Even if you don't know exactly what it is, you've probably heard of Pokémon, which started as a video game but has now spawned trading card games, animated television shows and movies, comic books, and toys. In a nutshell, Pokémon are Japanese-anime-inspired fictional creatures that human trainers catch and teach to battle each other.

I admit that the whole thing sounds ridiculous to me, but it doesn't seem ridiculous to millions of kids: Pokémon is now the second-best-selling video-game franchise, behind Nintendo's Mario franchise. Kids bring the trading cards to school, and even kids who aren't exposed to the games or movies at home (I know this from personal experience) end up with collections of Pokémon cards, albeit the discards their friends have deemed dispensable.

In fact, in a 2002 letter in Science, "Why Conservationists should Heed Pokémon," Andrew Balmford and colleagues reported that 109 schoolchildren they surveyed in the UK were far better at identifying Pokémon characters than the animals and plants living in their own backyards. Here's an excerpt from that letter:

Our findings carry two messages for conservationists. First, young children clearly have tremendous capacity for learning about creatures (whether natural or man-made), being able to at age 8 to identify nearly 80% of a sample drawn from 150 synthetic "species." Second, it appears that conservationists are doing less well than the creators of Pokemon at inspiring interest in their subjects: During their primary school years, children apparently learn far more about Pokemon than about their native wildlife and enter secondary school being able to name less than 50% of common wildlife types. Evidence from elsewhere links loss of knowledge about the natural world to growing isolation from it. People care about what they know. With the world's urban population rising by 160,000 people daily, conservationists need to reestablish children's links with nature if they are to win over the hearts and minds of the next generation.

Eight years later, in 2010, Science Creative Quarterly asked what would happen if someone took the Pokémon idea and applied it to real biodiversity and ecology content. Furthermore, what would happen if someone threw this challenge out to the online community?

What would happen is Phylo, a biodiversity trading card game. The concept was the brainchild of David Ng, director of the Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory at the University of British Columbia. Play involves creating ecosystems by matching organisms in domino-like fashion according to their habitat and where they fit into the food chain. Unlike dominos, though, cards can connect with other cards on all four sides, and natural and man-made disasters, such as fires and oil spills, can throw a wrench in things. You can watch David Ng demonstrate how the game is played on YouTube (below). Or, for a faster introduction, check out this blog post from Promega Connections.

I first learned about the Phylo project from a suggested activity in STEM to Story, a collection of lesson plans designed to get kids who are interested in creative writing to dig into science (I have the opposite problem—kids who already dig science but need some encouragement in the creative-writing department). The suggested activity didn't involve actually playing the card game, but we were curious, so we tried it out and thought it was fun.

Even more fun was the idea of designing custom decks. In the spirit of a crowdsourced project, hundreds of free cards are available for download on the Phylo site so that players can assemble the cards they like best. The concept is great; the application was a little buggy, and we weren't always able to print only the cards we wanted.

However, another option is to choose one of the starter decks. In addition to the Beaty Biodiversity Museum deck featured in the above video, for example, some available decks include the pterosaur deck from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the London Natural History Museum scavenger hunt deck, the MUSE Magazine deck, and the Genetics Society of America deck, which includes model organisms such as Arabidopsis thaliana, C. elegans, and others used frequently in genetics research.

There are also a number of expansion decks, such as the phytochemistry expansion deck, that players can use to introduce twists on the original game.

Alternatively, if you happen to be in Vancouver, you can purchase the original starter deck from the gift shop at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, which until September 2017 also has a special exhibit, Ecosystems in Play, letting visitors explore the inner workings of an ecosystem by stepping inside the Phylo game. You can also purchase high-quality decks at revenue-neutral prices from The Game Crafter. The latest deck, released in December 2016, showcases many of the organisms Darwin found on his voyage and can be used either with the original Phylo game or with a variation involving a map of Darwin's voyage and geographical constraints on play.

In collaboration with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Chair for Women in Science and Engineering Program at the University of British Columbia, Ng is also working on a special women-in-science deck to be released this spring.

I'm already dreaming of a Cell Press deck.

Some critics have pointed out that playing a biodiversity card game indoors is still a far cry from the ultimate goal of getting more kids outside, actually connecting with and appreciating nature. In today's increasingly urban and media-centric culture, we must not overlook the value of getting kids into the actual outdoors. Nonetheless, I would submit that educators and conservationists should take note of what gets kids' attention and use that information pragmatically. David Ng and the others who have helped to drive the Phylo(mon) project have done just that. After all, if kids are going to be trading character cards and playing video games, wouldn't it at least be better if they were learning about wildlife in the process? Maybe they'll get curious enough to want to meet—and take care of—some of the organisms they're learning about.

Now just imagine if games like Phylo could get the marketing efforts of games like Pokémon.

Had you heard of Phylo? I'm curious. Let me know in the comments.