Assignment
Biodiversity is one of those terms that everyone is familiar with but most people don't really know much about in any meaningful detail and I'm sure that Ecosystem Services is a new term to most of you even though you are the recipient of these free services on a moment to moment basis for all of your life. If you watch or read the news, you get the idea that biodiversity concerns are principally about pandas, tigers, elephants, whales, polar bears, etc. These are what conservation biologists refer to as the flagship species biodiversity, i.e. species who you are likely to recognize and care about. The flagship ecosystems are tropical rainforests and coral reefs. No matter how you divide up the planet in terms of what is important from a sustainability perspective, biodiversity is always one of the main categories. This probably seems strange to the average person who wonders why scientists are so concerned about the survival of these species. After all, will the planet really be in peril if they end up existing only in zoos? The reality is that the biodiversity concerns of scientists are with the entire, vast array of millions of species from tiny to large that drive ecosystem functions, functions upon which we humans depend in innumerable ways. The other reality is that it usually takes something as a cute as a panda or big as an elephant to get the attention of most people.
System functions are things such as photosynthesis and nutrient cycling which are dependent on bacteria, fungi, algae, plankton at one end and plants, herbivores, and carnivores at the other end. System functions also include physical processes such as rainfall, wind, ocean currents, etc. Both ends of the living component (large species and small species) need to be in balance for the systems to function in a manner that works optimally for humans as well as the organisms that comprise the systems. The "work" that these organisms do that we take advantage of without having to "pay" anything for is referred to as ecosystem services, i.e. the ecological systems and species are providing a service to humans for free. An example would be the breakdown of organic materials in the soil by bacteria and fungi that is needed for plant growth which translates into successful farming. At an even higher level, tropical rainforests are the water pumps that initiate the movement of the atmosphere which determines climate patterns worldwide. Take a look at this video to see what that looks like - Global Atmospheric Circulation Now that is one heck of an ecosystem function! In addition, there are millions of other uses made of species from antibiotics to foods and medicines for everything from blood thinners (saliva from vampire bats) to cancer medicines - some of the latter are made from snake venoms, vampire bat saliva, etc. The list goes on and on.
Unfortunately, some of the world's biodiversity is in serious trouble due to both the direct and indirect actions of human activities. The situation has become so obvious in some areas that there is a serious proposal to create a new geological period name, the Anthropocene, to formally recognize human dominance over the planet. Once again, there is the problem of humans dramatically under-appreciating the importance of virtually everything smaller than a house cat. Everything from the air, the soil, trees, fresh and ocean water, the canopy of forests to your skin and gut are home to millions of organisms. A single large tree in a tropical rainforest is a functional unit comprising over a thousand species of insects, many of which have never been named. When tropical forests are cut down, most of those unnamed species will remain forever unnamed.
A little data to get you started: there are an estimated 9 million terrestrial species and another 2 million or so species in the oceans of the world Number of Species. Of the 9 million, about a million are insects, 5000 or so are mammals of which ~1200 are rodents and about the same number are bats. There are about 8000 reptiles, 6000 or so birds, and about 300,000 species of trees and bushes - More Species Info. But the reality is that most of the world's species are very small and all our ecosystems rest squarely on their system-function shoulders. It is those system functions that we should be most concerned about. Hence the fall back to pandas, whales, and elephants.
Do a web search to provide information and data to address the following questions. There are dozens of videos to start your search with on biodiversity and ecosystem services found on YouTube and ScienceDaily, ScienceNews and Google are excellent places to search for information.
Task
A. Choose a single ecosystem of any type - desert, prairie, tropical rainforest, boreal forest, etc. - of your choice and briefly describe its diversity.
B. For that same system, describe the ecosystem services it provides to humans.
C. What are the main threats to biodiversity in that ecosystem?
D. Defend your position on why or why not the earth's ecosystems are in peril and what, if anything, needs to be done. What does your future lens look like and what are the steps one needs to take to get there?
E. Do we humans have an ethical or moral obligation to keep species from going extinct and for maintaining the viability of natural systems? Why or why not?