Mendel's Ark

Preface

1. The Future of Extinction

1.1 Goodbye to the Baiji

1.2 Welcome to the Anthropocene

1.3 Wicked Problems and Socio-Technical Imaginaries

1.4 Taking Control of Nature's Realm

1.5 Telling Stories about Extinction

1.6 The Once and Future Baiji

References

2. A Political History of Extinction

2.1 The Biodiversity and Extinction Crisis

2.2 The Ladder of Life:  The Question of Extinction in Classical Antiquity

2.3 The Order of Things: Classifying Nature in the Age of Enlightenment

2.4 The Second Alexandrian Tragedy: Extinction in the Progressive Era

2.5 Spaceship Earth: Modern Environmental Movements

2.6 Extinction in the Anthropocene

References

3. Bio-Inventories:  The Digitization of Species

3.1 They Had to Count Them All:  An Introduction to Bioinformatics

3.2 The Encyclopaedia of Life

3.3 A Barcode for Every Species

3.3.1 Transforming Ecology: From Species to Genes

3.3.2 The Taxonomic Impediment

3.3.3 Citizen Scientists and Democratic Natures

3.3.4 Digitizing Taxonomy as Big Science

3.4 Discussion

3.4.1 Biological Citizenship

3.4.2 Digital Natures

3.4.3 Scientific Frontiers and the New Modernity

References

4. Bio-Interventions: Cloning Endangered Species

4.1 The Molecular Frontier: Genetics in the 20th Century

4.2 Life as Code: A New Metaphor

4.3 From Wistar Rats to Oncomice: Engineering Animals

4.4 Dolly and Polly: The Era of Animal Transgenics

4.5 Noah's Ark: Cloning on the Edge of Extinction

4.5.1 Moral Hazards

4.5.2 Technological Fixes

4.5.3 Cloning and Animal Ethics

4.6 Discussion

4.6.1 Preservation in a Petri Dish

4.6.2 Bio-hype and Biovalue

4.6.3 At Least We Will Still Have