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New Estimate Suggests 5.5M Species On Earth, Not 30-100M
An anonymous reader writes "How many species share our planet? According to a recalculation by an international research team, the number is significantly lower than we thought — only around 5.5 million."
FTA:
By looking at all of the beetles that live on a single tree species in Papua New Guinea, the researchers were able to extrapolate their numbers to a global scale.
No, they thought they could extrapolate their numbers to a global scale. Luckily, they used only the most rigourous methods...
This type of model is widely used in financial risk assessments, but has rarely been applied to ecology.
Well perhaps not the most rigourous, more likely that type of model has never been applied to reality, but I digress. This smells like bullshit science and shouldn't be leant much credibility.
Yeah, sure.
But we can ask the question: Is our wanton destruction of many of the ecosystems on earth a desirable thing?
Quibbling over whether it is properly described as natural or not sort of misses the point.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Yes, it would be a part of the whole selection process.
The real problem with the numbers that go extinct is that when some species are removed from existence, the whole ecosystem goes crazy because it's not built to operate at the sudden pace that we're pushing it at. Plus, we're hitting nearly every ecosystem with rapid change at once, which is taking a somewhat delicate system and playing Jenga with it.
Not really. Once a species dies out completely, it's failed at evolution. Killing off a significant proportion of a population periodically, however, causes the traits of the survivors to be selected for. An example of this is immunity to rat poison. Rats have a very high mutation rate (a huge number of them die of cancer as a result), and so it's likely that a very small proportion of the population will be immune to any given poison that you can use. After a few days, you've killed off all of the local population except the immune ones. After a few weeks, the survivors have passed on their immunity to their offspring, and a couple of months later you have the same number of rats but none are immune. In contrast, if you kill them all with fire (which they are very unlikely to be immune to) then none will survive to the next generation so the local population dies completely.
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Which obviously could not be the case. This is the same sort of erroneous statistics that lead to creationist "proofs" that the world is only 4,000/6,000/10,000 years old by assuming that the current human population growth rate is exactly the same as it has been throughout history and counting backwards.
Humans killing (read: driving to extinction) other species is no longer beneficial to our evolution.
How do you know that?
I'm sure you're probably right, or right about most species, but I think the whole system is too chaotic for you to make that point as an absolute truth. Some extinctions have been GREAT for humanity (or at least mammals in general).
I'll bite. Stop anthropomorphizing evolution. Evolution does not care if it is the right thing to grow a second head or kill off the only food source. Evolution is a theory used to explain how organisms change with successive generations. That is all. It should not be used to moralize our actions. That is how things like eugenics get proposed. Going by your logic, because many people adhere to astronomy theories, we should not attempt to intercede if we detect a large comet on a collision course with Earth or the Moon.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
when some species are removed from existence, the whole ecosystem goes crazy because it's not built to operate at the sudden pace that we're pushing it at. Plus, we're hitting nearly every ecosystem with rapid change at once, which is taking a somewhat delicate system and playing Jenga with it.
In other words: Once we hit that bulls-eye, the dominoes will fall like a house of cards; checkmate.
You can't take the sky from me...
It's largely a matter of convention. Wolves hybridize with coyotes to produce viable offspring ... but the two species are genetically, behaviorally and ecologically distinct (in most places) so it seems reasonable to treat them as different species.
Insect species are often split based on tiny morphological details, even where the two populations hybridize. Other times they are organized into "subspecies", or species within a genus are organized into "subgenera".
What might make more sense is some kind of measure of genetic entropy. That would also count low species diversity, as in cases of species that pass through genetic bottlenecks (e.g. cheetahs), and so which represent a less stable population.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Someone doesn't have a sense of humor...Parent should be modded funny, not troll. At worst it's at BP's expense and maybe less funny, but sounds to me like it was intended as a joke.
1. There is no God, and evolution is how everything got here.
2. It's wrong to destroy species, etc. There's some moral/ethical/inherently-bad thing about it.
To me, there's a disconnect. #1 has some amount of backing (evolutionary theory). #2, combined with #1, seems to me to have no backing.
Evolution is not aimed to disprove God, it is a well-tested and refined theory on how life changes over generations. While many, myself included, do not believe in the existence of a deity, it is not a causal relationship with the acceptance of theories in the scientific community. Nor do I feel it necessary to conflict the two. I do have conflict with the teaching of creationism and/or "intelligent design" as science in schools, as they are not theories formed using the scientific method, but that is a different topic.
As for morality/ethics, as TheCycoONE mentions, they are not dependent on a God, so there is no inherent disconnect with your #1 and #2.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
I, as a strong believer in God, have to agree completely with what you just said.
;) , but I do not agree with Intelligent Design, so do I not with Creationism.
Let me tell about my side of the story...
I do believe, that nature is intelligently designed
There is a part of the teaching about micro- and macroevolution (evolution inbetween species and from species to species), which I do like as a thought - there is also no hard proof of species converting to other either - but I do believe MacroEv in the long run to be possible, maybe even wanted or happening.
As I have researched back then in historical background, evolution, as many other theories, came out of scientific university background, and was used in media to bash christian beliefs (I think it was english media, a face off between some clergy guy and a professor). From there on, the normal cycle of historical developments, where science changed the view of deists and atheists at the same amount over time (mostly by some sacrifices of christian scientists facing christian clergy), did not take it's usual path. It became something which was a direct attack on God, and was used as such. Same goes for the Big Bang, which in theory still does not proof God not existing. Christians started to defend themselves using non scientific explanations or pseudo science to keep their face in the last century, forgetting, that also christians fought to have a separation, freedom of faith and so on.
It feels like, believers tried to create a chisma between science and religion and now we have to pay for it by being attacked from those we wanted to liberate. Because not all christians did or do support religious viewpoints.
Universities in itself, as also many other aspects of our humanist culture, is something, a Christian would have fought for, especially from the early churches, but I think especially our main figure in the bible would have. Many scientists before this event were strong believers. But nowadays they are silent, silent because their scientific work would not been taken seriously if they admitted they are christians, and sometimes troubled in faith, because fundamentalists question their faith - they are attacked from both worlds.
It is hard to know, who really is at fault, populistic science, or religious fundamentalists, and who fired the first shot - I think it could be the christians on the other side. But one thing is clear: this war is not needed. Universities were not the temples of Atheism, as many christians nowadays see them. Knowledge was a virtue, it could be a calling from God, some books in the bible were written by "scientific" people back in the days of Luke (Genealogy was for example the begin of a historic text) and many Universities were founded by liberal thinking christians.
I do have experience. If I say, I do believe in God, I am regarded as somebody who might not really understand science (well I would never say, I know very much). It's a hard life in universities, and certainly did affect my life in general, in both studies - medicine and computer science. As if my personal belief in a God would not make me somebody who wants to find out what's out there, how things work and so on.
Since I was an atheist for a good period of my life, and did ask myself, how God can exist if evolution is proposed, I do understand, that it is seen as a contrast to the bible, it does trouble people seeking a faith.
Reading first chapter genesis and realising it's completely different aspect on creation as later in the book, seeing that even the timeline matches, and that it is only one chapter of a book afterwards going in a completely different direction, it made me realise, it's just a populistic hategame and talk-a-lot all around the world, like there is racism, and it should not stand in the way to only read, what that book has to say to me - or not. So I did continue. Many questions ahead. Still quite sceptical. Love Gen1,1 though.
I do enjoy the company of atheistic
How do you define species when there's no sexual reproduction?
Thanks for the insightful and well thought out post. It is really too bad that religion and science come to blows so often when they should remain unrelated. If computer technology somehow conflicted with the teachings of the Bible, would a fundamentalist denounce the use of them? If somehow evidence was found proving the existence of a deity, would atheists deny it, even if it were peer-reviewed and followed the scientific method? My guess, is that they probably would, and that is human nature at some of its worst.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
*Touché
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