“Life in One Cubic Foot” opens this weekend at the Burke Museum in Seattle. Using colorful photos, informative displays and artifacts, the exhibit celebrates biodiversity and encourages community science.
It also shows the immense variety of species that can be discovered using a simple device called a biocube. These are frames, usually made of wire, that are placed in a landscape for 24 hours. Observers document what’s there.
The original exhibit comes from the Smithsonian Institution and showcases findings from around the globe, such as in displays from a coral reef in the South Pacific or the middle ocean off the coast of California. Staff at the Burke supplemented these with local information and artifacts. Melissa Kennedy, manager of exhibit experiences, says her department set up a biocube in the old-growth forest of Seward Park.
“We weren't able to continuously monitor our cube for 24 hours like the original scientists in the exhibit,” Kennedy says. “So we returned a few times to the same location. And we also briefly set up a trail-cam to see what creatures would make an appearance if we weren't nearby.”
They found 24 species, including foraging birds, squirrels, lots of plants and mushrooms and one “very curious” coyote, who Kennedy says returned multiple times.
The exhibit encourages visitors to make their own biocubes — for example, in a family’s backyard — and then upload the survey results, to share them with other community scientists, via the popular app iNaturalist.
The show also explores some other methods of seeing and knowing what is out there, but the biocube is central. Just setting a frame and taking a close look can reveal an amazing variety of species.
“I mean, 99 percent of the life in that cubic foot, probably, you wouldn't have seen it otherwise,” says Ryan Kelly, a professor of marine and environmental affairs at the University of Washington.
He helped create a new part of the exhibit just for the Burke. It shows how sampling for DNA in the water or soil or even the air is almost like finding fingerprints at a crime scene.
“In a bottle of water, you can pick up information of all the things that are living there. And we don't even know what we're going to do with that information yet,” Kelly says.
His display shows 25 of the species identified by trace DNA found in about 16 ounces of water, as well as how that information can be used to see how the presence of eelgrass changes the ecosystem.
But that’s just one story of many that can be extracted from the data.
Kelly says working with e-DNA now is almost like computer science several decades ago — not knowing exactly where it’s going but sensing that it will change the world.
And survey methods as simple as biocubes can change the way we see the world – and spark new interest in the biodiversity.
“Life in One Cubic Foot” opens to the public on Saturday, Feb. 12, and runs through July 17, 2022.
