Advice for interdisciplinary biodiversity research

The need for interdisciplinarity to address global challenges has been expressed for decades, but the development of effective interdisciplinary work is slow. The tardiness might be related to the scarcity of literature on what interdisciplinarity means in practice that could guide new collaborations. This perspective presents a guide for interdisciplinary work in biodiversity research in practice. The focus is set on bridging between scholars from biology and from social science and humanities. The structure follows three overarching and interlinked dimensions of importance for interdisciplinary work: People, Process and Perspectives. People is about both the team composition and the characteristics of individual researchers. Process concerns how the work is planned and the organizing structure. Perspectives include approaches, concepts, and frameworks. Since the character of projects varies, there can be no detailed blueprint for interdisciplinary biodiversity research, but dialog and mutual respect are clearly key.