“If we don’t understand what insects and other small animals are doing, and we don’t understand their biology, we won’t be able to save them”

After receiving the 15th BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology, Marlene Zuk reflects in this interview on how animal behaviors evolve in response to environmental change and to the pressures of predators, parasites, and competitors. Drawing on examples from her work on insects and other organisms, she shows how natural selection operates in dynamic and often surprising ways, revealing the creativity of evolution. Her perspective blends science, observation, and communication, inviting us to understand animal behavior as a process in constant transformation.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology has gone in this fifteenth edition to Susan C. Alberts, Jeanne Altmann and Marlene Zuk “for their outstanding contributions to the behavioral and evolutionary ecology of animals,” in the words of the award citation.