Biodiversity

Reveals the roots of our biodiversity crisis, why we failed to meet targets set over a decade ago, and what we must do now to protect and preserve nature's wonders

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