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    Costs, Benefits, Parasites and Mutualists: The Use and Abuse of the Mutualism–Parasitism Continuum Concept for “Epichloë” Fungi
    with Sierra Gillis and Heather A. Hager
    Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 14 (9). 2022.
    The species comprising the fungal endophyte genus “Epichloë ”are symbionts of cool season grasses. About half the species in this genus are strictly vertically transmitted, and evolutionary theory suggests that these species must be mutualists. Nevertheless, Faeth and Sullivan (e.g., 2003) have argued that such vertically transmitted endophytes are ’usually parasitic,’ and Müller and Krauss (2005) have argued that such vertically transmitted endophytes fall along a mutualism-parasitism continuum…Read more
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    Precis of defending biodiversity
    Biology and Philosophy 35 (1): 1-4. 2020.
    Why should governments or individuals invest time and resources in conserving biodiversity? A popular answer is that biodiversity has both instrumental value for humans and intrinsic value in its own right. Defending Biodiversity critically evaluates familiar arguments for these claims and finds that, at best, they provide good reasons for conserving particular species or regions. However, they fail to provide a strong justification for conserving biodiversity per se. Hence, either environmental…Read more
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    Among the instrumental value defenses for biodiversity conservation is the argument that biodiversity is necessary to support ecosystem functioning. Lower levels of biodiversity yield lower levels of ecosystem functioning and hence the inference that we should conserve biodiversity. In our book Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics, we point out three problems with this inference. (1) The empirical support for such an inference derives from experiments conducted on a very smal…Read more