Convergent patterns between grizzly bear genetics and Indigenous language groups

Convergent patterns between grizzly bear genetics and Indigenous language groups(ecologyandsociety.org)

45 points by kat 4 years ago | 17 comments

What's actually fantastical about this paper (and maybe why it's written the way it is... more on that later) is that while they show clear correlation between bear genetics and Indigenous language groups, their analysis to try to determine what biophysical and geographical factors might be influencing these distributions came up basically blank. Once physical distance was removed, their remaining factors (terrain ruggedness, waterways, modern and ancient settlements, modern forestry, and language groups) could only explain a very small percentage of the distribution in bear populations.

So, on one hand, this is fantastic, since it plays into the whole notion that ecological systems (and how humans and human cultures interact with and shape ecological systems) are resistant to "straightforward" reductive analyses, which is very much in the spirit of this research.

On the other hand, it means this paper is kind of weird to write. Like it's a very enticing positive result (bear genetics and indigenous language groups are correlated), but basically empty handed in terms of explanation.

I've never written a real scientific paper, but plenty of engineering reports, and always found reports which are basically summarized to "here's ever measure and correlate we tried, and nothing is conclusive or explanatory" to be awful to write. Because you don't have a positive result to anchor onto, you're just... enumerating a bunch of stuff with no payoff.

alecst 4 years ago |

This is a potentially cool article that I'm straining to read because of all the science-ese. Like this is some of the most dense, strained, and non-intuitive English I have read in a while -- and I have a background in science. I want to like the paper but I just hate this style of writing.

Anyway the punchline is:

> Grizzly bears sampled within an area represented by a given language family were significantly similar to those sampled within that language family (P = 0.001) and significantly divergent to those sampled outside the language family (P = 0.001). This spatial co-occurrence suggests that grizzly bear and human groups have been shaped by the landscape in similar ways, creating a convergence of grizzly bear genetic and human linguistic diversity.

What I guess they're saying is that they've found pockets in the landscape where languages had time to evolve (relatively unmixed with other languages) and bears had time to evolve (relatively unmixed with other bear species.)

Anyway, I don't want to take away from the hard work of these researchers, who for all I know are reading this comment thread. But I will say the way they have written the paper makes me not want to read beyond the abstract (I tried.) For the intrepid one who wants to break this paper down, I'd be curious to know how much more there is.

AlotOfReading 4 years ago | |

It's fairly normal scientific language to me, but it does have a somewhat unusual twist. The authors are saying precisely what they mean, not making semantic space for extrapolation. That can be confusing because my understanding is not that they "found pockets where languages had time to evolve independently", but rather both that the same factors influencing bear community formation were potentially influencing human community formation and deliberately leaving open the interpretation that bear/other animal geography directly influenced human geography.

All of that said, I don't personally find it an incredibly exciting paper. It's just an exploratory paper saying "here's a cool coincidence, someone should look more into this". Those are pretty abundant in any subject dealing with humans even if the underlying proposal seems plausible.

darkerside 4 years ago | |

Why? Spatiotemporal correlates? I don't see what else is any different from a typical scientific paper.

The price of science is using precise language, and most of us here would say it's worth it.

alecst 4 years ago | | |

Maybe I'm just a bonehead, but take topic sentence (one of many possible examples):

> In addition to testing the hypothesis that the linear extents of human language family boundaries represent potentially resistant areas to grizzly bear gene flow, we tested for the overall overlap and similarities in spatial structuring among Indigenous language families and bear genetic groups using analysis of similarities (ANOSIM) and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA).

First of all, how many times do you have to read this sentence to understand what it means?

And, although I kind of get what it's saying -- both clauses seem like they could mean the same thing. I think you could rewrite it like this without losing any precision:

> The previous paragraph talked about how we found the spatial boundaries of language families and whether the gene flow of bears could easily cross these boundaries. Now we turn our attention to a similar but slightly different question. We compare the distribution of bear species vs the distribution of language families and see how much they overlap. As part of our toolbox we used ANOSIM (analysis of similarities) and MANOVA (multivariate analysis of variance.)

I'm sure some people will say this is worse, but I like it more, and I stand by my original position that this paper is hard to read.

dheera 4 years ago | |

I mean, all scientific researchers write like that so they sound badass. Writing in plain English usually gets you rejected by reviewers. More Greek letters (even better, Hebrew), more integrals, more sigmas, appendices with lemmas, fancy names of apparatus, all the better.

AllegedAlec 4 years ago | | |

> I mean, all scientific researchers write like that so they sound badass

Such an ignorant response.

Scientists write like this because they have a common jargon that they've used for ages in order to be concise and precise. These papers aren't written for consumption by the general public, but knowledge transfer between peers.

It'd be like non-programmers complaining about them using programming jargon, saying "well, they just want to sound smart so people don't take their jobs."

bryanrasmussen 4 years ago | | |

>I mean, all scientific researchers write like that so they sound badass.

except when something is truly badass.

liketochill 4 years ago |

TLDR: Geography and climate influenced both animal and human populations

peterburkimsher 4 years ago | |

Correlation does not imply causation.

Bear with me.

If there's an impassable mountain range, the bears might stay on one side, and so might the humans. There's a few outliers (especially among adventurous humans) but geographic features do separate populations of both people and bears.

liketochill 4 years ago | | |

A friend flies a small plane around the coast range of British Columbia and they see grizzlies and their tracks that just go in a straight line up and over whatever is in their way. They see them way up in the alpine at the peaks and ridges. Maybe they only roam so far, but they sure can go as far as they want.

KSteffensen 4 years ago | | |

> Bear with me.

I see what you did there