John Spicer

Biodiversity (eBook, ePUB)

A Beginner's Guide

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Biologist John Spicer shows how closely our future is linked with that of biodiversity while navigating readers through some key problems facing our planet, including mass extinctions, population explosions, habitat destruction, and pollution. Along the way, he provides valuable insight into the impact humans have had upon the earth and its inhabitants, whether efforts such as ecotourism really help, and how scientists and economists calculate the 'value' of biodiversity. Passionately argued, this book is a must for anyone who has an appreciation for nature and wants to understand the real issues at stake in preserving it.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Simon + Schuster LLC
• Seitenzahl: 192
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Dezember 2012
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781780741321
• Artikelnr.: 39507642

Autorenporträt

John Spicer is Professor in Marine Biology, University of Plymouth. He is co-author of the best-selling textbook Biodiversity: An Introduction, Blackwell Science, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

1  The pandemic of wounded biodiversity
Biodiversity - what was that again?
A long, leisurely trip to La Jolla
Directions
 
2  Teeming boisterous life
The big picture
The volleyball on Mission Beach
'A rose by any other name'...what's a species?
   Morphological species
   Identifying species without ever seeing them
   Biological species
   Evolutionary species
   Naming species
How many living species...and what are they?
   1) To the nearest approximation (almost) every organism is an
arthropod...?
   2) Greenery: The Plantae
   3) Fungi: Mushrooms, moulds and yeasts - The Fungi
   4) Mollusca: Shell life
   5) Chordata: Animals with backbones...mostly
   6) Protozoa or Protista?
   7) Nematoda: The roundworm that's the fly in the ointment?
   8) Bacteria and Archaea: Microbial life
   Remaining animal groupings
   Viruses: All the world's a phage... or nearly
New species
Planting and growing the 'tree of life'
   The great chain of being
   Linnaeus's hierarchical classification
   Influence of evolutionary ideas
   Chatton's two-domain idea
   Whittaker's five-kingdom approach
   Woese and the three-domain model
   A new twist to the three-domain model
   ...and when is a tree a bush?
Designs on life
   The phylum and the Bauplan
   Most phyla are not very species rich
An unequal distribution of life
 
3  Where on Earth is biodiversity?
From Berkeley, south to the Sea of Cortez
More is more
   Back to Bird Rock
   The species-area relationship
Those who go down to the sea in ships
Hotspots: A tale of two definitions
Big-scale biodiversity: Biogeographical and political regions
   On land
   Sea
   Biodiversity by country
Latitude for life?
   The land
   The sea
   Genetic diversity and latitude
   Why is there a latitudinal gradient?
Altitude
   Lessons from the tops of Scottish mountains
   Biodiversity takes the hump with altitude
   Mountains as islands?
   Aerial plankton and organisms in flight
Depth
   The short-lived azoic theory
   Out of our depth
   A journey to the centre of the Earth
Staying close to home
Congruence: The holy grail of diversity?
 
4  A world that was old when we came into it: Diversity, deep time and
extinction
One every twenty minutes?
A life in the year of...
Precambrian - before life?
   A schoolgirl changes our understanding of life before life - but no one
believes her
   The garden of Ediacara
   A world of chemical energy, not driven by sunlight?
   How familiar is the Ediacaran fauna?
Explosive Cambrian
   Cambrian forms
   Archaeocyatha: The only extinct phylum?
   Why diversify now?
   Cambrian explosion or short fuse?
Cambrian biodiversity: Good designs... or just lucky?
   How a small quarry in British Columbia changed our understanding of
biodiversity
    'It's a Wonderful Life'
   To conclude
Post-Cambrian: Tinkering with successful designs?
   Palaeozoic - 'first life'
   Middle and modern life
   The present - not set in stone
Beginnings of evolution: The origin of species
End of evolution: Extinction
   The 'big five'
   Causes of extinction
   Extinctions as routine events in the history of life
   Early humans and biodiversity
   Extinctions post-1600s
   Proving extinction?
   The Red Data Book
   Other takes on extinction
   To conclude
 
5  Swept away and changed
Threatening behaviour
Living beyond our means
Top five direct (or proximate) causes of biodiversity loss
1) Habitat loss and degradation
2) Direct exploitation
   Home economics
   Food, glorious food
   Industrial materials
   Medicine sans frontiers
   Ecotourism
   Controlling the natural world
3) Climate change
4) Introduced species
The domino effect: Extinction cascades
Some light relief: Complete elimination of biodiversity by extraterrestrial
means
The ultimate cause of biodiversity loss: You and me
   Once upon a time there were two people...now look how many
   Not just population size but where people live
   Not just population size but what people do
It's the poor that do the suffering
To conclude
 
6  Are the most beautiful things the most useless?
'...and for everything else there's Mastercard'
Costing a small planet
Use now, pay when?
   What bees do for free is expensive
   Costing the Earth - literally
   How Biosphere 1 works - as one
   Earth, the Goldilocks planet - just right
   Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis
   Critiques of Gaia
How bits of Biosphere 1 work
Build your own biosphere: Not-so-silent running
   The home marine aquarium
   Mysteries and hazards
Valuable for what, and to whom?
   Keeping options open
Bequest and bequeathal
Full-on philosophers and laid-back religion?
   Value bestowed, not intrinsic
   Intrinsic value
   Valued as an object of worship or through kinship
   A creator gives biodiversity value
To conclude
 
7  Our greatest hazard and our only hope?
Saving private land
Antecedents
Oh, Rio
   Large brushstrokes
   Louder than words
   Arks in parks
   Out of place - but alive
   Buzzword for the twenty-first century
Responses to Rio
Millennium Assessment
Aichi (2010) and 'Pathway for Humanity' (2015)
   Strategic plan for biodiversity and Aichi biodiversity targets
    'Pathway for Humanity': UN Sustainable Development Goals (2015)
   Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (2019)
   Aichi
   Target 11: Increasing protected areas
   Goal 16: Nagoya protocol in force
   Sustainability goals
No room for the individual?
Epilogue
 
8  No one is too small to make a difference
 
Going further: Suggestions for wider reading
Index