— Your fieldwork is conducted in the mountains, in the alpine zone. Those are some breathtakingly beautiful places. Does it inspire you?
— Absolutely. It's been a tradition since my student years. I wrote my first thesis in the forests near Valdai. The goal was to find subjects that would be both convenient and fun to study. In other words, they had to be sustained in a natural state or at least not heavily disturbed by human activity. Moreover, I prefer to study aspects that other researchers aren't interested in. It's not that hard to be honest. We have plenty of subjects and not many people studying them. Back then, you could study anything you wanted, be it tundras, deserts, or mountains. But we chose mountains because they were the least explored.
And when we started working in the Caucasus, it turned out to be true... The botanists that worked there would climb up for half a day, collect an herbarium, and then descend. That was it. They described the composition of plant species, but everything related to community structure, diversity, mechanisms, and dynamics was completely unknown. Not to mention minor community components — mites, algae, and lichens were practically unexplored in the Caucasus. So, everything we did was largely new, sometimes on a regional and sometimes on a fundamental level. We made several very interesting scientific discoveries.
Not to mention the love for mountains! I used to be a mountaineer. I never achieved the rank of Second-Class Sportsman, so-called advanced degree in sports, but...

— I'm a mountaineer too, by the way!
— I completed five training courses in total, with the last three counting towards the degree. This allowed me to visit various mountains. It's all very fascinating. During Soviet times, Moscow residents were mostly given trade union vouchers to the Caucasus, but not to Central Asia. To get to Central Asia, I asked my friend to get me a voucher from Ashgabat. One time I represented a Turkmen sports club. In general, it was quite fun, and the trips were wonderful.

— Since we've started talking about this topic, at what altitude do you usually work?
— It’s usually 2,800 meters. This is the center of the alpine zone in the Caucasus, somewhere between the highest point and the lowest, where the subalpine zone is. Of course, the altitude will be different for different mountains.
I enjoy living in nature. I believe that to understand how natural systems function, you need to live there. Not just visit for an hour but observe how they behave in different conditions and weather, during different seasons, etc.
There are several types of such environmental field studies, each peculiar to different cultures, countries, and nations. They can be roughly divided into three groups. The first is a more classic European or English approach. We choose a subject, set a task, and schedule a specific day to perform it. Usually, the subject is situated close to a road that starts from a convenient location. For example, from a base that has all the necessary facilities. We drive to the site, spend a day making observations, and then return to spend the night in a well-equipped and comfortable environment.

— Sounds comfortable indeed.
— Relatively comfortable. Once, for example, we were doing research in New Zealand with my friend, Professor Alan Mark, who is also a mountain ecologist. We had everything planned out, and then a terrible storm hit! I must say, there are very strong winds in the Southern Hemisphere. I've never encountered such winds as in New Zealand, Australia, and Africa either in our mountains or anywhere else.
I said, "Well, we'll probably have to postpone or cancel." And he replied, "What? But we've already got everything planned!" So we took our raincoats, along with special paper and pencils for writing in the rain, and set out crawling — because it was impossible to stand upright— to the sites we had marked. We finished everything in about five or six hours. In other words, they [researchers using the mentioned European or English approach – editor’s note] have a strict schedule, but they also have equipment for any weather. They also have research bases with all the amenities.
The second approach is the Chinese one. My graduate students complain to me that in China, fieldwork is the most expensive part of their budget. Biochemistry and equipment are cheaper than field research. But why? Say, you need to take soil samples at specific locations several times during the season. A researcher from the center flies to a mountain airport and checks into a hotel in the nearest town. The next morning they take a taxi and drive to the foot of a mountain where their Tibetan acquaintances live. They rent a horse and a guide for a not very moderate fee. They climb up 500 meters, take samples for an hour, and then do everything in reverse order: horse-taxi-hotel. Of course, the budget turns out to be enormous.
And the third option is to work like us. That is, to live as close as possible to the subjects and not work under bad weather conditions because the data gets distorted. When we come to a reserve, we take our tents and set up camp as close to the subjects as possible. We live there for several days, weeks, or months. When the weather permits, we go out and do fieldwork. When it rains, we stay in the tents and sort out the samples there. In my opinion, this is the most productive way.

— So, it's science in a small tent.
— Why small? We have big ones too!

— You mentioned that one of your criteria was for the subject to be interesting. How do you determine what's interesting in the mountains?
— There are several aspects to this. Firstly, the Caucasus is the only region in modern-day Russia recognized by UNESCO as one of the 20 centers of biodiversity. In other words, it boasts the greatest variety of plants, animals, and other organisms. Secondly, any ecosystem is always influenced by two key groups of factors — biotic and abiotic. In extreme conditions, such as polar or regular deserts, everything is sparse. In such places, it's evident that the environment — the abiotic factor — dictates everything. The interaction between plants is minimal. Conversely, in forests and the like, competition and internal factors, namely biotic ones, play a larger role. What makes alpine communities intriguing? It's the fact that both elements are present to approximately the same extent.
There is a continuous cover, implying that plants interact closely, and the structure [of the community] is shaped by the interactions among various plant species. On the other hand, there are abiotics. While not extreme, external factors still hold significant importance.
Incidentally, the Alps resemble the Caucasus. I recall a conversation we had with the world-renowned highland ecologist and botanist Professor Christian Körner. His team spent a considerable amount of time working on the Georgian side of the Caucasus during the Soviet period. However, when the Soviet Union fell apart, they ceased their research there. I asked him why they discontinued their work, and he responded, "From a life forms perspective, the Caucasus is very similar to the Alps. It's much simpler for us to work in the Alps than to grapple with Georgian bureaucracy when importing equipment through customs, among other things."

— Is there a significant interest in our alpine zone from international colleagues?
— Yes. A lot of scientists from New Zealand, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and other countries have been here. Quite a number of Chinese researchers have visited our national park for its observation station. Everyone has always shown great interest.
And, accordingly, we also got invited to different places. For instance, I visited an American observation station. What surprised me was their approach to wildfires. For them, it's an entirely natural process. When we were in Montana, we saw smoke as we were climbing a mountain. I asked what was going on, and the Americans responded that there had been a wildfire and that it had reportedly reached beyond the national park boundary. That meant they weren't going to put it out. It was just a natural process.
Of course, not all fires are the same. Everything man-made that surrounds us needs to be protected. These are self-evident truths. But we should approach natural fires sensibly and understand that many systems on Earth have evolved under their influence.

— Okay. You study plant communities and understand certain things about them. What can they tell us?
— A lot, really. For instance, they provide a vast amount of historical data. What we see now is the result of centuries, if not millennia, of evolution. Just imagine even for a weed like windflower, the average age of generative individuals — those that have reached flowering — is around 650 years. According to estimates, about 10% of the population is around 1,000 years old.
Imagine a carrot sticking out of the ground as Tamerlane passes through and a war rages on. By studying population structure and other traits, we can learn about the conditions of the past. For example, we have discovered that the Caucasus is the best preserved area in terms of natural high-altitude systems. And sadly, the main reason why the Caucasus is much less affected by human activity than, for example, the Alps, is due to the frequent military conflicts that have occurred in the region. There hadn't been a period of peace for 200 consecutive years, only constant wars! This means that mountain cattle breeding was underdeveloped, as it can only exist where there are winter pastures. But on the plains, any conflict halts free range grazing because it becomes dangerous for livestock. So, what exactly happens? Nature gets a "break", and the population recovers.
By the way, there are places in the Caucasus that are completely untouched by humankind. For example, we've found a curious little gorge where, based on all historical data and trace studies, there was never any grazing.

— So it's a pristine piece of land.
— Yes. It's small, and there are no old traces. No mowed-down grass, nothing. It's a convenient subject for many general scientific theories and hypotheses.

— What's the most interesting discovery you've made?
— Here is an example. We discovered that plant roots can grow not only in soil, air, or water, but also in snow. This is true only for some species, of course, and only under special conditions. Although, we were actually the first to discover this phenomenon. Moreover, the above-ground organs of these plants live for about a month and a half, while their thin, thread-like roots hidden in the snow last for eight to ten months. If the snow patch is more than half a meter thick, the temperature underneath is always constant, around zero degrees. At this temperature, grass roots grow slowly throughout the winter. Most importantly, they absorb nitrogen and scarce mineral compounds directly from the snow.
When we discovered snow roots, we conducted an experiment with Corydalis conorhyza. We introduced a nitrogen marker into the snow, and it turned out that only this species was active. The nitrogen was inaccessible for the other plants nearby, even though the snow was melting, and the water should have reached the roots. But it didn't, all because the lower part of the snow patch forms an ice crust 3–5 centimeters thick. And when the top layer starts to melt, the water goes down, hits this crust, and flows sideways. Therefore, plants can only access the nitrogen by penetrating above this solid barrier.

— Do the roots somehow break through it?
— No. The crust forms slowly, and the roots appear in the snow patch earlier. One Christmas, my graduate student and I went to the mountains and dug out snow from a depth of three meters. Then we brought the sample down, sifted it, and found that there were already quite normal roots there. It became clear that they start to grow as soon as the snow settles.

— That's truly amazing.
— Yes. Another interesting discovery has to do with answering the fundamental question of why specific species live in specific numbers and ratios in a specific territory under specific conditions. What would happen if the conditions changed? For example, the climate changes due to human impact or something else happens. There are several very sound theories in modern ecology. One of them suggests that surroundings play a big role in how many species live in an area.
We compared the number of species per 100 square meters in different mountain systems — in New Zealand, Tibet, the Alps, Kenya, and the Caucasus. And surprisingly, it turned out that only one parameter, namely the size of the chain of mountains, can predict with 98% probability how many species will be present on average per unit area. Neither the location nor the altitude above sea level play a huge role.

— So, the larger the area, the more species, right?
— Not exactly. Rather, the larger the area, the more species have had the opportunity to evolve and establish there. And it's not just about the total number of species, which would be understandable, but specifically about biodiversity per unit area. And it doesn't matter if it's 100 square meters or ten. The poorest in our experiment was Africa, because Mount Kenya, which we studied, is essentially a volcano amidst tropical forests and savannas. The richest, naturally, was Tibet with its vast mountain system. The Caucasus was somewhere in the middle, while New Zealand was relatively poor.
We then confirmed this pattern at a regional level. And here's the interesting thing about it. All Russian nature reserves regularly engage in forest management. In 2005, the director of the Teberda Nature Reserve asked us to chart their meadows. At that point, we had a typology in place, and we managed to create a geobotanical map in just under a year. We handed it over and forgot about it. Later on, forest managers used our map to create a modern map with GIS, which can be used to easily calculate the areas of specific territories. I selected eight types of mountain-meadow communities and compared our species count data with the overall area of the reserve. And there too, I also saw a significant linear correlation! It's not as overwhelming, but it can explain more than half of the variation.
We assumed that swamps had fewer species due to their extreme conditions. Not at all! They simply occupy a small area. But there is another aspect here: the larger the area, the longer plant community usually exist. They are more resistant to climate changes.

— Have you personally observed the effects of climate change?
— If we talk about changes in the mountains, the situation is intriguing with some interesting findings. We wanted to know how we could predict which species would expand their presence and which wouldn't. And as it turned out, the answer was quite simple. From our more than 30 years of observations, it's clear that the lower the altitude of a species’ typical range, the greater this species’ presence within the community. In other words, plants that are lower and more heat-tolerant increase in number, while those with higher-altitude habitats become less abundant. So, the composition of species remains the same, but their ratio shifts towards the more heat-tolerant ones. This has been demonstrated across all alpine communities.

— What about species extinction?
— It's difficult to say because it's much less noticeable compared to animals. Generally speaking, I have two major disappointments in my life. The first one has to do with my round-the-world trip. You see, I was raised on geography textbooks that beautifully depicted distant lands, tropics, and wild nature... But when I flew to New Zealand via America, I saw a completely different picture from the plane. I saw vegetable plots and quarries (especially in Indonesia). Everything was cultivated or exploited. Everywhere, except for deserts, you could see traces of human activity. It was a heavy blow shattering my childhood myths.
The second disappointment came at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, Netherlands. It's a great natural history museum, with a multi-story building housing all the collections. A friend of mine offered to give me a tour and I agreed.
They have something similar to our zoological museum there. One floor is dedicated to bird systematics, another to mammals, and so on. Everything is stored very neatly, using the latest scientific and technological methods. Then we moved to another floor where everything was mixed up! Naturally, I asked what they store here. The staff told me that it's a special floor where they keep all the extinct species that haven't been recorded for the last 50 years. I asked how many of these are registered, and they said a few dozen vertebrates every year. And that's just vertebrates! Insects are harder to track, as you can imagine. So, despite all the calls to action and measures, humanity is destroying biodiversity at an alarming rate.
Everyone seems to know about it, but when you see these collections, these organisms, carcasses, and beautiful taxidermy of species that no longer exist in nature, it's shocking. In the middle of the last century, someone — I can't remember who exactly — said, "Humanity shouldn't fear nuclear war. It will perish under the debris of a collapsed biosphere." I fully agree with that statement.

— It's a painful truth.
— Yes, unfortunately, it's a disheartening conclusion. In our time, when we studied Marxism at school, a significant part of the literature and history was devoted to the predecessors of Marxism, the socialist utopians. I see myself as an environmental utopian. That is, I believe I know how to arrange the Earth so that humanity can develop normally while preserving nature and maintaining balance. In simple terms, half of the globe should become a conservation area. And all environmentally sustainable development should be concentrated on the other half, proportionally — in different countries, natural zones, etc. From an economic development perspective, the likelihood of this happening is zero.

— Are you saying there is no reason for optimism?
— Unfortunately, things are progressing. But the Chinese have set a positive example. They are making tremendous efforts to restore nature, and they're doing it very wisely.

— Aren't they currently considered the leaders in terms of human-made forest areas?
— And not just any forest areas, there are all kinds of forests. If you plant eucalyptus or American pines everywhere, you'll also have a forest, but the result will be a terrible disaster. They are restoring their natural biocenosis, i.e., their species, based on scientific principles. They are investing a huge amount of money in this, which is very inspiring.

— Speaking of scientific principles, new technologies today are greatly changing and sometimes even transforming certain fields of science, such as paleontology. How does this affect your field?
— We are influenced by two relatively new methodological aspects, isotope analysis and everything related to molecular genetics, including the identification of organisms.
As for our approaches, they have also changed. Maybe they are not so revolutionary in terms of technology, but methodologically, it's a significant breakthrough. We are trying to investigate two components that were not so important before — the phylogenetic structure of communities and their functional structure. For phylogenetics, we consider a community as a collection of species that live here and look at how closely related they are compared to a random sample from the surrounding area. This is a simpler task, a kind of bridge between ecology and evolutionary theory. The second, broader component is the concept of functional traits and functional diversity of communities. In simple terms, species have various traits that are believed to be important for survival and can be easily measured. For a leaf, for example, it’s its thickness, water content, dimensions, and even the area per gram. Then we look at how the community’s functional structure is organized. Is the selected trait important or not? How much do the species common here differ from a random sample of the local flora based on this trait? Are they more large-leaved or not? And another important question is if the trait is important for a species to dominate a community? It's a lot of work because you have to study and measure a lot of species. But, thankfully, we are supported by the Russian Science Foundation which we are very grateful for.

— So you're looking for some kind of defining trait.
— We're looking for traits that affect the distribution of a species. How defining they are is, of course, harder to say. But at least we know that a particular species in a community is not there by chance. There is a selection process going on. However, each taxon also has its trait variation limit. This plays a big role, especially in the highlands. I was amazed that wherever you go, be it the mountains of New Zealand, Africa, Tibet, or the Caucasus, you will find the same families of plants. The genera are mostly very similar or identical. It's just the species that differ. Picture a mountain in Africa rising above the tropical forests teeming with a vast array of diverse families! And what do we see as we climb higher? Buttercups, fumeworts, thistles, bluegrasses, and sedges! Those are the same plants we have in Russia. In other words, very few plants can survive the environmental conditions of the highlands.

— So, is it good to be a buttercup? It even survived Tamerlane and climbed up into the mountains!
— Yes. [Laughs.]

— Do you have a scientific dream?
— I want to explain how the world functions using the communities we study as examples.

— Explaining how the world functions is quite an ambitious goal!
— I wish to comprehend how nature operates in its various forms and why these specific organisms live here in certain proportions. What mechanisms shape natural communities? How can they be preserved? What do we need to do to prevent their extinction? What allows them to maintain stable and sustainable coexistence ? I also want to be able to accurately predict what various environmental changes will result in. We've managed to piece together some parts of this, but we're still far from having a complete picture. My friend Alexey Kondrashov, a renowned population geneticist with whom I started my career, once said, "You're observing a meadow. Destroying it would be as simple as taking two steps. Just dig it up, and it's done. But understanding it would take several decades." And that's exactly what we're striving to do.

— That's quite poetic! So, it's a kind of thirst for knowledge, isn't it?
— Absolutely! The purpose of life and this endeavor is to comprehend the world in its specific manifestation.