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Because many types of governance can be polycentric, an observer faces a challenge in trying to identify and understand polycentric governance in actual settings. This chapter adopts the perspective of thinking about polycentricity as a lens through which to view governance situations. We take an inquiry approach, considering how one might determine whether and in what ways a given governance situation demonstrates the characteristics of polycentric governance. We proceed through a series of questions an observer could pose as part of 'seeing polycentrically', i.e., looking at the aspects and dimensions of polycentric governance introduced in Stephan, Marshall, and McGinnis as a way of building an understanding of a governance situation. We attempt to describe why these queries are important and how posing and answering these questions helps in examining and understanding the situation. We close the chapter by considering the challenges of assessing the operation of polycentric governance arrangements.

California is an excellent setting to observe evolution in action. Tough, flavorless tomatoes bred for supermarkets provide an example of rapid human-induced evolutionary change in a crop plant, while many California landscapes exert specific ecological pressures that have shaped their resident species for millennia. These settings include the Central Valley, the Sierra Nevada, and archipelagoes of habitat islands. A better understanding of evolution in California is necessary to inform the management of our agricultural ecosystems and conservation of our natural landscapes and the species that depend on them, many of which face uncertain futures because of human activities and climate change.