The Multispecies Map: documenting the inhabitants of a university campus.

Abstract

The Multispecies Map is a collaborative effort to acknowledge, document, and better understand the diversity of life that inhabits the Penryn Campus in Cornwall, UK. A university campus is a shared space where staff and students live and work, often unknowingly, among a diverse collective of other inhabitants. The Penryn Campus is shared by two universities (Exeter and Falmouth), but also by hedgehogs, snails, herring gulls, moths, wildflowers, apple trees, veteran oaks, and a historic collection of rhododendrons. The Multispecies Map project aims to develop an interactive, multi-layered map of the campus site, through which users can explore which species live on campus, how they use the space, and how they are affected by human activities. Academics are also enrolling some nonhuman inhabitants of campus into their research programmes in ecology, conservation, cognition, and human-wildlife conflict. The map’s development involves highly interdisciplinary working, drawing together monitoring and mapping by biologists and geographers with design and digital development from computer scientists and video game designers. This paper introduces the concept of the multispecies map, traces its development at the Penryn Campus, and discusses risks and challenges. It considers how this novel mapping tool might enable human inhabitants of a place to better recognise, understand, and coexist with the many other species sharing the campus space.