Across the United States, placing bounties on fish is a management method that is used to remove an unwanted population. Bounties involve anglers being paid to catch a certain species, and they are offered for either population reduction or research. There are several factors involved in designing a fish bounty discussed in this thesis. Fish bounties are interesting in the sense that there is no “right way” to offer them. Each bounty has to be tailored to individual populations in order to achieve the desired goals. The first part of this thesis is a review of fish bounties across the United States, followed by a discussion of their effectiveness. The Brown Trout Incentivized Harvest at Lees Ferry is a topic of controversy and is the main subject of this thesis. The National Parks Service began this program in 2020 and is currently paying anglers $33 for every brown trout (Salmo trutta) they catch and turn in to the agency. This program was started in order to reduce the population of piscivorous brown trout at Lees Ferry, for concern they will disperse 60 miles downstream to where there is a population of protected humpback chub (Gila cypha). There are many opinions related to this incentivized harvest. One way to analyze this situation is to look at it from an animal rights perspective. Martha Nussbaum has created her Capabilities Approach to explain what rights animals are entitled to, as they are creatures deserving of the ability to flourish. This is helpful to assess which decision regarding brown trout and humpback chub is best.

How is knowledge created at the intersections between basic science, biotechnology, and industry? Gene drives are an interesting example, as they combine a long-standing interest with a recent technological breakthrough and a new set of commercial applications. Gene drives are genes engineered such that they are preferentially inherited at a frequency greater than the typical Mendelian fifty percent ratio. During the historical and conceptual evolution of gene drives beginning in the 1960s, there have been many innovations and publications. Along with that, gene drive science developed considerable public attention, explosion of new scientists, and variation in the way the topic is discussed. It is now time to look at this new organization of science using a systematic approach to characterize the system that has enabled knowledge to grow in this scientific field. This project breaks new ground in how knowledge advances in genetic engineering science, and how scientists understand what a “gene drive” is through analysis of language, communities, and other social factors. In effect, this research will advance multiple fields and enable a deeper understanding of knowledge and complexity. This project documents patterns of publication, collaborative relationships, linguistic variation, innovation, and knowledge expansion. The results of computational analysis provide an in-depth and complete characterization of the structure, dynamics, and evolution of scientific knowledge found in the gene drive technology. Further, time series analysis of the multiple layers of discourse enabled a diachronic connective mapping of collaborative relationships and tracked linguistic variation and change, highlighting where ambiguous language may appear, improving and creating more cohesive scientific language. Overall, depicting the structure, dynamics, and evolution of scientific knowledge during a novel eruption of scientific complexity can shed light on the factors that can lead to: (1) improved scientific communication, (2) reduction of scientific progress, (3) new knowledge, and (4) novel collaborative relationships. Therefore, characterizing the current technological, methodological, and social contexts that can influence scientific knowledge.