What messages are shared through a tick bite? Maxime Fecteau explores his experience with Lyme disease, revealing how an undesired relationship with ticks nonetheless has profound impact on his way of seeing ecological degradation, multispecies kinship, and the Anthropocene.
There’s a sinking swamp in the middle of Manhattan that has kept a host of species safe for millennia. Nat Xu uses the space and their work in it to reflect on Indigenous stewardship, more-than-human precarity, and restorative conservation as an imperfect practice.
Companionship across species is not always simple, nor always rewarding, but perhaps says something about respect for more-than-human beings. In this poem and short essay, Kelsey Dayle John reflects on how the complex fear of witnessing her two dogs fight shaped her approach to multispecies relations.
Lizzie Smith describes the oft-overlooked living skin of the desert: biological soil crusts or “biocrusts.” Biocrust bundles show that deserts are full of life, wonder, and instructions for a more interconnected future.
In this series keynote, professor emerita and historian Harriet Ritvo sets the stage for further investigation of “companion species.” She introduces the varied threads of animal companionship—from influence and impact to proximal, favored reciprocity.
Kate Judith shares a creative and speculative story through the vertiginous voices of the cuckoo and currawong, which underscore the tension between parasitism and care. The currawong’s caregiving is marked by both sacrifice and survival, while the cuckoo’s actions highlight a demolishing invasive behavior. This form reflects the complex, often painful exchanges that define interspecies interactions.
As we welcome in another new year, Edge Effects editors reflect on ten years of posting and recommend their favorite essays and podcasts from 2024.
What can we learn from lichens about the air we breathe? Lucy Sabin shares her creative research on sensing atmospheres with lichens as proxies.
In this entry to the Troubling Time special series, Caroline Abbott explores a medieval furrow near her home in Cambridge and finds its connections to time, memory, and multispecies entanglements.
Indian artist Jagannath Panda is known for his play imagination of urban life. Sreyashi Ray explores how it uses rich textiles and figures to highlight the intersection of human and other-than-human issues that resonate with viewers from all around the world.
