité par l’espoir,
ce dernier effort d’un amour éternel, d’une passion délirante,
réveillait la raison de son amie.
—Ah! Stéphanie, nous serons heureux.
Elle laissa échapper un cri de satisfaction, et ses yeux eurent un
vague éclair d’intelligence.
—Elle me reconnaît! Stéphanie!
Le colonel sentit son cœur se gonfler, ses paupières devenir
humides. Mais il vit tout à coup la comtesse lui montrer un peu de
sucre qu’elle avait trouvé en le fouillant pendant qu’il parlait. Il avait
donc pris pour une pensée humaine ce degré de raison que suppose
la malice du singe. Philippe perdit connaissance. Monsieur Fanjat
trouva la comtesse assise sur le corps du colonel. Elle mordait son
sucre en témoignant son plaisir par des minauderies qu’on aurait
admirées si, quand elle avait sa raison, elle eût voulu imiter par
plaisanterie sa perruche ou sa chatte.
—Ah! mon ami, s’écria Philippe en reprenant ses sens, je meurs
tous les jours, à tous les instants! J’aime trop! Je supporterais tout si,
dans sa folie, elle avait gardé un peu du caractère féminin. Mais la
voir toujours sauvage et même dénuée de pudeur, la voir...
—Il vous fallait donc une folie d’opéra, dit aigrement le docteur.
Et vos dévouements d’amour sont donc soumis à des préjugés? Hé
quoi! monsieur, je me suis privé pour vous du triste bonheur de
nourrir ma nièce, je vous ai laissé le plaisir de jouer avec elle, je n’ai
gardé pour moi que les charges les plus pesantes. Pendant que
vous dormez, je veille sur elle, je... Allez, monsieur, abandonnez-la.
Quittez ce triste ermitage. Je sais vivre avec cette chère petite
créature; je comprends sa folie, j’épie ses gestes, je suis dans ses
secrets. Un jour vous me remercierez.
Le colonel quitta les Bons-Hommes, pour n’y plus revenir qu’une
fois. Le docteur fut épouvanté de l’effet qu’il avait produit sur son
hôte, il commençait à l’aimer à l’égal de sa nièce. Si des deux
amants il y en avait un digne de pitié, c’était certes Philippe: ne
portait-il pas à lui seul le fardeau d’une épouvantable douleur! Le
médecin fit prendre des renseignements sur le colonel, et apprit que
le malheureux s’était réfugié dans une terre qu’il possédait près de
Saint-Germain. Le baron avait, sur la foi d’un rêve, conçu un projet
pour rendre la raison à la comtesse. A l’insu du docteur, il employait
le reste de l’automne aux préparatifs de cette immense entreprise.
Une petite rivière coulait dans son parc, où elle inondait en hiver un
grand marais qui ressemblait à peu près à celui qui s’étendait le long
de la rive droite de la Bérésina. Le village de Satout, situé sur une
colline, achevait d’encadrer cette scène d’horreur, comme
Studzianka enveloppait la plaine de la Bérésina. Le colonel
rassembla des ouvriers pour faire creuser un canal qui représentât la
dévorante rivière où s’étaient perdus les trésors de la France,
Napoléon et son armée. Aidé par ses souvenirs, Philippe réussit à
copier dans son parc la rive où le général Éblé avait construit ses
ponts. Il planta des chevalets et les brûla de manière à figurer les ais
noirs et à demi consumés qui, de chaque côté de la rive, avaient
attesté aux traînards que la route de France leur était fermée. Le
colonel fit apporter des débris semblables à ceux dont s’étaient
servis ses compagnons d’infortune pour construire leur embarcation.
Il ravagea son parc, afin de compléter l’illusion sur laquelle il fondait
sa dernière espérance. Il commanda des uniformes et des costumes
délabrés, afin d’en revêtir plusieurs centaines de paysans. Il éleva
des cabanes, des bivouacs, des batteries qu’il incendia. Enfin, il
n’oublia rien de ce qui pouvait reproduire la plus horrible de toutes
les scènes, et il atteignit à son but. Vers les premiers jours du mois
de décembre, quand la neige eut revêtu la terre d’un épais manteau
blanc, il reconnut la Bérésina. Cette fausse Russie était d’une si
épouvantable vérité, que plusieurs de ses compagnons d’armes
reconnurent la scène de leurs anciennes misères. Monsieur de Sucy
garda le secret de cette représentation tragique, de laquelle, à cette
époque, plusieurs sociétés parisiennes s’entretinrent comme d’une
folie.
Au commencement du mois de janvier 1820, le colonel monta
dans une voiture semblable à celle qui avait amené monsieur et
madame de Vandières de Moscou à Studzianka, et se dirigea vers la
forêt de l’Ile-Adam. Il était traîné par des chevaux à peu près
semblables à ceux qu’il était allé chercher au péril de sa vie dans les
rangs des Russes. Il portait les vêtements souillés et bizarres, les
armes, la coiffure qu’il avait le 29 novembre 1812. Il avait même
laissé croître sa barbe, ses cheveux, et négligé son visage, pour que
rien ne manquât à cette affreuse vérité.
—Je vous ai deviné, s’écria monsieur Fanjat en voyant le colonel
descendre de voiture. Si vous voulez que votre projet réussisse, ne
vous montrez pas dans cet équipage. Ce soir, je ferai prendre à ma
nièce un peu d’opium. Pendant son sommeil, nous l’habillerons
comme elle l’était à Studzianka, et nous la mettrons dans cette
voiture. Je vous suivrai dans une berline.
Sur les deux heures du matin, la jeune comtesse fut portée dans
la voiture, posée sur des coussins, et enveloppée d’une grossière
couverture. Quelques paysans éclairaient ce singulier enlèvement.
Tout à coup, un cri perçant retentit dans le silence de la nuit. Philippe
et le médecin se retournèrent et virent Geneviève qui sortait demi-
nue de la chambre basse où elle couchait.
—Adieu, adieu, c’est fini, adieu, criait-elle en pleurant à chaudes
larmes.
—Hé bien, Geneviève, qu’as-tu? lui dit monsieur Fanjat.
Geneviève agita la tête par un mouvement de désespoir, leva le
bras vers le ciel, regarda la voiture, poussa un long grognement,
donna des marques visibles d’une profonde terreur, et rentra
silencieuse.
—Cela est de bon augure, s’écria le colonel. Cette fille regrette
de n’avoir plus de compagne. Elle voit peut-être que Stéphanie va
recouvrer la raison.
—Dieu le veuille, dit monsieur Fanjat qui parut affecté de cet
incident.
Depuis qu’il s’était occupé de la folie, il avait rencontré plusieurs
exemples de l’esprit prophétique et du don de seconde vue dont
quelques preuves ont été données par des aliénés, et qui se
retrouvent, au dire de plusieurs voyageurs, chez les tribus sauvages.
Ainsi que le colonel l’avait calculé, Stéphanie traversa la plaine
fictive de la Bérésina sur les neuf heures du matin, elle fut réveillée
par une boîte qui partit à cent pas de l’endroit où la scène avait lieu.
C’était un signal. Mille paysans poussèrent une effroyable clameur,
semblable au hourra de désespoir qui alla épouvanter les Russes,
quand vingt mille traînards se virent livrés par leur faute à la mort ou
à l’esclavage. A ce cri, à ce coup de canon, la comtesse sauta hors
de la voiture, courut avec une délirante angoisse sur la place
neigeuse, vit les bivouacs brûlés, et le fatal radeau que l’on jetait
dans une Bérésina glacée. Le major Philippe était là, faisant
tournoyer son sabre sur la multitude. Madame de Vandières laissa
échapper un cri qui glaça tous les cœurs, et se plaça devant le
colonel, qui palpitait. Elle se recueillit, regarda d’abord vaguement
cet étrange tableau. Pendant un instant aussi rapide que l’éclair, ses
yeux eurent la lucidité dépourvue d’intelligence que nous admirons
dans l’œil éclatant des oiseaux; puis elle passa la main sur son front
avec l’expression vive d’une personne qui médite, elle contempla ce
souvenir vivant, cette vie passée traduite devant elle, tourna
vivement la tête vers Philippe, et le vit. Un affreux silence régnait au
milieu de la foule. Le colonel haletait et n’osait parler, le docteur
pleurait. Le beau visage de Stéphanie se colora faiblement; puis, de
teinte en teinte, elle finit par reprendre l’éclat d’une jeune fille
étincelant de fraîcheur. Son visage devint d’un beau pourpre. La vie
et le bonheur, animés par une intelligence flamboyante, gagnaient
de proche en proche comme un incendie. Un tremblement convulsif
se communiqua des pieds au cœur. Puis ces phénomènes, qui
éclatèrent en un moment, eurent comme un lien commun quand les
yeux de Stéphanie lancèrent un rayon céleste, une flamme animée.
Elle vivait, elle pensait! Elle frissonna, de terreur peut-être! Dieu
déliait lui-même une seconde fois cette langue morte, et jetait de
nouveau son feu dans cette âme éteinte. La volonté humaine vint
avec ses torrents électriques et vivifia ce corps d’où elle avait été si
longtemps absente.
—Stéphanie, cria le colonel.
—Oh! c’est Philippe, dit la pauvre comtesse.
Elle se précipita dans les bras tremblants que le colonel lui
tendait, et l’étreinte des deux amants effraya les spectateurs.
Stéphanie fondait en larmes. Tout à coup ses pleurs se séchèrent,
elle se cadavérisa comme si la foudre l’eût touchée, et dit d’un son
de voix faible:—Adieu, Philippe. Je t’aime, adieu!
—Oh! elle est morte, s’écria le colonel en ouvrant les bras.
Le vieux médecin reçut le corps inanimé de sa nièce, l’embrassa
comme eût fait un jeune homme, l’emporta et s’assit avec elle sur un
tas de bois. Il regarda la comtesse en lui posant sur le cœur une
main débile et convulsivement agitée. Le cœur ne battait plus.
—C’est donc vrai, dit-il en contemplant tour à tour le colonel
immobile et la figure de Stéphanie sur laquelle la mort répandait
cette beauté resplendissante, fugitive auréole, le gage peut-être d’un
brillant avenir.
—Oui, elle est morte.
—Ah! ce sourire, s’écria Philippe, voyez donc ce sourire! Est-ce
possible?
—Elle est déjà froide, répondit monsieur Fanjat.
Monsieur de Sucy fit quelques pas pour s’arracher à ce
spectacle; mais il s’arrêta, siffla l’air qu’entendait la folle, et, ne
voyant pas sa maîtresse accourir, il s’éloigna d’un pas chancelant,
comme un homme ivre, sifflant toujours, mais ne se retournant plus.
Le général Philippe de Sucy passait dans le monde pour un
homme très-aimable et surtout très-gai. Il y a quelques jours une
dame le complimenta sur sa bonne humeur et sur l’égalité de son
caractère.
—Ah! madame, lui dit-il, je paie mes plaisanteries bien cher, le
soir, quand je suis seul.
—Êtes-vous donc jamais seul?
—Non, répondit-il en souriant.
Si un observateur judicieux de la nature humaine avait pu voir en
ce moment l’expression du comte de Sucy, il en eût frissonné peut-
être.
—Pourquoi ne vous mariez-vous pas? reprit cette dame qui avait
plusieurs filles dans un pensionnat. Vous êtes riche, titré, de
noblesse ancienne; vous avez des talents, de l’avenir, tout vous
sourit.
—Oui, répondit-il, mais il est un sourire qui me tue.
Le lendemain la dame apprit avec étonnement que monsieur de
Sucy s’était brûlé la cervelle pendant la nuit. La haute société
s’entretint diversement de cet événement extraordinaire, et chacun
en cherchait la cause. Selon les goûts de chaque raisonneur, le jeu,
l’amour, l’ambition, des désordres cachés, expliquaient cette
catastrophe, dernière scène d’un drame qui avait commencé en
1812. Deux hommes seulement, un magistrat et un vieux médecin,
savaient que monsieur le comte de Sucy était un de ces hommes
forts auxquels Dieu donne le malheureux pouvoir de sortir tous les
jours triomphants d’un horrible combat qu’ils livrent à quelque
monstre inconnu. Que, pendant un moment, Dieu leur retire sa main
puissante, ils succombent.
Paris, mars 1830.

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From Assessing to Conserving

Biodiversity Conceptual and Practical

Cultural evolution conceptual challenges 1st Edition

Lanzarote and Chinijo Islands Geopark From Earth to

Privacy In Public Space: Conceptual And Regulatory

Phylogenetic Diversity Applications and Challenges in

Ecosystem services : from biodiversity to society. Part

Social Capital and Local Development: From Theory to

Disaster Research and the Second Environmental Crisis

A Conceptual History of Space and Symmetry From Plato

ISSN 2211-1948 ISSN 2211-1956 (electronic)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019936165

This book is an open access publication.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

1 Biodiversity Healing�������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1

Part I Estimating Biodiversity: Data Collection

Part II Characterizing Biodiversity: Beyond the Species Approach

Part III Conserving Biodiversity: From Science to Policies

19 Natural Diversity: How Taking the Bio- out

Francesco Andrietti is a zoologist interested in insect ethology and biomechanics,

Anouk Barberousse is Professor of philosophy of science at Sorbonne Université,

Sophie Bary is Doctor in “interdisciplinary biology”, working at the National

Luís Borda-de-Água is a Researcher in ecology and conservation biology at

Andrea Borghini is Associate Professor of philosophy at the University of Milan,

Cristina Branquinho is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the

Elena Casetta is Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Education

Anne Chenuil is an evolutionary biologist who studied a variety of marine species

biological diversification, and their relationships. She is a Senior Researcher at the

Sylvain Coq is Assistant Professor at the University of Montpellier (France) and in

Vincenzo Crupi is Associate Professor of logic and philosophy of science in the

Silvia Di Marco is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centro de Filosofia das Ciências da

Antoine C. Dussault is a Researcher at the Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche

Jorge Marques da Silva is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the

Paula Matos is a Postdoc at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of

Yves Meinard is a Researcher in environmental decision analysis at the CNRS

Alice Nunes is a Postdoc at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of

ecological indicators of the effects of environmental changes on ecosystem func-

Markku Oksanen is Senior Lecturer in philosophy at the University of Eastern

Carlo Polidori is a zoologist interested in behavioural ecology and evolution of

Thomas A. C. Reydon is Professor of philosophy of biology in the Institute of

Sahotra Sarkar is Professor in the Departments of Integrative Biology and

Bernhard Schmid is Professor of environmental sciences and Dean of the Faculty

Helena Cristina Serrano is a Postdoc Researcher at the Faculty of Sciences of the

Davide Vecchi is a philosopher of biology working in the Department of History

Timo Vuorisalo is Adjunct Professor and Senior Lecturer in environmental science

Elena Casetta, Jorge Marques da Silva, and Davide Vecchi

© The Author(s) 2019 1

accomplished task. Why is it so? The overexploitation of natural resources by our

When biodiversity conservation is at issue, theoretical and practical matters go hand

1.1  ssessing and Diagnosing the Patient. Estimating

and Carlo Polidori, and Chap. 3, Marine biodiversity databanks by Anouk

In a similar way as temperature can be measured by means of a substance, mercury,

As it can be grasped from the above quote, species richness is considered to be

Network.5 These include: genetic composition, species populations, species traits,

1.2  re We Taking Care of the Right Patient?

If measuring biodiversity poses a series of mainly practical challenges, it also opens

Counting species is relatively easy in practice and theoretically well motivated. In

based approach to biodiversity is not enough. Lessons from multispecies biofilms,

1.3  reating the Patient. Conserving Biodiversity:

1.4  he Way Ahead: Interdisciplinary Solutions

gene, formally introduced by the Danish botanist W. L. Johannsen in 1909, started

Interdisciplinary science still faces, however, a series of constraints (institutional,

Acknowledgements We acknowledge the financial support of the Fundação para a Ciência e

1 Biodiversity Healing�� 1

Part I Estimating Biodiversity: Data Collection

Part II Characterizing Biodiversity: Beyond the Species Approach

Part III Conserving Biodiversity: From Science to Policies

19 Natural Diversity: How Taking the Bio- out

1.1 ssessing and Diagnosing the Patient. Estimating

1.2 re We Taking Care of the Right Patient?

1.3 reating the Patient. Conserving Biodiversity:

1.4 he Way Ahead: Interdisciplinary Solutions