Vital Vocab: Biodiversity

This is such a beautiful word, and one everyone should make themselves familiar with.  Ozone depletion, climate change, rising sea levels... these are old buzz words.  "Biodiversity" is the next big thing.

Basically this word refers to the variety of species in an area.  You can have areas with low biodiversity, such as your apartment (a moth, two spiders, your roommate's cat, and the mold on that really old orange) or high biodiversity areas, such as the rainforests of Ecuador, where a mere five acres of jungle can hold over a hundred species of bats (compare that to Northern California, where there are twenty-three bat species over fifty million acres).  The planet as a whole has biodiversity encompassing many millions.

But, as you have probably heard, species all over the world are going extinct.  And it's not just tigers and polar bears.  Over 40% of all species on earth are currently at risk of extinction.  It's also not just in distant areas of the world; in the state of California (one of the world's twenty-five biodiversity hotspots) about 29% of species are at risk.  This is a problem that's devastating the environment right in our own back yards.  The natural rate of extinction throughout most of the planet's history has been one per century; today, between one and one hundred species go extinct each day.  That's between one hundred and one thousand times the natural rate, and it actually puts us right in the middle of the sixth mass extinction in the history of earth.  We're going the way of the dinosaurs, man!  But of course this all begs the question: why should we care?

Well, believe it or not, the earth is run by living things.  You can't grow plants in soil devoid of bacteria.  You can't pollinate crops without bees, bats, butterflies, and birds.  You can't have fish in the seas without plankton for them to eat.  And dead bodies don't just disappear, you know.  They need bacteria, fungi, bugs, and carrion eaters to get rid of 'em.  As all these creatures start to disappear, the natural functions of our world decline, and these are all functions that we as humans rely on to survive.  We have to protect our biodiversity in order to keep our lands and waters alive.

Besides, who knows what amazing uses all these creatures could have for us in future?  Ever heard of biopharmaceuticals?