By: Sammy Herdman
Imagine a life in which biodiversity is virtually diminished. You walk outside your home and walk down the concrete path leading to the concrete road. At least some trees survived to produce oxygen, and your eye is attracted to a lonely pine tree every once in a while. But they aren’t looking too good because their soil isn’t being enriched by a variety of species and waste like it formerly was. There are no bees or butterflies as you walk along the road; those went extinct- and without their cross pollination, all the brilliant flowers and buzzing insects that depended on those plants died as well. Your walk is fairly silent. Maybe there’s a surviving squirrel- almost starving without the abundance of nuts it had evolved to eat. You get to a market, and there are probably no bright fruit stands out in front, and if there are they’re exorbitantly expensive due to their rarity. There’s no honey, no berries, no peanut butter or jelly. There are plenty of cow products though; the cows will last as long as the grass does. However, their methane expulsions have caused the demise of countless other creatures. But this monotonous world isn’t the fault of the cows. It’s the fault of the creatures who inhumanely bred them as cheaply and quickly as they could.
This dystopian anecdote isn’t as far off as we may hope. A mass extinction occurring right now is killing off species at a rate of approximately a dozen a day, and the resulting lack of biodiversity may have many more negative side effects than a drab looking world and less food options.
Biodiversity serves our species as much as it does any other organism. It ensures natural sustainability for all life forms.
We rely on biodiversity in plant species for chemical exchanges, including the production of oxygen and the breakdown of carbon dioxide.
Rich soil, which allows for more successful farming, is dependent on a variety of plants and animals to remove certain nutrients and to leave other ones in return.
Climate stability, protection of water sources, food, future resources, nutrient recycling, and maintenance of ecosystems are a few systems of nature that will be compromised as biodiversity continues to decrease.
Because all species have adapted to coexist and rely on one another, the extinction of one species leads to the extinction of others. Eventually even humans will feel the menace of mass extinction.
Fortunately, efforts are being made to stop this natural crisis. Spreading awareness and getting people to be passionate about environmental issues is one remedy. The Encyclopedia of Life is a growing online database that aspires to collect all the information existing about all types of organisms from different resources and minds all over the globe. It’s a free research tool that holds information from creatures as obscure as nematodes, to animals as charismatic as elephants.
“One motivation to bring all this information together is for everybody to have very good access to the latest information about the worlds biodiversity and also to begin to understand what we know, and perhaps more importantly, what we don’t know,” said Marie Studer, the director of the Encyclopedia of Life’s Learning and Education group. “We can begin to organize that information in a way to answer important questions…about how will species be impacted by climate change, or it might also be getting people to look at the lesser known species on the planet.”
Humans are intrinsically intertwined in biodiversity and the survival of all species, so it’s important for individuals to get involved in the fate of other organisms and the Earth. Educating yourself on biological diversity is a good place to start, and the Encyclopedia of Life is the perfect place to do it.
Link to Encyclopedia of Life: http://eol.org/
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