Balance of nature illustrated (Introduction)

by David Turell @, Saturday, January 31, 2015, 18:15 (3345 days ago)

dhw laughs at it, but it is necessary, and this article shows it:-http://www.livescience.com/49640-bear-ant-attack-helps-plants.html?cmpid=558962-"Black bears, rabbitbrush, ants and treehoppers all have wide ranges across the Rocky Mountains, so the species likely cross paths in many places throughout the West, Grinath said.-"For Grinath, the results highlight the many important roles that top predators fill in ecosystems. "My research shows there are multiple ways in which predators can influence plants and other organisms, and therefore it's important to conserve these top predators to maintain species diversity.'"

Balance of nature illustrated

by dhw, Sunday, February 01, 2015, 19:20 (3344 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: dhw laughs at it, but it is necessary, and this article shows it:-http://www.livescience.com/49640-bear-ant-attack-helps-plants.html?cmpid=558962-"Black bears, rabbitbrush, ants and treehoppers all have wide ranges across the Rocky Mountains, so the species likely cross paths in many places throughout the West, Grinath said.
"For Grinath, the results highlight the many important roles that top predators fill in ecosystems. "My research shows there are multiple ways in which predators can influence plants and other organisms, and therefore it's important to conserve these top predators to maintain species diversity.'"-I don't laugh at the obvious fact that living organisms are interdependent, and that if certain elements change their balance, some organisms may flourish and others may become extinct. That is how evolution has always proceeded - with Nature constantly changing its balance, as species come and go. What makes me cringe is the claim that God planned every little twist and turn, right down to preprogramming or separately creating half the weaverbird's nest, half the monarch's lifestyle, half the spider's silk etc., in order to balance Nature in such a way that it could end up with human beings.

Balance of nature illustrated

by David Turell @, Sunday, February 01, 2015, 19:44 (3344 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: I don't laugh at the obvious fact that living organisms are interdependent, and that if certain elements change their balance, some organisms may flourish and others may become extinct. That is how evolution has always proceeded - with Nature constantly changing its balance, as species come and go. What makes me cringe is the claim that God planned every little twist and turn, right down to preprogramming or separately creating half the weaverbird's nest, half the monarch's lifestyle, half the spider's silk etc., in order to balance Nature in such a way that it could end up with human beings.-Keep on cringing. You yourself have said all these theories are possible.

Balance of nature illustrated

by dhw, Monday, February 02, 2015, 15:40 (3343 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I don't laugh at the obvious fact that living organisms are interdependent, and that if certain elements change their balance, some organisms may flourish and others may become extinct. That is how evolution has always proceeded - with Nature constantly changing its balance, as species come and go. What makes me cringe is the claim that God planned every little twist and turn, right down to preprogramming or separately creating half the weaverbird's nest, half the monarch's lifestyle, half the spider's silk etc., in order to balance Nature in such a way that it could end up with human beings. -DAVID: Keep on cringing. You yourself have said all these theories are possible.-Individually, yes, I accept the alternative, hypothetical possibilities of a) atheistic chance, b) an autonomous inventive mechanism (theistic or atheistic), c) divine preprogramming (within limits - I share your “dilemma” on this one, multiplied by about 100) and/or dabbling, d) that God wanted to create human beings, e) that human beings were not part of God's scheme. I also accept the possibility of certain combinations of these hypotheses, but there are some I would exclude as being too far-fetched, and the one above is among them. I shall indeed keep on cringing.

Balance of nature illustrated

by David Turell @, Monday, February 02, 2015, 17:10 (3343 days ago) @ dhw
edited by dhw, Tuesday, February 03, 2015, 20:59

dhw: in order to balance Nature in such a way that it could end up with human beings.[/i] 
 I also accept the possibility of certain combinations of these hypotheses, but there are some I would exclude as being too far-fetched, and the one above is among them. I shall indeed keep on cringing.-My thought is very different than yours: nature has to have a balance so that a food supply is available for all living beings. That allows the process of evolution to move forward and for complexity to emerge (either with God's guidance or not entirely. Note that humans only began to appear 6 million years ago. Life started about 3.8 byo. The balance maintained life until the current epoch. Balance gives the time to allow humans to appear though the evolutionary process. It did not cause humans.

Balance of nature illustrated

by dhw, Tuesday, February 03, 2015, 21:07 (3342 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My thought is very different than yours: nature has to have a balance so that a food supply is available for all living beings. -Not quite. Nature keeps changing its balance, and some living beings survive while others don't.
 
DAVID: That allows the process of evolution to move forward and for complexity to emerge (either with God's guidance or not entirely. Note that humans only began to appear 6 million years ago. Life started about 3.8 byo. The balance maintained life until the current epoch. -The balance kept changing, but it's true that we still have life! I like “not entirely”. Is there a glimmer of a breakthrough here? Might you perhaps be about to concede that a few billion organisms and lifestyles could have emerged independently of God's guidance, or are you back to having him design half the nest and leaving the weaverbird to work out the other half?-DAVID: Balance gives the time to allow humans to appear though the evolutionary process. It did not cause humans.-“Gives the time to allow...” suggests that all the different changes in balance, all the innovations, all the strange lifestyles, all the comings and goings throughout the history of evolution - not to mention the countless environmental changes local and global - were divinely preprogammed or dabbled to allow humans time to “appear” (with another special dabble for the brain), and that is the issue between us. The diversity of life, from bacteria to trilobites to dinosaurs to weaverbirds' nests looks to me (yes, I know that's subjective) like a colossal free-for-all, and I doubt if even you would be able to find a link between all of them and the appearance of humans. If God exists, maybe a colossal free-for-all was what he wanted, but that doesn't fit in with the anthropocentric pattern you wish to believe in.

Balance of nature illustrated

by David Turell @, Wednesday, February 04, 2015, 15:07 (3341 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: My thought is very different than yours: nature has to have a balance so that a food supply is available for all living beings. 
> 
> dhw: Not quite. Nature keeps changing its balance, and some living beings survive while others don't.-Your reply is not on point. I'm simply considering food supply in the balance. Of course it changes. It has forever, which is why the program of conservation of species is not called for. 99% of everything that ever existed is gone. -> dhw: Might you perhaps be about to concede that a few billion organisms and lifestyles could have emerged independently of God's guidance,-No.- 
> DAVID: Balance gives the time to allow humans to appear though the evolutionary process. It did not cause humans.-> dhw: The diversity of life, from bacteria to trilobites to dinosaurs to weaverbirds' nests looks to me (yes, I know that's subjective) like a colossal free-for-all, and I doubt if even you would be able to find a link between all of them and the appearance of humans. If God exists, maybe a colossal free-for-all was what he wanted, but that doesn't fit in with the anthropocentric pattern you wish to believe in.-I never view it as a free-for-all. Somehow what we see is planned by God. It is how He controls it that is my dilemma.

Balance of nature illustrated

by dhw, Thursday, February 05, 2015, 19:22 (3340 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My thought is very different than yours: nature has to have a balance so that a food supply is available for all living beings. 
dhw: Not quite. Nature keeps changing its balance, and some living beings survive while others don't.
DAVID: Your reply is not on point. I'm simply considering food supply in the balance. Of course it changes. It has forever, which is why the program of conservation of species is not called for. 99% of everything that ever existed is gone.-In that case, I'm not sure what your point is. Living organisms have to have food, but the balance is always changing, 99% of all species have disappeared, and somehow this proves that God has planned everything? -DAVID: Balance gives the time to allow humans to appear though the evolutionary process. It did not cause humans.
dhw: The diversity of life, from bacteria to trilobites to dinosaurs to weaverbirds' nests looks to me (yes, I know that's subjective) like a colossal free-for-all, and I doubt if even you would be able to find a link between all of them and the appearance of humans. If God exists, maybe a colossal free-for-all was what he wanted, but that doesn't fit in with the anthropocentric pattern you wish to believe in.
DAVID: I never view it as a free-for-all. Somehow what we see is planned by God. It is how He controls it that is my dilemma.-No dilemma as I see it, since you've made it clear that you think he either preprogrammed the very first living cells to pass on every conceivable innovation and lifestyle, or he dabbled. I'd have thought there would be much more of a dilemma in figuring out why he should specially preprogramme or dabble the weaverbird's nest, the monarch's lifestyle, the spider's silk, and the 99% of dead species, when apparently what he actually wanted to do was create humans.

Balance of nature illustrated

by David Turell @, Thursday, February 05, 2015, 21:49 (3340 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: In that case, I'm not sure what your point is. Living organisms have to have food, but the balance is always changing, 99% of all species have disappeared, and somehow this proves that God has planned everything? -Of course the balance is always changing. This is planning for a balanced food supply at all times, not for survivorship. What survives is balance of food supply, period.-> DAVID: I never view it as a free-for-all. Somehow what we see is planned by God. It is how He controls it that is my dilemma.
> 
> dhw: No dilemma as I see it, since you've made it clear that you think he either preprogrammed the very first living cells to pass on every conceivable innovation and lifestyle, or he dabbled. I'd have thought there would be much more of a dilemma in figuring out why he should specially preprogramme or dabble the weaverbird's nest, the monarch's lifestyle, the spider's silk, and the 99% of dead species, when apparently what he actually wanted to do was create humans. -And that is just what happened. The book, Nature's IQ , which I referred to in my book, was published by authors with my viewpoint: that is, very complex lifestyles point to a designer God, since it is extremely unlikely that the organisms, by themselves, could have created these complex ways of living. You question why He did it, I don't. You seem to be implying life should be simple and straightforward and it isn't. I try to reason why based on design because I don't believe chance can create these complex lives. Why do salmon go to sea for six years? I don't know. It seems it would have been simpler to stay in a nice safe fresh water pond. But the salmon I love to eat have great nutritional value. Perhaps this is the desired result. This is all speculation, but I start with the premise that it is designed, because it looks designed, and for me I don't have to go any further. It simply fits.

Balance of nature illustrated

by dhw, Friday, February 06, 2015, 18:16 (3339 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: In that case, I'm not sure what your point is. Living organisms have to have food, but the balance is always changing, 99% of all species have disappeared, and somehow this proves that God has planned everything? -DAVID: Of course the balance is always changing. This is planning for a balanced food supply at all times, not for survivorship. What survives is balance of food supply, period.-You make it sound as if your God's purpose was to create a balanced food supply, regardless of what ate it! Balanced in whose interests? How do you define a balanced food supply if different organisms require different foods, and when there aren't enough worms for Dicky Bird, he disappears? -DAVID: [...] very complex lifestyles point to a designer God, since it is extremely unlikely that the organisms, by themselves, could have created these complex ways of living. -Extremely unlikely, but possible - a description that fits all the hypotheses.-DAVID: You question why He did it, I don't. You seem to be implying life should be simple and straightforward and it isn't.-Absolutely not. I question your anthropocentric view of the diversity (plus the new idea that God planned a varied but “balanced” diet regardless of what organisms might survive on it). -DAVID: I try to reason why based on design because I don't believe chance can create these complex lives. Why do salmon go to sea for six years? I don't know. [...] I start with the premise that it is designed, because it looks designed, and for me I don't have to go any further. It simply fits.-Interesting. Bacteria look intelligent, but you start with the premise that they are automatons! Which comes first - the premise or the observation? Once more you revert to your attack on chance. I don't believe the salmon's voyage, the monarch's four-generation migratory lifestyle, the spider's silk, or the weaverbird's nest are the result of chance either. But instead of a 3.7-billion-year-computer programme or separate dabbles, I offer an alternative: a form of autonomous inventive intelligence (possibly God-given), akin to though different from the autonomous intelligence you believe is possessed by us humans, who also do our own inventing. It may seem unlikely, but as you put it so succinctly, it simply fits.

Balance of nature illustrated

by David Turell @, Friday, February 06, 2015, 18:54 (3339 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: You make it sound as if your God's purpose was to create a balanced food supply, regardless of what ate it! Balanced in whose interests? How do you define a balanced food supply if different organisms require different foods, and when there aren't enough worms for Dicky Bird, he disappears? -Why not? Species do disappear.
> 
> DAVID: [...] very complex lifestyles point to a designer God, since it is extremely unlikely that the organisms, by themselves, could have created these complex ways of living. 
> 
> dhw: Extremely unlikely, but possible - a description that fits all the hypotheses.-"Extremely unlikely" suggests against the odds, don't you think?
> 
> dhw: Interesting. Bacteria look intelligent, but you start with the premise that they are automatons! Which comes first - the premise or the observation?-From observation-
> dhw: Once more you revert to your attack on chance. ... But instead of a 3.7-billion-year-computer programme or separate dabbles, I offer an alternative: a form of autonomous inventive intelligence (possibly God-given), akin to though different from the autonomous intelligence you believe is possessed by us humans, who also do our own inventing. It may seem unlikely, but as you put it so succinctly, it simply fits.-Kauffman does the same thinking. It avoids an agency such as God.

Balance of nature illustrated

by dhw, Saturday, February 07, 2015, 19:27 (3338 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Of course the balance is always changing. This is planning for a balanced food supply at all times, not for survivorship. What survives is balance of food supply, period.
Dhw: You make it sound as if your God's purpose was to create a balanced food supply, regardless of what ate it! Balanced in whose interests? How do you define a balanced food supply if different organisms require different foods, and when there aren't enough worms for Dicky Bird, he disappears? -DAVID: Why not? Species do disappear.-That is my point. You keep telling us that God planned or dabbled all the innovations and lifestyles, 99% of which have disappeared. Now you tell us he planned a balanced food supply and not survival. So were all the extinctions an accident or planned? Has the food supply remained balanced when 99% of the eaters and the eaten have disappeared? (I don't know the percentage of plants.) Once again, a “balanced food supply” in whose interests?-DAVID: [...] very complex lifestyles point to a designer God, since it is extremely unlikely that the organisms, by themselves, could have created these complex ways of living. 
Dhw: Extremely unlikely, but possible - a description that fits all the hypotheses.
DAVID: “Extremely unlikely” suggests against all the odds, don't you think?-Yes, I do. And that applies to a know-all consciousness that's simply always been there as much as it does to a consciousness that evolved and to the miraculous creativity of chance.-DAVID: I try to reason why based on design because I don't believe chance can create these complex lives. Why do salmon go to sea for six years? I don't know. [...] I start with the premise that it is designed, because it looks designed, and for me I don't have to go any further. It simply fits.
Dhw: Interesting. Bacteria look intelligent, but you start with the premise that they are automatons! Which comes first - the premise or the observation?
DAVID: From observation.-The salmon's lifestyle looks designed, and therefore your premise is that it is designed. The bacterium's behaviour looks intelligent, and therefore your premise is that it is an automaton. Hm.-Dhw: Once more you revert to your attack on chance. I don't believe the salmon's voyage, the monarch's four-generation migratory lifestyle, the spider's silk, or the weaverbird's nest are the result of chance either. But instead of a 3.7billion-year-computer programme or separate dabbles, I offer an alternative: a form of autonomous inventive intelligence (possibly God-given), akin to though different from the autonomous intelligence you believe is possessed by us humans, who also do our own inventing. It may seem unlikely, but it simply fits.
DAVID: Kauffman does the same thinking. It avoids an agency such as God.-Why “avoids”? You make it sound as if God is the default position, and Kauffman is trying to wriggle out of it. Why should you automatically assume that a complicated bird's nest was not designed by the bird but by a vast mind that nobody knows anything about? (Continued under “Epigenetics”)

Balance of nature illustrated

by David Turell @, Sunday, February 08, 2015, 00:14 (3338 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: You keep telling us that God planned or dabbled all the innovations and lifestyles, 99% of which have disappeared. Now you tell us he planned a balanced food supply and not survival. So were all the extinctions an accident or planned?-David Raup thinks accidental ("Extinctions: Bad Gene or Bad Luck".God may have made choices.-> dhw: Has the food supply remained balanced when 99% of the eaters and the eaten have disappeared? -Yes, for the living, which kept reappearing in large new forms and quantities.-> dhw:Once again, a “balanced food supply” in whose interests?-The survivors.-> DAVID: “Extremely unlikely” suggests against all the odds, don't you think?-> Yes, I do. And that applies to a know-all consciousness that's simply always been there as much as it does to a consciousness that evolved and to the miraculous creativity of chance.-And where did that evolving consciousness come from? Pure energy? Energy interacting with matter to invent consciousness. And I'll skip chance. You've said you don't believe chance can do it. The appearance of consciousness certainly bothers Nagel. He wrote a whole book about his discomfort at the lack of recognition by science that nothing explains it. -> Dhw: Bacteria look intelligent, but you start with the premise that they are automatons! Which comes first - the premise or the observation?
> DAVID: From observation.
> 
> dhw: The salmon's lifestyle looks designed, and therefore your premise is that it is designed. The bacterium's behaviour looks intelligent, and therefore your premise is that it is an automaton. Hm.-Did you notice you are comparing single-celled vs. multicellular? Vast difference. Try a different tack.-> DAVID: Kauffman does the same thinking [as you]. It avoids an agency such as God.
> 
> dhw: Why “avoids”? You make it sound as if God is the default position, and Kauffman is trying to wriggle out of it. Why should you automatically assume that a complicated bird's nest was not designed by the bird but by a vast mind that nobody knows anything about? -Because, as you know, I accept only either chance or design. One has to be the default.

Balance of nature illustrated

by dhw, Sunday, February 08, 2015, 19:46 (3337 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: This is planning for a balanced food supply at all times, not for survivorship. 
dhw:Once again, a “balanced food supply” in whose interests?
DAVID: The survivors.-Put these statements together, and what have you got? God planned a balanced food supply in the interests of the survivors, but he didn't plan what was to survive. So how did he know for which creatures he should plan a balanced food supply? There simply has to be a more coherent explanation for the higgledy-piggledy bush!
 
DAVID: “Extremely unlikely” suggests against all the odds, don't you think?-Dhw: Yes, I do. And that applies to a know-all consciousness that's simply always been there as much as it does to a consciousness that evolved and to the miraculous creativity of chance.
DAVID: And where did that evolving consciousness come from? Pure energy? Energy interacting with matter to invent consciousness. And I'll skip chance. You've said you don't believe chance can do it. The appearance of consciousness certainly bothers Nagel. He wrote a whole book about his discomfort at the lack of recognition by science that nothing explains it.-It bothers all of us. If nothing explains consciousness, it doesn't really help much to say that consciousness was created by a consciousness which can't be explained! -Dhw: Bacteria look intelligent, but you start with the premise that they are automatons! Which comes first - the premise or the observation?
DAVID: From observation.
dhw: The salmon's lifestyle looks designed, and therefore your premise is that it is designed. The bacterium's behaviour looks intelligent, and therefore your premise is that it is an automaton. Hm.
DAVID: Did you notice you are comparing single-celled vs. multicellular? Vast difference. Try a different tack.-Irrelevant. Researchers have claimed that bacteria are intelligent. You claim that your premises are based on observation. You observe something that looks designed and conclude that therefore it is designed. You observe something else that looks intelligent (which you have admitted), and you conclude that it isn't intelligent. You have no way of actually knowing, but you impose your premises on what you observe.
 
DAVID: Kauffman does the same thinking [as you]. It avoids an agency such as God.

dhw: Why “avoids”? You make it sound as if God is the default position, and Kauffman is trying to wriggle out of it. Why should you automatically assume that a complicated bird's nest was not designed by the bird but by a vast mind that nobody knows anything about? 
DAVID: Because, as you know, I accept only either chance or design. One has to be the default.-Just as design by a human is design, design by a bird is design. Chance is not a factor here. We are talking about the inventive mechanism and not its source.

Balance of nature illustrated

by David Turell @, Sunday, February 08, 2015, 20:25 (3337 days ago) @ dhw

dhw:Once again, a “balanced food supply” in whose interests?
> DAVID: The survivors.
> 
> dhw: Put these statements together, and what have you got? God planned a balanced food supply in the interests of the survivors, but he didn't plan what was to survive.-How do you know He didn't plan 'what was to survive?-> Daavid The appearance of consciousness certainly bothers Nagel. He wrote a whole book about his discomfort at the lack of recognition by science that nothing explains it.[/i]
> 
> It bothers all of us. If nothing explains consciousness, it doesn't really help much to say that consciousness was created by a consciousness which can't be explained!-The explanation is that it always existed. Back to the issue that there has to be a first cause. 
> 
> dhw: Irrelevant. Researchers have claimed that bacteria are intelligent. You claim that your premises are based on observation. You observe something that looks designed and conclude that therefore it is designed. You observe something else that looks intelligent (which you have admitted), and you conclude that it isn't intelligent. You have no way of actually knowing, but you impose your premises on what you observe.-So do you. I know how single cells work. They are automated factories and are so described by biochemists. They have automated responses to stimuli, as do single celled organisms. -> DAVID: Because, as you know, I accept only either chance or design. One has to be the default.
> 
> dhw: Just as design by a human is design, design by a bird is design. Chance is not a factor here. We are talking about the inventive mechanism and not its source.-I'm not arguing that point as you present it. I agree that animals appear to do some design on their own, but the basis of our argument is the issue of instinct as the problem. We do not know how it arises. Either the bird nest is a matter of repetitive attempts over many generations with epigenetic alterations or they were helped with design by pre-existing genetic instructions. I have my choice.

Balance of nature illustrated

by dhw, Monday, February 09, 2015, 14:45 (3336 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw:Once again, a “balanced food supply” in whose interests?
DAVID: The survivors.
dhw: Put these statements together, and what have you got? God planned a balanced food supply in the interests of the survivors, but he didn't plan what was to survive.-DAVID: How do you know He didn't plan 'what was to survive?-I'm trying to understand your beliefs here, not putting forward my own. You wrote that the higgledy-piggledy bush entailed “planning for a balanced food supply at all times, not for survivorship” and specifically mentioned David Raup's belief that survival was accidental, though you did qualify it with “God may have made choices.” Please remember we are trying to find a convincing explanation for the diversity of life and the constant comings and goings, which you say amount to 99% of life forms but were all somehow geared to the production of humans. Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant, but sometimes it is quite hard to follow your line of reasoning.-Dhw: If nothing explains consciousness, it doesn't really help much to say that consciousness was created by a consciousness which can't be explained!
DAVID: The explanation is that it always existed. Back to the issue that there has to be a first cause. -Back to the issue of whether first cause “pure energy” has always been a single conscious mind that knows all about everything, or evolves both consciousness and knowledge. 
 
dhw: You observe something that looks designed and conclude that therefore it is designed. You observe something else that looks intelligent (which you have admitted), and you conclude that it isn't intelligent. You have no way of actually knowing, but you impose your premises on what you observe.
DAVID: So do you. I know how single cells work. They are automated factories and are so described by biochemists. They have automated responses to stimuli, as do single celled organisms. -I try to keep an open mind and consider the merits of alternative views. As regards single-celled organisms - not to mention multicellular organisms, or cell communities - in addition to automated responses (which of course we humans also have in abundance), some biochemists believe they have a form of conscious intelligence. I needn't repeat the list of scientists or the list of attributes that they equate with that intelligence. Sometimes you accept the possibility and sometimes you don't.-DAVID: Because, as you know, I accept only either chance or design. One has to be the default.
dhw: Just as design by a human is design, design by a bird is design. Chance is not a factor here. We are talking about the inventive mechanism and not its source.

DAVID: I'm not arguing that point as you present it. I agree that animals appear to do some design on their own, but the basis of our argument is the issue of instinct as the problem. We do not know how it arises. Either the bird nest is a matter of repetitive attempts over many generations with epigenetic alterations or they were helped with design by pre-existing genetic instructions. I have my choice.

Of course you do. I don't have a problem with “design” as an argument. The problem for me continues to be the difficulty of fitting together all the bits and pieces that make up your choice: a 3.7-billion-year inheritable programme, divine personal demonstrations, the relevance of the nest and a 99% extinction rate to a balanced food supply and the emergence of humans as God's goal for evolution...

Balance of nature illustrated

by David Turell @, Monday, February 09, 2015, 17:53 (3336 days ago) @ dhw

dhw:Please remember we are trying to find a convincing explanation for the diversity of life and the constant comings and goings, which you say amount to 99% of life forms but were all somehow geared to the production of humans. Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant, but sometimes it is quite hard to follow your line of reasoning.-The reasoning is working back from the against-odds appearance of humans. We know humans are here. We know that life stays in balance, despite all the losses. Therefore I assume a connection, which is, since we know that life takes continuous ingestion of energy, the two are tied together.-> DAVID: I'm not arguing that point as you present it. I agree that animals appear to do some design on their own, but the basis of our argument is the issue of instinct as the problem. We do not know how it arises. Either the bird nest is a matter of repetitive attempts over many generations with epigenetic alterations or they were helped with design by pre-existing genetic instructions. I have my choice.
> 
> dhw: Of course you do. I don't have a problem with “design” as an argument. The problem for me continues to be the difficulty of fitting together all the bits and pieces that make up your choice: a 3.7-billion-year inheritable programme, divine personal demonstrations, the relevance of the nest and a 99% extinction rate to a balanced food supply and the emergence of humans as God's goal for evolution...-Of explained my reasoning above. For all the incidental issues you keep dwelling upon, I have offered reasonable guesses. But I stick to the dilemma as the best spot to be in for the moment: I don't have an answer. Which is why I brought up the issue of the mind of God. Does He think like we do? We have only our minds to consider as evidence. I don't know if He does. I see the evidence for evolution of life. I have assumed that God guides it, as the best explanation for appearance of humans. You keep harping on how He does it, and I've freely admitted, I don't know. It seems as if you will accept design if I can prove a methodology to God's handling of evolution. I can't. Based on odds humans shouldn't be here. Since they are here, it is easy to assume God arranged it. Easy for me but not for you. So be it. Remember, my acceptance of God is based on lots of other factors besides the process of evolution.

Balance of nature illustrated

by dhw, Tuesday, February 10, 2015, 09:54 (3335 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw:Please remember we are trying to find a convincing explanation for the diversity of life and the constant comings and goings, which you say amount to 99% of life forms but were all somehow geared to the production of humans. Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant, but sometimes it is quite hard to follow your line of reasoning.
DAVID: The reasoning is working back from the against-odds appearance of humans. We know humans are here. We know that life stays in balance, despite all the losses. Therefore I assume a connection, which is, since we know that life takes continuous ingestion of energy, the two are tied together.-ALL life is against odds, and we know the duck-billed platypus is here. I still don't understand what you mean by “life stays in balance”. The 99% of extinct species suggest that it doesn't. I can certainly accept Romansh's “interconnectedness”, but that would apply even if there were no humans on Earth.
 
dhw: I don't have a problem with “design” as an argument. The problem for me continues to be the difficulty of fitting together all the bits and pieces that make up your choice: a 3.7-billion-year inheritable programme, divine personal demonstrations, the relevance of the nest and a 99% extinction rate to a balanced food supply and the emergence of humans as God's goal for evolution...-DAVID: Of explained my reasoning above. For all the incidental issues you keep dwelling upon, I have offered reasonable guesses. But I stick to the dilemma as the best spot to be in for the moment: I don't have an answer. Which is why I brought up the issue of the mind of God. Does He think like we do? We have only our minds to consider as evidence. I don't know if He does. I see the evidence for evolution of life. I have assumed that God guides it, as the best explanation for appearance of humans. You keep harping on how He does it, and I've freely admitted, I don't know.
 -If God exists, of course we can't know for sure how he thinks. So we could stop speculating and end all discussions, which would be the classic agnostic approach: impossible to know...end of story. But it is our nature to seek explanations for the world as we know it. The issues I've raised concerning your own hypotheses (preprogramming and dabbling) are far from incidental, since the weaverbird problem exemplifies that raised by every single innovation and lifestyle that you regard as beyond the capabilities of organisms themselves. You've given me reasons for rejecting my alternative hypothesis (an autonomous inventive mechanism), and I've given you reasons for doubting yours. Neither of us knows. -DAVID: It seems as if you will accept design if I can prove a methodology to God's handling of evolution. I can't. Based on odds humans shouldn't be here. Since they are here, it is easy to assume God arranged it. Easy for me but not for you. So be it. -I have never asked for proof, because we both know proof is impossible. I merely ask for coherent explanations. See above for the odds against the duck-billed platypus. Yes, it's easy to assume God arranged it, and it's easy for an atheist to assume there is no such thing as God. What's not so easy is to explain how God did it or chance did it. You're happy to ask the atheist how chance could have done it, but complain if you are asked how God could have done it. -DAVID: Remember, my acceptance of God is based on lots of other factors besides the process of evolution.-That is a fair comment, and my own open-mindedness on the subject also incorporates other factors.

Balance of nature illustrated

by David Turell @, Tuesday, February 10, 2015, 15:27 (3335 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: ALL life is against odds, and we know the duck-billed platypus is here. I still don't understand what you mean by “life stays in balance”. The 99% of extinct species suggest that it doesn't. I can certainly accept Romansh's “interconnectedness”, but that would apply even if there were no humans on Earth.-Before humans got mixed up in covering the world, each environment had losses and gains of its inhabitants and life stayed naturally generally in balance. Organisms disappeared as new ones appeared, as the concept of natural selection tells us. Yesterday I saw an article that found foxes and cats introduced, by arriving humans, into Australia have killed off about 13% of all original strange animals known only to Australia which for millennia was so isolated. This shows natural balance vs. artificial disruption. I don't know what is so hard to understand.
 
> 
> DAVID: It seems as if you will accept design if I can prove a methodology to God's handling of evolution. I can't. Based on odds humans shouldn't be here. Since they are here, it is easy to assume God arranged it. Easy for me but not for you. So be it. 
> 
> dhw: I have never asked for proof, because we both know proof is impossible. I merely ask for coherent explanations. Yes, it's easy to assume God arranged it, and it's easy for an atheist to assume there is no such thing as God. What's not so easy is to explain how God did it or chance did it. You're happy to ask the atheist how chance could have done it, but complain if you are asked how God could have done it.-I'm not complaining. My explanations for my belief in God don't just hinge on the point that evolution might have been God's method. I look at all the other observations that chance does not allow for, those observations well-known to you. You don't accept chance either, so we can't be that far apart.
 
> dhw:That is a fair comment, and my own open-mindedness on the subject also incorporates other factors.-Please, let's hear some of your other factors to explain toe source of the BB, fine tuning, life's appearance, and the majesty of human intelligence.

Balance of nature illustrated

by dhw, Wednesday, February 11, 2015, 21:23 (3334 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by dhw, Wednesday, February 11, 2015, 21:49

dhw: I still don't understand what you mean by “life stays in balance”. The 99% of extinct species suggest that it doesn't.
DAVID: Before humans got mixed up in covering the world, each environment had losses and gains of its inhabitants and life stayed naturally generally in balance. Organisms disappeared as new ones appeared, as the concept of natural selection tells us.-Natural selection only tells us why some organisms survive and others don't. If, as below, foxes kill off native species, natural selection will result in more foxes and fewer native species - i.e. a change of balance.
 
DAVID: Yesterday I saw an article that found foxes and cats introduced, by arriving humans, into Australia have killed off about 13% of all original strange animals known only to Australia which for millennia was so isolated. This shows natural balance vs. artificial disruption. I don't know what is so hard to understand.-I would suggest that evolution has always been a constant, higgledy-piggledy sequence of disruption and change of balance. Humans are just the latest in a long line of different contributory factors. 
 
dhw: ... You're happy to ask the atheist how chance could have done it, but complain if you are asked how God could have done it.-DAVID: I'm not complaining. My explanations for my belief in God don't just hinge on the point that evolution might have been God's method.-That is not the point at issue, since we both believe evolution happened. You keep saying God's evolutionary method was preprogramming and/or direct dabbling, i.e. he specially designed every innovation and unusual lifestyle. When I doubt the feasibility of this, and its relevance to the emergence of humans as your designated purpose, you reply: “You keep harping on how He does it, and I've freely admitted, I don't know.” I thought your dilemma lay between preprogramming and dabbling, but if you're merely saying "God did it and you don't know how", you're in the same boat as the atheist, who doesn't know how chance did it. 
 
DAVID: You don't accept chance either, so we can't be that far apart.-I don't accept chance, and I don't accept God, and I don't accept my panpsychist alternative, but I don't reject any of them. That's why I am an agnostic.-DAVID: Remember, my acceptance of God is based on lots of other factors besides the process of evolution.
dhw: That is a fair comment, and my own open-mindedness on the subject also incorporates other factors.
DAVID: Please, let's hear some of your other factors to explain toe source of the BB, fine tuning, life's appearance, and the majesty of human intelligence.-All of the above are directly linked to the three alternatives I have listed. Other factors that play a role in my open-mindedness on the subject of God's existence are connected with psychic phenomena and the mysteries associated with consciousness - emotions, aesthetics, reason, memory etc. With the possible exception of aesthetics, all of these are common to our fellow animals, though to a vastly smaller degree.

Balance of nature illustrated

by David Turell @, Thursday, February 12, 2015, 00:50 (3334 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Natural selection only tells us why some organisms survive and others don't. If, as below, foxes kill off native species, natural selection will result in more foxes and fewer native species - i.e. a change of balance.-I don't disagree with you. The Australian balance was changed but there is still balance. Currently they are unhappy about the human-induced change. But there is still a balance.-
> 
> That is not the point at issue, since we both believe evolution happened. You keep saying God's evolutionary method was preprogramming and/or direct dabbling,... I thought your dilemma lay between preprogramming and dabbling, but if you're merely saying "God did it and you don't know how", you're in the same boat as the atheist, who doesn't know how chance did it. -I'm not in that boat. Chance explains nothing, because chance can't possibly work.
> 
> DAVID: You don't accept chance either, so we can't be that far apart.
> 
> dhw: I don't accept chance, and I don't accept God, and I don't accept my panpsychist alternative, but I don't reject any of them. That's why I am an agnostic.-It seems to my you reject all of them.
> 
> dhw: All of the above are directly linked to the three alternatives I have listed. Other factors that play a role in my open-mindedness on the subject of God's existence are connected with psychic phenomena and the mysteries associated with consciousness - emotions, aesthetics, reason, memory etc. With the possible exception of aesthetics, all of these are common to our fellow animals, though to a vastly smaller degree.-The 'mysteriousness of consciousness' should act to convince you that something beyond naturalism is happening. You are obviously aware of all the things I present. Your decision not to reach a conclusion I can understand as a very personal approach by you. Something innate.

Balance of nature illustrated

by dhw, Thursday, February 12, 2015, 19:54 (3333 days ago) @ David Turell

DHW: I thought your dilemma lay between preprogramming and dabbling, but if you're merely saying "God did it and you don't know how", you're in the same boat as the atheist, who doesn't know how chance did it. 
DAVID: I'm not in that boat. Chance explains nothing, because chance can't possibly work.-The atheist says there is no God, therefore chance must have done it, though he doesn't know how. You say chance can't have done it, so God must have done it, though you don't know how. Neither of you can see that you are in the same boat. Two one-eyed kings...-dhw: I don't accept chance, and I don't accept God, and I don't accept my panpsychist alternative, but I don't reject any of them. That's why I am an agnostic.

DAVID: It seems to my you reject all of them.-It seems we agnostics are doomed to eternal misunderstanding! Nobody knows the answers. In every hypothesis there is a proportion of believability, plus a proportion of unbelievability. The unbelievable bits make it impossible for some of us to believe. The believable bits make it impossible for some of us to disbelieve. And so we neither believe nor disbelieve. But theists and atheists find it impossible to believe that someone can be neither a believer nor a disbeliever.-DAVID: The 'mysteriousness of consciousness' should act to convince you that something beyond naturalism is happening. You are obviously aware of all the things I present. Your decision not to reach a conclusion I can understand as a very personal approach by you. Something innate.-It is personal, as is your own, but not innate. It is just as much the result of conscious thinking as your decision that God exists. The mystery of consciousness is not solved by telling us that consciousness can only have been created by a consciousness that was not created.

Balance of nature illustrated

by David Turell @, Thursday, February 12, 2015, 21:11 (3333 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: The atheist says there is no God, therefore chance must have done it, though he doesn't know how. You say chance can't have done it, so God must have done it, though you don't know how. Neither of you can see that you are in the same boat. Two one-eyed kings...-Since there are only chance and design one has to be true. I like my eye's view better.
> 
>dhw: It [agnosticism] is just as much the result of conscious thinking as your decision that God exists. The mystery of consciousness is not solved by telling us that consciousness can only have been created by a consciousness that was not created.-I cannot believe something as magical as consciousness can have been invented from a gaseous and rocky universe by chance out of thin air. Only a purposeful entity could do that.

Balance of nature illustrated

by George Jelliss ⌂ @, Crewe, Wednesday, February 25, 2015, 19:16 (3320 days ago) @ David Turell

This PDF is about the causal "forces" at work in evolution.
Natural selection versus Drift:-http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/3035/1/DriftPSApaperFinal.pdf-I thought it might fit into this thread, 
especially as dhw is on about "chance" again!

--
GPJ

Balance of nature illustrated

by David Turell @, Thursday, February 26, 2015, 01:01 (3320 days ago) @ George Jelliss

George: This PDF is about the causal "forces" at work in evolution.
> Natural selection versus Drift:
> 
> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/3035/1/DriftPSApaperFinal.pdf
> 
> I thought it might fit into this thread, 
> especially as dhw is on about "chance" again!-I don't see how forceful natural selection can really be. It only acts on what is presented to it. And that presentation depends upon mutations, epigenetic alterations as well as underlying genetic drift. I view it as at the end of an assembly line and allowing a good product to be spit out. I can't really follow the mathematical arguments in the article, but I understand that the size of a population, of course, must alter the probabilities. The article fits slow step by step Darwin theory of evolution, but it doesn't solve major issues like why the Cambrian Explosion happened. The article does not deal with epigenetics at all, so I don't know how organism self-inventiveness fits into the author's discussion, if at all.

Balance of nature illustrated

by dhw, Thursday, February 26, 2015, 17:34 (3319 days ago) @ George Jelliss

GEORGE: This PDF is about the causal "forces" at work in evolution.
Natural selection versus Drift:-http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/3035/1/DriftPSApaperFinal.pdf
 
I thought it might fit into this thread, 
especially as dhw is on about "chance" again!-My references to chance in evolution have nothing to do with natural selection, and I suspect you have missed a lot of the discussion in which I have attempted to eliminate chance from the process. In brief, many of us have great difficulty accepting that random mutations (= chance) can produce the complex innovations which have led from single cell life to humans. Innovation is the problem - natural selection only ensures the survival of those innovations that are beneficial; it does not produce them. I have suggested that since we know organisms themselves are capable of changing their structures in order to adapt to changing conditions, it is possible that in the past, when conditions were very different, the same mechanism for adaptation enabled organisms to exploit the opportunities offered by new environments and to innovate. What Darwin attributed to chance would therefore have been the result of deliberate actions by organisms themselves.-I'm afraid I found the article very hard going, and gave up after a while. It didn't seem to be concerned with the problem of innovation anyway, and David's comment confirms my impression.

Balance of nature illustrated: termite mounds

by David Turell @, Tuesday, March 03, 2015, 14:36 (3314 days ago) @ dhw

Protect the soil and much more:-http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/termites-are-guardians-of-the-soil.html?emc=edit_th_20150303&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=60788861&_r=0-"By poking holes, or macropores, as they dig through the ground, termites allow rain to soak deep into the soil rather than running off or evaporating. Termites artfully mix inorganic particles of sand, stone and clay with organic bits of leaf litter, discarded exoskeletons and the occasional squirrel tail, a blending that helps the soil retain nutrients and resist erosion.-"The stickiness of a termite's feces and other bodily excretions lend structure and coherence to the soil, which also prevents erosion. Bacteria in the termite's gut are avid nitrogen fixaters, able to extract the vital element from the air and convert it into a usable sort of fertilizer, benefiting the termite host and the vast underground economy.-"'Over all, termites are extremely good for the health of the soil” on which everything else depends, Dr. Bignell said.-"And termites have been enormously successful. Taxonomically, they're considered “a superior kind of cockroach,” as Dr. Bignell puts it, but termites account for a far greater portion of the world's insect biomass than do all the other cockroaches combined. In the tropics, where social insects rule, the termites outweigh the ants hundredfold.-"With the help of symbiotic bacteria and protozoa packed into the termitic paunch at what might be the highest microbial densities in nature, termites thrive by eating what others can't or won't: wood, dung, lichen, even dirt."

Balance of nature illustrated: loss of large predators

by David Turell @, Thursday, March 12, 2015, 15:34 (3305 days ago) @ David Turell

Has a direct effect on balance:-
"'There are links between the sizes of (organisms) in the food chain," DeLong said. "Wolves eat moose and deer. Each individual moose is going to eat a lot more vegetation than an individual rabbit, so that link is stronger."-"As a result, losing a large predator may substantially reduce the primary producers in an ecosystem by essentially giving consumers free reign to feast on them."-
 Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-03-loss-large-predators-ecosystem.html#jCp

Balance of nature illustrated: poop production

by David Turell @, Monday, October 26, 2015, 23:45 (3077 days ago) @ David Turell

The loss of large megafauna has reduced the transport of many nutrients, especially phosphorus:-http://phys.org/news/2015-10-declines-whales-fish-seabirds-large.html-"Giants once roamed the earth. Oceans teemed with ninety-foot-long whales. Huge land animals—like truck-sized sloths and ten-ton mammoths—ate vast quantities of food, and, yes, deposited vast quantities of poop. -"A new study shows that these whales and outsized land mammals—as well as seabirds and migrating fish—played a vital role in keeping the planet fertile by transporting nutrients from ocean depths and spreading them across seas, up rivers, and deep inland, even to mountaintops.-"However, massive declines and extinctions of many of these animals has deeply damaged this planetary nutrient recycling system, a team of scientists reported October 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.-"'This broken global cycle may weaken ecosystem health, fisheries, and agriculture," says Joe Roman, a biologist at the University of Vermont and co-author on the new study.-"On land, the capacity of animals to carry nutrients away from concentrated "hotspots," the team writes, has plummeted to eight percent of what it was in the past—before the extinction of some 150 species of mammal "megafauna" at the end of the last ice age."-Comment: Balance in nature is critical

Balance of nature; destruction of

by David Turell @, Thursday, December 17, 2015, 00:30 (3026 days ago) @ David Turell

When foreign animals are introduced and there are no natural predators the balance is destroyed with severe results:-http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/feral-cats-numbat/?WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20151216-"Feral cats have scratched up another victim. Earlier this month the Western Australia (WA) government listed a rare marsupial called the numbat, also known as the banded anteater (Myrmecobius fasciatus), as endangered. The colorful squirrel-like critters—literally the emblem of Western Australia—only grow to about 45 centimeters in length and have no defense against hungry felines.-***-"Despite their risks, numbats are doing better than some other species. The same day the numbat was declared endangered four other long-lost mammals were finally identified as extinct: the desert bettong (Bettongia ogilbyi penicillata), inland burrowing bettong (Bettongia lesueur graii), south-western rufous hare-wallaby ( Lagorchestes hirsutus hirsutus) and Gould's mouse (Pseudomys gouldii). All were probably wiped out by invasive predators like foxes, cats, mice or rats. None of them have been seen for at least 50 to 100 years."-Comment: A natural balance of nature never lets this happen. The balance is very important for the ladder of predation is maintained.

Balance of nature; destruction of

by David Turell @, Monday, April 25, 2016, 01:07 (2896 days ago) @ David Turell

Another example from Australia, where the problem coms from the 1800's when colonists brought to Australia any animal or plant hey wished without any knowledge of how it might upset the balance of nature:-https://www.newscientist.com/article/2085389-vampire-vine-helps-to-destroy-alien-european-weeds-in-australia/-"Cassytha pubescens, or devil's twine, is the first native plant to be investigated as a weapon against invasive weeds introduced to Australia by European settlers in the early 1800s.-"Robert Cirocco of the University of Adelaide says the vine is able to kill all the “major baddies” - gorse, Scotch broom and blackberry - by attaching small suckers to the plants' stems and extracting their water and nutrients. 
 
“'This is important because these weeds cost us millions of dollars annually to eradicate, not to mention their incalculable costs to our native biodiversity,” he says.-"Cirocco and his colleagues showed that devil's twine can destroy gorse by reducing its water and nutrient intake, which in turn harms photosynthesis. “Less photosynthesis translates to less carbohydrate, and less carbohydrate translates to less growth,” says Cirocco-"The gorse plants that the researchers studied were in the Mount Lofty Ranges in South Australia, where many had been naturally infected with C. pubescens in the area. “You could see a Cassytha infection front that was leaving dead gorse in its wake,” says Cirocco.-"As a result, there is little danger that the vine will itself become a menace, as with the cane toads introduced to Australia in 1935 to control beetles that devastated sugar-cane crops.-"C. pubescens also fulfils the brief of being far more toxic to non-native than native plants.-“'Cassytha is not the smartest thing - it will pretty much go for anything it can get its suckers on, including barbed wire,” says Cirocco. “But research shows that Cassytha has a much greater effect on invasive weeds, perhaps because native plants have co-evolved with it, so they have likely developed mechanisms of resistance or tolerance.'”-Comment: This discussion points out that Australia is still fighting the mistakes made by its colonists, learning about the balance of nature the hard way.

Balance of nature; ecologists view

by David Turell @, Thursday, June 02, 2016, 15:45 (2857 days ago) @ David Turell

It turns out in a community of animals the top predator controls the existing diversity:-http://nautil.us/issue/37/currents/the-ecologist-who-threw-starfish-rp-"All three scientists were interested in the processes that control animal populations, and they debated explanations circulating at the time. One major school of thought was that population size was controlled by physical conditions such as the weather. Smith, Hairston, and Slobodkin (hereafter dubbed “HSS”) all doubted this idea because, if true, it meant that population sizes fluctuated randomly with the weather. Instead, the trio was convinced that biological processes must control the abundance of species in nature, at least to some degree.-***-"HSS pictured the food chain as subdivided into different levels according to the food each consumed (known as trophic levels). At the bottom were the decomposers that degrade organic debris; above them were the producers, the plants that relied on sunlight, rain, and soil nutrients; the next level were the consumers, the herbivores that ate plants; and above them the predators that ate the herbivores.-***-"Altogether, the removal of the predatory starfish had quickly reduced the diversity of the intertidal community from the original 15 species to eight.-"The results of this simple experiment were astonishing. They showed that one predator could control the composition of species in a community through its prey—affecting both animals it ate as well as animals and plants that it did not eat.-***-"In 1971, Paine was offered a trip to one of those places—Amchitka Island, a treeless island in the western part of the Aleutians. Some students were working on the kelp communities there and Paine flew out to offer his advice. Jim Estes, a student from the University of Arizona, met with Paine and described his research plans. Estes was interested in sea otters, but he was not an ecologist. He explained to Paine that he was thinking about studying how the kelp forests supported the thriving sea otter populations.-“'Jim, you are asking the wrong questions,” Paine told him. “You want to look at the three trophic levels: sea otters eat urchins, sea urchins eat kelp.”-***-"Estes' and Palmisano's observations suggested that the reintroduction of sea otters would lead to a dramatic restructuring of coastal ecosystems. Shortly after their pioneering study, the opportunity arose to test the impact of sea otters as they spread along the Alaskan coast and re-colonized various communities. In 1975, sea otters were absent from Deer Harbor in southeast Alaska. But by 1978, the animals had established themselves there, sea urchins were small and scarce, the sea bottom was littered with their remains, and tall, dense stands of kelp had sprung up.-"The presence of the otters had suppressed the urchins, which had otherwise suppressed the growth of kelp. This kind of double negative logic is widespread in biology. In this instance, otters “induce” the growth of kelp by repressing the population of sea urchins. -***-"The discovery of trophic cascades was exciting. The many indirect effects caused by the presence or absence of predators (starfish, sea otters) were surprising because they revealed previously unsuspected, indeed unimagined, connections among creatures. Who would have thought that the growth of kelp forests depended on the presence of sea otters?-***-"Indeed, trophic cascades have been discovered across the globe, where keystone predators such as wolves, lions, sharks, coyotes, starfish, and spiders shape communities. And because of their newly appreciated regulatory roles, the loss of large predators over the past century has Estes, Paine, and many other biologists deeply concerned.-"Today, of course, one predator has more influence than any other. We have created the extraordinary ecological situation where we are the top predator and the top consumer in all habitats. “Humans are certainly the overdominant keystones and will be the ultimate losers if the rules are not understood and global ecosystems continue to deteriorate,” Paine says. The only species that can regulate us is us."-Comment: A perfect reason for the bush of life. As I've stated everyone has to eat for evolution to exist and progress. Ecosystems must maintain balance. The higgildy-piggeldy has full-blown purpose behind it.

Balance of nature illustrated: role of jelly fish

by David Turell @, Wednesday, March 23, 2016, 22:54 (2928 days ago) @ David Turell

The lowly jelly fish has an important role at the bottom of the food chain. This is a very long article most of which is not to my point that the food chain explains the reason for the bush of life. This article shows why this ancient 600 million year old (roughly)animal needs to be studied and understood. We humans have a tendency to disrupt the ecosystems of nature without thought. Luckily, in the recent past, our activities have been recognized as having potential dangers. Just ask the Australians, who introduced all sorts of foreign animals to the detriment of the indigenous species:-http://www.nature.com/news/the-secret-lives-of-jellyfish-1.19613?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20160324&spMailingID=50988418&spUserID=MjA1NjE2NDU5MwS2&spJobID=882986144&spReportId=ODgyOTg2MTQ0S0-“It's been very, very hard to convince fisheries scientists that jellies are important,” says Purcell.-***-"A few years ago, they discovered that salmon prey such as herring and smelt tend to congregate in different areas of the sound from jellyfish1 and they are now trying to understand the ecological factors at work and how they might be affecting stocks of valuable fish species. But first, the researchers need to know how many jellyfish are out there. For this, the team is taking a multipronged approach. They use a seaplane to record the number and location of jellyfish aggregations, or 'smacks', scattered about the sound. -***-"Some studies show that the animals are important consumers of everything from microscopic zooplankton to small fish, others suggest that jellies have value as prey for a wide range of species, including penguins, lobsters and bluefin tuna. There's also evidence that they might enhance the flow of nutrients and energy between the species that live in the sunlit surface waters and those in the impoverished darkness below.-*** 
" When Cardona's team analysed 20 species of predator and 13 potential prey, it was surprised to find that jellies had a major role in the diets of bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), little tunny (Euthynnus alletteratus) and spearfish (Tetrapturus belone)2. In the case of juvenile bluefins, jellyfish and other gelatinous animals represented up to 80% of the total food intake. “According to our models they are probably one of the most important prey for juvenile bluefin tuna,” says Cardona.-
***-"Jarman, who works at the Australian Antarctic Division in Kingston, reported in 2013 that DNA analysis of the samples revealed that jellyfish are a common part of the penguin's diet4. Work that has yet to be published suggests the same is true for other Southern Ocean seabirds.-***-"In the deep waters of the South Pacific and Indian oceans, Jeffs has been studying the elusive early life stages of the spiny lobster (Panulirus cygnus). During a 2011 plankton-collecting expedition 350 kilometres off the coast of Western Australia, he and his fellow researchers hauled in a large salp (Thetys vagina), a common barrel-shaped gelatinous animal. The catch also included dozens of lobster larvae, including six that were embedded in the salp itself. DNA analysis of the lobsters' stomach glands revealed that the larvae had been feeding on their hosts5.-"Jeffs now suspects that these crustaceans, which support a global fishery worth around US$2 billion a year, depend heavily on this relationship. “What makes the larvae so successful in the open ocean,” he says, “is that they can cling to what is basically a big piece of floating meat, like a jellyfish or a big salp, and feed on it for a couple of weeks without exerting any energy at all.”-***-"As scientists gather more data, they hope to get a better sense of exactly what role jellyfish have in various ocean regions. If jellies turn out to be as important as some data now suggest, the population spikes that have made the headlines in the past decade could have much wider repercussions than previously imagined."-Comment: And dead jelly fish provide nutrients for bottom plants. The bush of life is very intertwine and necessary.

Balance of nature: feral cats are a Hawaiian disaster

by David Turell @, Thursday, June 09, 2016, 20:52 (2850 days ago) @ David Turell

Toxoplasmosis is affecting Hawaiian geese fro feral cats:-http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/hawaiian-birds-cat-poop/?WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20160609-"The parasite that causes toxoplasmosis has become widespread in Hawaii and now infects as many as 48 percent of some Hawaiian geese populations, a new study finds.-"Hawaiian geese, also known as n?n? (Branta sandvicensis), nearly went extinct in the last century due to overhunting and introduced predators. By 1949, the year captive breeding efforts began, just 30 geese remained. Today that has turned around and an estimated 2,800 geese live on four of Hawaii's main islands, where they remain protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act.-"Now the n?n?'s remarkable recovery faces a new challenge. According to a study published in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases, the geese have become increasingly infected by Toxoplasma gondii, the protozoan parasite that causes toxoplasmosis. Researchers found that the birds on the island of Molokai, the island which had “a conspicuously consistent presence of feral cats,” also had the highest rates of infection, as astonishing 48 percent. Infections rates were 23 percent on Maui and 21 percent on Kauai, where feral cat populations were lower.-"Lead author Thierry Work, a wildlife disease specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey, says the geese are probably contracting T. gondii by either accidentally ingesting cat feces or eating insects that are carrying the parasite.-"Toxoplasmosis doesn't kill a huge number of geese by itself. Work says it's only directly responsible for about 4 percent of deaths, but it may contribute to mortality in other ways. “There is increasing body of evidence to suggest that animals infected with T. gondii have altered behavioral patterns, one of which is that infected animals are more prone to trauma,” Work says. Trauma—such as predator attacks or being struck by vehicles—is leading cause of death in the birds. Work thinks the parasite could make the geese more prone to “traumatic events,” but that still needs additional confirmation.-"Work says he hopes this new research—which also indicates a greater threat of toxoplasmosis for humans and other wildlife—could “prompt some additional soul searching on how to address feral cats in an ecosystem where they don't belong.”-"Conservationists echoed this sentiment. “While we appreciate cats as pets and acknowledge the important role pet cats play in many people's lives, it is clear that the continued presence of feral cats in our parks and neighborhoods is having detrimental impacts on people and wildlife,” Grant Sizemore, director of invasive species programs at American Bird Conservancy, said in a prepared release. “Before another species goes extinct or another person is affected by toxoplasmosis, we need to acknowledge the severity of the problem and take decisive actions to resolve it. What is required is responsible pet ownership and the effective removal of free-roaming feral cats from the landscape.'”-Comment: Just like Australia. Bring in foreign animals to an isolated ecosystem and it is a disaster.

Balance of nature: gene drives are a worry

by David Turell @, Tuesday, June 14, 2016, 14:37 (2845 days ago) @ David Turell

Genetic engineering among noxious insects is advancing but is worrisome: - http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fast-spreading-genetic-mutations-pose-an-ecol... - "A technique that allows particular genes to spread rapidly through populations is not ready to be set loose in the wild, warns a committee convened by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. - "In a report released on June 8, the committee argued that such ‘gene drives' pose complex ecological risks that are not yet fully understood. “It is not ready—and we are not ready—for any kind of release,” says Elizabeth Heitman, co-chair of the committee and a research integrity educator at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee. “There is a lot of work that needs to be done.” - "Even so, Heitman and other members of the committee felt that the potential of gene drives, for example to combat insect-borne diseases, is compelling enough to warrant additional laboratory and field studies. - "Gene drives have been studied for more than half a century, and have long been postulated as a way to eradicate mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria. But the field was hampered by technical challenges until the recent advent of sophisticated—and easy-to-use—tools for engineering genomes. In the past two years, researchers have used a popular gene-editing technique called CRISPR-Cas9 to develop gene drives that spread a given gene through a population almost exponentially faster than normal in yeast, fruit flies and two species of mosquitoes. - "But as molecular biology research on gene drives has surged forward, it has outpaced our understanding of their ecological consequences, says Heitman. Even a small, accidental release from a laboratory holds the potential to spread around the globe: “After release into the environment, a gene drive knows no political boundaries,” the committee wrote. - *** - "A gene drive could have unintended effects on the environment if it is unleashed in wild populations: removing one species of insect, for example, could endanger the animals that feed on it. Given this risk, the report also stressed the importance of layering multiple methods of containment to prevent accidental release of engineered species, and of consulting with the public even before gene drive experiments are undertaken in the laboratory. It's a message that evolutionary engineer Kevin Esvelt worries may not come through strongly enough to individual researchers." - Comment: The worry about upsetting balance is very real. Again, ask the Australians. Any newly developed balance may not be good for the niche ecologic area where is happens and needed species can be destroyed.

Balance of nature: gene drives are a worry

by David Turell @, Friday, June 17, 2016, 20:46 (2842 days ago) @ David Turell

A solution to everlasting gene drives is to use ones that last for only a few generations:-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carina%E2%80%93Sagittarius_Arm-"It's a Catch-22. We have to field-test gene drives to determine if they are safe to use to stop the spread of malaria, for example. But these bits of self-copying DNA could spread to every member of a species, making field tests risky. “A release anywhere is likely a release everywhere,” says Kevin Esvelt at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.-"But his team may have the answer. It has come up with a way to make gene drives self-limiting, so they spread rapidly through a population at first but gradually vanish after, say, 50 or a hundred generations.-"Not only could this make it possible to safely test gene drives in the wild, it could also allow cities and countries to use them locally without have to worry about the risk of worldwide spread.-"Most plants and animals have matching pairs of chromosomes, but pass down only one of each pair to each of their offspring - the other comes from the other parent.-"This means that if you add a piece of DNA to one chromosome, normally only half the offspring will inherit it. Gene drives cheat by “copying and pasting” themselves to the other chromosome, meaning all offspring inherit them and they can spread rapidly throughout a population.-"Natural gene drives have been around for hundreds of millions of years. In the past two years, biologists have created artificial versions based on the CRISPR gene editing system.-***-"To create gene drives that don't spread indefinitely, the team split them up into three or more parts - which Esvelt calls elements - to create a “daisy chain”.-"Each element contains one or more genes that contribute towards the whole gene drive. In Esvelt's design, element A can only copy and paste itself if element B is present. Element B can only copy and paste itself if element C is present. And element C, crucially, cannot copy and paste itself at all - it can only spread by normal breeding, to half of offspring.-"The idea is to release thousands of mosquitoes, say, carrying all three elements. When they mate with wild mosquitoes, all the offspring will inherit element A and B, but only half will inherit element C. In the following generations, element B will spread rapidly and A will spread even more rapidly, but C will gradually die out. Once it does, B will start to disappear, and finally A will too.-***-:The team's modelling suggests that if only a few animals are released, the drive's spread would be limited and it would soon die out. If enough animals are released, though, element A could spread to 100 per cent of a local population. And by adding more elements to the daisy chain, the gene drive could be made to persist longer in the wild.-"This could allow local use of gene drives. Suppose the US wanted to release a gene drive that would halt the spread of Lyme disease by making the white-footed mice that carry the disease-causing bacterium immune to it. A conventional gene drive would spread to mice in Canada and Mexico, so approval from their governments would be needed too. With a daisy-chain drive, the spread could be limited. Esvelt is exploring the possibility of combating Lyme disease this way but stresses that it is a long way off.-"Another possibility, he says, would be to use a daisy-chain gene drive to help save Hawaii's native birds, which are being wiped out by avian malaria. The gene drive could be used to eliminate the mosquito species that carries the disease.-"With a conventional gene drive, a single mosquito stowing away in someone's luggage could spread the drive around the tropics. If the daisy-chain drives work as planned, a single mosquito couldn't spread the drive very far at all."-Comment: Interesting research, but it doesn't solve the problem of how speciation works, not that it was meant to. But it is possible that natural gene drives exist and drive speciation.

Balance of nature: loss of diversity

by David Turell @, Friday, July 15, 2016, 01:38 (2815 days ago) @ David Turell

Here is an article that demonstrates the importance of maintaining the balance of nature:-http://phys.org/news/2016-07-biodiversity-falls-safe-globally.html-"Levels of global biodiversity loss may negatively impact on ecosystem function and the sustainability of human societies, according to UCL-led research. -"'This is the first time we've quantified the effect of habitat loss on biodiversity globally in such detail and we've found that across most of the world biodiversity loss is no longer within the safe limit suggested by ecologists" explained lead researcher, Dr Tim Newbold from UCL and previously at UNEP-WCMC.-"We know biodiversity loss affects ecosystem function but how it does this is not entirely clear. What we do know is that in many parts of the world, we are approaching a situation where human intervention might be needed to sustain ecosystem function."-"The team found that grasslands, savannas and shrublands were most affected by biodiversity loss, followed closely by many of the world's forests and woodlands. They say the ability of biodiversity in these areas to support key ecosystem functions such as growth of living organisms and nutrient cycling has become increasingly uncertain.-***-"It's worrying that land use has already pushed biodiversity below the level proposed as a safe limit," said Professor Andy Purvis of the Natural History Museum, London, who also worked on the study.-"'Decision-makers worry a lot about economic recessions, but an ecological recession could have even worse consequences - and the biodiversity damage we've had means we're at risk of that happening. Until and unless we can bring biodiversity back up, we're playing ecological roulette."-***-"The team used data from hundreds of scientists across the globe to analyse 2.38 million records for 39,123 species at 18,659 sites where are captured in the database of the PREDICTS project. The analyses were then applied to estimate how biodiversity in every square kilometre land has changed since before humans modified the habitat.-"They found that biodiversity hotspots - those that have seen habitat loss in the past but have a lot of species only found in that area - are threatened, showing high levels of biodiversity decline. Other high biodiversity areas, such as Amazonia, which have seen no land use change have higher levels of biodiversity and more scope for proactive conservation.-"'The greatest changes have happened in those places where most people live, which might affect physical and psychological wellbeing. To address this, we would have to preserve the remaining areas of natural vegetation and restore human-used lands," added Dr Newbold."-Comment: This study illustrates why the 'balance of nature' and the h-p bush are so important. Both are one and the same, that is obvious. Both are needed. Isn't that obvious?

Balance of nature: loss of diversity

by dhw, Friday, July 15, 2016, 12:49 (2814 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTES: "'Decision-makers worry a lot about economic recessions, but an ecological recession could have even worse consequences - and the biodiversity damage we've had means we're at risk of that happening. Until and unless we can bring biodiversity back up, we're playing ecological roulette."-"'The greatest changes have happened in those places where most people live, which might affect physical and psychological wellbeing. To address this, we would have to preserve the remaining areas of natural vegetation and restore human-used lands," added Dr Newbold."-David's comment: This study illustrates why the 'balance of nature' and the h-p bush are so important. Both are one and the same, that is obvious. Both are needed. Isn't that obvious?-According to you, the balance of nature only means that life goes on. It has constantly changed as parts of the h-p bush have gone and others have come, and so it is simply whatever the h-p bush makes it. I myself consider the loss of biodiversity through human negligence a colossal tragedy, and the fact that humans are changing the balance of nature - and as a result may even threaten their own existence - is obvious to us all. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with your hypothesis that God personally designed millions of natural wonders like the weaverbird's nest in order for nature to be balanced in order to produce food in order for life to go on in order to produce homo sapiens - or simply because he likes complexity for complexity's sake.

Balance of nature: bald eagle troubles

by David Turell @, Monday, July 18, 2016, 17:58 (2811 days ago) @ dhw

Young baby eagles re not getting enough food in Florida. Perhaps lack of prey:-https://www.newscientist.com/article/2097850-starving-bald-eagle-chicks-hint-at-ecosystem-collapse-in-florida/-"A team at Florida Atlantic University installed cameras at four bald eagle nests in Florida Bay, between the southern mainland and the Florida Keys, to figure out why the population has been declining.-"They found that eagle parents were feeding their young less than twice a day - nearly half what eagle chicks get to eat in other regions. The team also observed that the biomass of the food deliveries declined throughout the breeding season even as the chicks grew larger, suggesting that the parents weren't finding enough food.-"The study concluded that a collapsing Florida Bay ecosystem isn't supporting the eagles any more. In recent decades, high salt concentrations have killed off sea grasses, releasing sediments that triggered algal blooms.-"The knock-on effect has killed many fish that eagles depend on for food. It's possible developments in the Everglades have disrupted the flow of fresh water into the bay, setting off these problems. -"Ospreys, another raptor species that relies even more on fish, have also dwindled in Florida Bay, says Watts.-“'The same fingers are pointing to food stress related to an ecosystem-wide change,” he says. “One of the benefits of monitoring ospreys and eagles is that they're an indicator of what's happening underneath the surface.”-"However, bald eagles aren't in trouble in most of the US, says Watts. After recovering from the 1970s decline, the species has thrived. “Their numbers are huge across the continent now,” he says."-Comment: To remind, it has been shown when the top predator is removed from the microcosm of the ecosystem, it falls apart.

Balance of nature: bald eagle troubles

by dhw, Tuesday, July 19, 2016, 13:03 (2810 days ago) @ David Turell

David's comment: To remind, it has been shown when the top predator is removed from the microcosm of the ecosystem, it falls apart. - A good example of the way ecosystems work (or don't work), but - the pedant speaking here - I think the article shows that it's when the microcosm of the ecosystem is removed that the top predator is also removed and the system falls apart.

Balance of nature: bald eagle troubles

by David Turell @, Tuesday, July 19, 2016, 14:54 (2810 days ago) @ dhw

Another version of a story about loss of diversity:-http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/46573/title/Report--Biodiversity-Has-Fallen-Below--Safe--Levels/&utm_campaign=NEWSLETTER_TS_The-Scientist-Daily_2016&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=31817144&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8cmBIFgNW9W4uIb6SZKUlW5wlEhraJsBUNntDcMTFK6pYvdqTPvi8DwJWCnkCzzTDVwyWQ48OK38odOSHODsHxEIMHHA&_hsmi=31817144/-"Researchers at the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre in the U.K. and colleagues have found that 58 percent of the world's land—home to more than 70 percent of the human population—has lost more than 10 percent of its biodiversity, placing it below the “safe” limit “within which ecological function is relatively unaffected,” according to a study published last week (July 14) in Science. Human society depends on these ecosystems for everything from crop pollination to waste decomposition.-“'This is definitely a situation where the precautionary principle needs to be applied: we can't afford to wait to see the long-term consequences of degradation of natural ecosystems,” ecologist Owen Lewis of Oxford University, who was not involved in the study, told BBC News.-"Study coauthor Tim Newbold and colleagues modeled how human land use and other factors have impacted biodiversity, based on more than 2 million records for nearly 40,000 land-dwelling species. The ecological decline was most dramatic in grasslands and biodiversity hotspots such as the Amazon rainforest and sub-Saharan Africa, the researchers reported.-"The 10 percent safe-level cutoff is based on the Biodiversity Intactness Index, a measure of how abundant populations of different species are relative to their preindustrial levels, as detailed in the Planetary Boundaries framework (first published in 2009 and updated in 2015).-***-“'Unless we really convey . . . the implications of that biodiversity loss for human well-being, for livelihood, then we can't really expect to be able to explain to decision makers why they should be paying money to conserve biodiversity,” ecologist Tom Oliver of Reading University in the U.K., who was not involved in the work, told The Verge."-Comment: 'Nuff said: balance of nature is vital. I cannot tell you why it so higgledy-piggledy. That is simply what happened and both of us are stuck with explaining it.

Balance of nature: bald eagle troubles

by dhw, Wednesday, July 20, 2016, 12:12 (2809 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: 'Unless we really convey . . . the implications of that biodiversity loss for human well-being, for livelihood, then we can't really expect to be able to explain to decision makers why they should be paying money to conserve biodiversity,” ecologist Tom Oliver of Reading University in the U.K., who was not involved in the work, told The Verge."-David's comment: 'Nuff said: balance of nature is vital. I cannot tell you why it so higgledy-piggledy. That is simply what happened and both of us are stuck with explaining it.-Vital to what? In this article, “balance of nature” means what suits human beings. Your own “balance of nature” simply entailed the continuation of life. While there was life, there was balance. And the very fact that it is constantly changing (higgledy-piggledy) would seem to support the argument that there is no overall plan, and there never was one.

Balance of nature: bald eagle troubles

by David Turell @, Wednesday, July 20, 2016, 13:50 (2809 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Vital to what? In this article, “balance of nature” means what suits human beings. Your own “balance of nature” simply entailed the continuation of life. While there was life, there was balance. And the very fact that it is constantly changing (higgledy-piggledy) would seem to support the argument that there is no overall plan, and there never was one. - But it applies to all even though in this case they worried about humans. They are emphasizing the aspect of required diversity which h-p supplies.

Balance of nature: New Zealanad fights back

by David Turell @, Monday, July 25, 2016, 23:44 (2804 days ago) @ David Turell

Both New Zealand and Australia are over run by feral animals brought to the two countries by settlers. they now regret it as native animals and birds are being lost:-https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/07/25/new-zealand-plans-to-kill-every-weasel-rat-and-feral-cat-on-its-soil/?wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1-"New Zealand is a nation that takes its birds seriously, and it's got very special ones. The country's currency is adorned with images of winged species found nowhere else, including the yellow-eyed penguin and the black-masked kokako. The logo of the national air force is stamped with the famed kiwi — a chicken-sized puff of feathers that cannot fly.-"But many of those birds and other native wildlife are under assault from species that showed up with settlers to the island nation 200 years ago. And on Monday, Prime Minister John Key announced that, generations after they came, the invaders would have to go.-"New Zealand, he said, has adopted the “ambitious goal” of eradicating its soil of rats, possums, stoats and all other invasive mammals by 2050. The name of the plan: Predator Free New Zealand.-***-"This isn't the first time New Zealanders have contemplated the idea of a full wipeout of introduced predators, which the government says kill 25 million native birds a year and spread diseases to cattle and deer.-***-And in Australia:-https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/07/16/australia-actually-declares-war-on-cats-plans-to-kill-2-million-by-2020/?tid=a_inl-"The Australian government announced plans to cull up to 2 million feral cats by 2020 in a bid to preserve dozens of native species that authorities claim face extinction because of the cats' predatory behavior.-***-"The animals were introduced to the Antipodes about 200 years ago by European settlers and bred and spread rapidly across the Australian continent and New Zealand. According to one estimate, the roughly 20 million cats in Australia kill roughly 75 million native animals a day.-"According to Britain's Guardian newspaper, Australia has one of the worst extinction records in the world, losing about 29 native mammal species since the European arrival. It now lists some 1,800 species as under threat.-***-"It's very important to emphasize, too, that we don't hate cats," cautioned Andrews, the threatened-species commissioner. "We just can't tolerate the damage that they're doing anymore to our wildlife.'"-Comment: Balance in nature is really balanced until it is upset.

Balance of nature: New Zealand fights back

by David Turell @, Wednesday, August 24, 2016, 22:12 (2774 days ago) @ David Turell

My entry on extinction today shows balance of nature based on environmental changes. This article discusses how predators affect the system. in the ice ages large cats fed on young mastodons and maintained the balance:-http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/sabercats-kept-the-world-green/?WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20160824-"The huge herbivores of the Ice Age were ecosystem engineers. Wherever they went, mastodons, sloths, bison, and their ilk changed the landscape by eating, defecating, trampling, and otherwise going about their plant-mashing business. But they were not isolated agents. Following out the engineer analogy, Ice Age megaherbivores had managers. These were the sabercats, hyenas, wolves, and other predators past.-***-"Many of the most iconic Ice Age herbivores were simply too big to kill. It's the same reason why lions don't often chase after adult elephants. Clawing into a pachyderm is a high-risk scenario, even considering the fleshy reward, and fossil evidence has suggested the same pattern held in the Pleistocene. Smilodon didn't take on adult mammoths and Megatherium, for example, but often targeted camels and bison instead. Large size was a refuge was most Pleistocene giants. But their offspring were a different story.-"In a new study surveying the effects of large carnivores stalking the Ice Age landscape, University of California, Los Angeles paleontologist Blaire Van Valkenburgh and colleagues found that the young of many large Pleistocene herbivores would have been right in the sweet spot for hungry carnivores.-***-“'nearly all Pleistocene predator guilds found outside of Australia included at least one and often two species of large sabertooth cat.” This pattern is directly related to the number of big herbivores there were to eat. Even in modern ecosystems, Van Valkenburgh and colleagues point out, the likelihood that three or more large carnivores might be present steadily increases. In addition to the herbivores creating more open habitat that give predators the opportunity to hide along the forested margins, there's simply more meat to carve up.-***-"While a solitary extant lion probably can't capture even a two-year-old baby elephant, the paleontologists found, a lone Smilodon, Homotherium, cave lion, or other large cat would have been capable of hunting a baby mammoth or mastodon in the two-to-four-year-old range. (A sabercat den full of baby mastodon bones in Texas supports this point.) The chances of the Pleistocene predators only got better if they formed a pride, and social strategy was a boon to packs of wolves and clans of hyenas, too.-***-"This is how the landscape was shaped by the subtle paw of the carnivores. Many paleontologists previously thought that Ice Age herbivores were too big to fail. That they existed at saturation levels because their size made them immune. But now Van Valkenburgh and coauthors have made a solid case that carnivores greatly influenced herbivore populations by preying on the young. This was violent, and even sad, but all a part of the constant ecological shuffle. Unchecked by carnivores, large herbivores can proliferate to destructive levels until they start eating themselves out of house and home. Smilodon, dire wolves, and other beasts of prey actually defended the plants - vegetation has no greater friend than a predator. That's how large carnivores have been keeping the world green for millions of years,.."-Comment: We have established that natural ecology always balances out, and that top predators are required to keep the balance. Humans are top predators now. we need to be careful to not disturb the balance.

Balance of nature: Wolves in Yellowstone

by David Turell @, Tuesday, September 27, 2016, 14:56 (2740 days ago) @ David Turell

The reintroduction of a top predator changed Yellowstone. wolves were absent for 70 years. When brought back the entire population of animals changed for the good, the geography of the rivers was stabilized and the vegetation increased. A 5 minute video: - https://aeon.co/videos/how-the-return-of-just-66-wolves-rejuvenated-yellowstone-s-entir... - Comment: Well worth watching. Everyone has to eat is neatly shown.

Balance of nature: Oaks and acorns

by David Turell @, Saturday, November 05, 2016, 22:55 (2701 days ago) @ David Turell

Lots of animals like to eat acorns. This is a problem for oaks who want to continue reproducing but the whole problem is bound up in a balance of nature which involves lice, mice, and gypsy moths, along with variable acorn production:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/boom-or-bust-breeding-cycle-that-helps-the-mighty-oak-survi...

"At unpredictable intervals, groups of stately oaks, usually recognized for their strength and longevity, breed like rabbits. The phenomenon is known as masting, or the simultaneous production of unusually large numbers of acorns by a population of trees.

"It’s impossible to anticipate a mast year because scientists aren’t sure what triggers it, and few places collect the data necessary to verify when it occurs, but this year, oak trees on Long Island and some species in central Pennsylvania are dropping acorns like there’s no tomorrow.

***

"The bumper crops are beneficial because they increase the likelihood that a few oak seedlings will reach maturity. But other consequences ripple through the ecosystem. Animals that feed on acorns will feast on the bounty, and their populations, normally controlled by limited food supplies, will swell. The parasites they support will do the same.

"One important beneficiary is the white-footed mouse, the main reservoir of the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.

"About 10 months after acorns peak in October of a mast year, large numbers of sated mice will begin hosting tick larvae, and about 10 months after that—in May or June the second year after the mast—those larvae will develop into nymphs, which can bite people.

"While deer are often associated with ticks that carry Lyme disease, the ruminants don’t transmit the infection. Mice do, and when they flourish, the disease will proliferate.

***

"Last year, New York’s Hudson Valley experienced a mast year, according to Dr. Ostfeld, who has been counting acorns on the institute’s 2,000-acre property since 1992, and this year it was overrun by what he described as a mouse plague. He expects the coming year to be “risky” for Lyme disease, but on the plus side, the mice will also chow down on the pupae of gypsy moths, which defoliate trees and are one of the country’s most devastating forest pests.

***

"Producing acorns takes a lot of energy, they say, and after a large crop, it’s possible that the trees, which grow slowly in mast years, must redirect their resources to support new growth. They and other scientists also hypothesize that boom-or-bust cycles are adaptations that help oaks outmaneuver predators that gobble up their yield in meager years.

“'What the oak is trying to do is produce so many acorns that predators like chipmunks, squirrels, deer and birds can eat all the acorns they want, but the tree has produced so many there will be leftovers to produce seedlings,” Dr. Abrams said.

***

"Areas that kept out deer and thinned the understory to make room for seedlings improved survival to 56%, but the oaks’ struggle to regenerate was apparent.
“In years when we don’t get bumper crops, most of the acorns are consumed or destroyed,” said David R. Jackson, a forest resources educator with Penn State Extension.

"Increases in the population of deer, which eat both acorns and seedlings, and a century-old forestry policy to eliminate fires that, historically, benefited oaks, make mast years even more important for regeneration."

Comment: Look at the diagram on the website. Note the interacting complexity of this ecosystem as a great example of the importance of the balance of nature. Everyone gets to eat. This system involves two insects, oak trees, changing environmental stresses, mice, deer, human varying forestry practice activities, all related to a varying supply of acorns. God's activity is primarily in the production of a bush of life, which then allows for many interactions between all the organisms that can be involved as part of the network.

Balance of nature: Oaks and acorns

by dhw, Sunday, November 06, 2016, 13:45 (2700 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID's comment: Look at the diagram on the website. Note the interacting complexity of this ecosystem as a great example of the importance of the balance of nature. Everyone gets to eat. This system involves two insects, oak trees, changing environmental stresses, mice, deer, human varying forestry practice activities, all related to a varying supply of acorns. God's activity is primarily in the production of a bush of life, which then allows for many interactions between all the organisms that can be involved as part of the network.

Thank you for another lovely article. It’s pleasing to note that you think your God’s activity is PRIMARILY to produce a bush of life, whereas in the past everything has been primarily geared to the appearance of humans. The balance of nature is constantly changing, which is what results in the huge variety of life throughout its history. As we have noted, this history – even if we restrict it to a theistic perspective - is wide open to interpretation: God exercising tight control over innovations, natural wonders and environmental conditions, or God setting up the mechanisms by which organisms produce their own history of changing balances in accordance with uncontrolled environmental conditions (good or bad luck), or even perhaps a combination of both (which entails dabbling).

Balance of nature: man making a bad balance

by David Turell @, Sunday, November 06, 2016, 14:40 (2700 days ago) @ dhw

This is a story of feral hogs and rabid bats. The feral hogs were an introduced species that got on the loose. The bats take advantage:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/11/04/brazils-invasive-p...

"For nearly three decades now, invasive wild pigs have been spreading throughout Brazil, uprooting native plants, damaging soil quality and destroying crops. There are even reports of the pigs attacking livestock. But while they’re considered a nuisance by most, at least one group seems to be benefiting from them: Brazil’s residents vampire bats.

***

"In other words, it’s a classic example of how one human action — introducing a species that becomes an invader and colonizes new ecosystems in a destructive way — can have cascading and damaging effects that ultimately come back around and hurt humans, themselves.

“'Vampire bats…carry infectious disease, a lot of infectious disease,” said Felipe Pedrosa, a Ph.D. student at Sao Paolo State University and one of the new paper’s authors. “And one of these diseases is rabies.”

***

"Today, the incidence of rabies infections in vampire bats varies by location — it tends to be anywhere from about 1 to up to 10 percent, according to the authors of the new paper. Some farmers routinely vaccinate their livestock against the disease, but the feral pigs, which can also carry rabies, are another story and “may therefore pose a serious threat by spreading the disease,” the authors write.  

***

"They found that, in addition to preying on livestock like cattle, the bats also feed on wild animals including tapirs, deer and feral pigs. The videos and photos from the Pantanal region suggested there was about a 2 percent chance that a pig might be attacked by a vampire bat on any given night. In the Atlantic Forest, this chance rose to 11 percent.

***

"A study published last year in Science, for instance, used a genetic technique to investigate what species the bats prey on most frequently. The results indicated that vampire bats were about seven times more likely to prey on pigs than one would expect would happen by chance alone — in other words, the bats were likely actively seeking out the boars.  

***

"There have been feral pigs in Brazil for up to 200 years, research suggests, when a few domestic pigs escaped and went wild in the Pantanal region. But a large-scale, country-wide invasion can be traced back to the 1990s, when wild boars were imported from Europe and Canada for use in high-quality meat products. In Brazil, many farmers bred these boars with the domestic pigs that already existed in the country. Eventually, the government stopped permitting the importation of wild boars, and many of the interbred pigs were released — accidentally or intentionally — into the wild.

***

"The Brazilian government has established a program allowing the killing of feral pigs, he noted, but added that rigorous restrictions on the purchase of firearms has kept the number of participants fairly small so far. He and other scientists are currently involved in helping federal environment agents come up with better plans to address the pig problem in the future.

"In the meantime, “vampire bats feeding on the constantly spreading feral pigs may therefore be viewed as a potential risk to wildlife, livestock and humans,” the researchers write."

Comment: There is a moral here. A naturally attained balance of nature works correctly until some outsider organism is introduced with no prior study as to the possible consequences. History is replete with the examples, especially in Australia. Everybody has to eat somebody, but a new body is disruptive unless proven otherwise. The bush of life provides for balance, as the oak/ acorn study shows. 

Balance of nature: man making a bad balance

by dhw, Monday, November 07, 2016, 13:21 (2699 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID’s comment: There is a moral here. A naturally attained balance of nature works correctly until some outsider organism is introduced with no prior study as to the possible consequences. History is replete with the examples, especially in Australia. Everybody has to eat somebody, but a new body is disruptive unless proven otherwise. The bush of life provides for balance, as the oak/ acorn study shows.

Absolutely right, and human interference could eventually do for us all. However, it should be pointed out once more that the balance of nature was disrupted on a catastrophic scale over and over again long before humans appeared on the scene. That is one of the major problems you and I keep grappling with in our interpretations of life’s history, as you try to make up your mind whether each disruption was an accident or a deliberate intervention by your God. Whichever it was, we can say that a “naturally attained balance of nature” works for some organisms until a new environment is introduced by God’s design or by accident to change it. This process may result in innovations (the Cambrian) or extinctions (Chixculub), and these changes have produced the bush of life. There is no balance of nature that "works correctly" - there is only a particular balance of nature that suits particular organisms at any given time.

Balance of nature: man making a bad balance

by David Turell @, Monday, November 07, 2016, 14:44 (2699 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID’s comment: There is a moral here. A naturally attained balance of nature works correctly until some outsider organism is introduced with no prior study as to the possible consequences. History is replete with the examples, especially in Australia. Everybody has to eat somebody, but a new body is disruptive unless proven otherwise. The bush of life provides for balance, as the oak/ acorn study shows.

dhw: Absolutely right, and human interference could eventually do for us all. However, it should be pointed out once more that the balance of nature was disrupted on a catastrophic scale over and over again long before humans appeared on the scene. That is one of the major problems you and I keep grappling with in our interpretations of life’s history, as you try to make up your mind whether each disruption was an accident or a deliberate intervention by your God. Whichever it was, we can say that a “naturally attained balance of nature” works for some organisms until a new environment is introduced by God’s design or by accident to change it. This process may result in innovations (the Cambrian) or extinctions (Chixculub), and these changes have produced the bush of life. There is no balance of nature that "works correctly" - there is only a particular balance of nature that suits particular organisms at any given time.

You are right, but, there is a vast difference between your examples: " This process may result in innovations (the Cambrian) or extinctions (Chicxulub)". Chicxulub has an obvious mechanism, while the Cambrian is unexplained. This is an important difference to think about. The Cambrian requires agency, while Chicxulub is simply an extension of objects flying around all through the development of the solar system, a physical process.

Balance of nature: man making a bad balance

by dhw, Tuesday, November 08, 2016, 11:57 (2698 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: …. There is no balance of nature that "works correctly" - there is only a particular balance of nature that suits particular organisms at any given time.

DAVID: You are right, but, there is a vast difference between your examples: " This process may result in innovations (the Cambrian) or extinctions (Chicxulub)". Chicxulub has an obvious mechanism, while the Cambrian is unexplained. This is an important difference to think about. The Cambrian requires agency, while Chicxulub is simply an extension of objects flying around all through the development of the solar system, a physical process.

Why would the Cambrian not have been a physical process? Whatever changes in the environment - an increase in oxygen? - triggered all the innovations would surely have had a physical cause. (Or are you suggesting that there was no change in the environment?) You can argue that God was the "agency" that threw Chixculub and organized the physical factors that caused the changed environment. Or you can argue that in one case or both, the factors were determined by luck – good or bad.

Balance of nature: man making a bad balance

by David Turell @, Tuesday, November 08, 2016, 14:25 (2698 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You are right, but, there is a vast difference between your examples: " This process may result in innovations (the Cambrian) or extinctions (Chicxulub)". Chicxulub has an obvious mechanism, while the Cambrian is unexplained. This is an important difference to think about. The Cambrian requires agency, while Chicxulub is simply an extension of objects flying around all through the development of the solar system, a physical process.


dhw: Why would the Cambrian not have been a physical process? Whatever changes in the environment - an increase in oxygen? - triggered all the innovations would surely have had a physical cause. (Or are you suggesting that there was no change in the environment?) You can argue that God was the "agency" that threw Chixculub and organized the physical factors that caused the changed environment. Or you can argue that in one case or both, the factors were determined by luck – good or bad.

You miss the point that a Cambrian rise in Oxygen does not require an advance in complexity. It only allows for it. Therefore some other force must exist requiring complexity to appear.

Balance of nature: man making a bad balance

by dhw, Wednesday, November 09, 2016, 12:59 (2697 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You miss the point that a Cambrian rise in Oxygen does not require an advance in complexity. It only allows for it. Therefore some other force must exist requiring complexity to appear.

I didn’t think I would need to repeat it, but my hypothesis proposes that evolution advances not only through organisms’ requirements for the purpose of survival but also through their drive for improvement (not all, of course – just the bright, adventurous, inventive ones). I am suggesting that given new opportunities, such as a changed environment, some organisms use them to develop new ways of life, e.g. if Freddy Fish finds himself confronted by dry land, he might go exploring...do I need to go over this again?

Balance of nature: man making a bad balance

by David Turell @, Wednesday, November 09, 2016, 14:46 (2697 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You miss the point that a Cambrian rise in Oxygen does not require an advance in complexity. It only allows for it. Therefore some other force must exist requiring complexity to appear.

dhw: I didn’t think I would need to repeat it, but my hypothesis proposes that evolution advances not only through organisms’ requirements for the purpose of survival but also through their drive for improvement (not all, of course – just the bright, adventurous, inventive ones). I am suggesting that given new opportunities, such as a changed environment, some organisms use them to develop new ways of life, e.g. if Freddy Fish finds himself confronted by dry land, he might go exploring...do I need to go over this again?

Only if someone gave him a set of lungs in advance of his landward perambulation.

Balance of nature: man making a bad balance

by David Turell @, Monday, November 14, 2016, 19:04 (2692 days ago) @ David Turell

Another example of the problems in Australia:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2112592-bunnies-eat-toxic-leaves-to-conquer-austra...

"Nothing will stand in their way. After devastating Australia’s low-lying regions, European rabbits are now muscling in on snowy mountainous areas by adapting to survive on toxic snow gum leaves.

"Rabbits were introduced to Australia in the 19th century and rapidly spread across the continent, creating huge problems for native wildlife and farmers. The only areas they have failed to colonise are those with snow cover in winter, because the grass they eat is buried.

"But in 2011, Ken Green at Australia’s National Parks and Wildlife Service began to notice rabbits living above the winter snowline in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales.

"To understand how they are surviving, he collected their faecal pellets for three years and sent them to the University of Melbourne for dietary analysis.

"The results showed that the leaves of alpine eucalyptus trees, also known as snow gums, form the biggest part of the rabbits’ winter diet.

"It is astonishing that the rabbits can eat such high quantities of eucalyptus leaves, says Green. The tough leaves are difficult to digest, low in nutrients and contain toxins like tannins, terpenes and phenolics.

“Rabbits of course are quite different – they are very energetic – so it’s amazing that they’re getting by and not having major digestive issues,” Green says.

"How they are managing this is not clear. In theory, the rabbits might have acquired gut microbes that help them digest eucalyptus leaves, or evolved physical adaptations. Or it could just be a behavioural change, which means the rabbits must already have had some ability to digest the leaves.

"The health of the rabbits was not directly monitored, but they continued breeding from year to year, suggesting they were surviving well, he says. This may be because they only need to eat the gum leaves for three to four months of the year while there is snow cover, says Green.

"The leaves that the rabbits are eating are those that have recently regenerated after a bushfire ripped through the area in the summer of 2003. These may be gentler on the rabbits’ stomachs than older leaves, says David Lee at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.

"The regenerating trees also have leaves low enough to the snow for the rabbits to reach them. How the rabbits will fare as the trees grow taller is not clear.
This species of rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus, has not colonised snowy regions in Europe because European trees lose their leaves during winter, Green says. “It just goes to show that if you take animals out of their native range and put them in novel environments, strange things will happen.”

"Native animals like koalas can survive on gum leaves because they have evolved special digestive mechanisms – such as hindgut fermentation – that allow them to extract nutrients and detoxify the chemicals. But koalas are mostly sedentary, conserving the limited energy they can extract."

Comment: The point is obvious. Those rabbits are terribly disruptive.

Balance of nature: man making a bad balance

by dhw, Tuesday, November 15, 2016, 14:06 (2691 days ago) @ David Turell

David's comment: The point is obvious. Those rabbits are terribly disruptive.

That certainly is obvious. And what is equally obvious is that according to your reasoning, life remains balanced, because it still goes on. But now it’s balanced in favour of rabbits – just as once it was balanced in favour of dinosaurs. What you call “bad balance” is balance you don’t like. Rabbits are having the time of their life.

Balance of nature: man making a bad balance

by David Turell @, Tuesday, November 15, 2016, 20:23 (2691 days ago) @ dhw

David's comment: The point is obvious. Those rabbits are terribly disruptive.

dhw: That certainly is obvious. And what is equally obvious is that according to your reasoning, life remains balanced, because it still goes on. But now it’s balanced in favour of rabbits – just as once it was balanced in favour of dinosaurs. What you call “bad balance” is balance you don’t like. Rabbits are having the time of their life.

While valuable plants are being destroyed, bringing more bad balance. You are right, there are all sorts of balances, good and bad.

Balance of nature: climate balance uses guano

by David Turell @, Monday, November 21, 2016, 17:58 (2685 days ago) @ David Turell

Arctic bird guano helps seed clouds which reflect sunlight back into space:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161117145110.htm

"Associate Professor of Atmospheric Science Jeff Pierce and graduate student Jack Kodros present evidence linking ammonia emissions from summertime Arctic seabird-colony excrement, called guano, to newly formed atmospheric aerosol particles. These particles can in turn influence Arctic cloud properties and their effects on climate.

"Clouds play a key role in modulating Arctic temperature; thus, understanding factors that influence clouds is essential, Pierce says. Central to the development of clouds is the availability of cloud condensation nuclei -- small atmospheric particles around which water can condense.

:They report the presence of summertime bursts of atmospheric particles linked to ammonia emissions from seabird-colony guano. These particles can spread throughout the Arctic, fostering cloud-droplet formation, and in turn reflect sunlight back to space for a net cooling effect.

"'This newly identified and fascinating ecological-atmospheric connection highlights the interconnectedness of the many components of Earth's climate system," Pierce said."

Comment: Everything on Earth is interconnected to keep this planet stable for life to continue. Looks like it is planned to me.

Balance of nature: saved in New Zealand

by David Turell @, Tuesday, November 29, 2016, 20:41 (2677 days ago) @ David Turell

A destructive butterfly removed:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2114573-new-zealand-is-the-first-country-to-wipe-o...

"Bye bye butterfly. New Zealand has become the first country to successfully eradicate an invasive butterfly species.

The great white butterfly (Pieris brassicae) is found in Europe, Africa and Asia. A member of the species was spotted in New Zealand for the first time in 2010.
An elimination plan was soon launched by the government to protect agricultural crops from being destroyed by the invaders.

"Before morphing into a butterfly, P. brassicae starts out as a caterpillar that feeds voraciously on brassica crops – including cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and Brussel sprouts. It can also eat New Zealand’s 79 native cress species, 57 of which are at risk of extinction.

“'The caterpillars feed in groups on a wide range of host plants and will completely defoliate a plant, and can travel more than 100 metres to find another,” says Jaine Cronin at New Zealand’s department of conservation.
Without swift intervention, the butterfly was predicted to spread rapidly through the country.

***

"Between 2010 and 2014, the department of conservation carried out more than 263,000 searches of 29,000 properties in Nelson on the South Island, where the pest was first discovered, to wipe them out. The species is thought to have arrived by ship at the city’s port.

***

"Children captured 134 great white butterflies, while department staff caught 3000 butterflies, pupae, caterpillars and egg clusters. Killing was done by hand or using insecticide spray, and care was taken not to destroy any native butterfly species. Wasps that attack P. brassicae were also released in 2015 to bolster the efforts.

"Since the NZ$3 million campaign finished in December 2014, careful searches have not found any more great white butterflies. “We’re confident we can declare them eradicated,” says Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy.

“'If none have been seen for two years despite intensive searches, that is a reasonable claim,” says Myron Zalucki at the University of Queensland, Australia.

***

"New Zealand’s great white butterfly eradication is part of a larger scheme to remove all introduced pests. In July, the government announced that it would also wipe out all rats, stoats and possums by 2050."

Comment: More evidence of the importance of the balance of nature.

Balance of nature: saved in New Zealand

by dhw, Wednesday, November 30, 2016, 12:25 (2676 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "New Zealand’s great white butterfly eradication is part of a larger scheme to remove all introduced pests. In July, the government announced that it would also wipe out all rats, stoats and possums by 2050."

David’s comment: More evidence of the importance of the balance of nature.

Let me keep this in context, as you sometimes try to conflate all these examples with your theory that all innovations and natural wonders were part of God’s plan to balance nature to provide food to keep life going so that humans could arrive on the scene. The question, as always, is “important for what”? If the great white butterfly, rats, stoats and possums all disappear, nature will be balanced in favour of all the enemies of great whites, rats, stoats and possums. Nature was balanced in favour of the dinosaurs until it wasn’t. The term is meaningless as an explanation for the course of evolution. But I think we can say with some degree of certainty that it is important for humans that the balance of nature should favour humans. And it is important for rats that the balance of nature should favour rats.

Balance of nature: saved in New Zealand

by David Turell @, Wednesday, November 30, 2016, 15:44 (2676 days ago) @ dhw


dhw: Let me keep this in context, as you sometimes try to conflate all these examples with your theory that all innovations and natural wonders were part of God’s plan to balance nature to provide food to keep life going so that humans could arrive on the scene. The question, as always, is “important for what”? If the great white butterfly, rats, stoats and possums all disappear, nature will be balanced in favour of all the enemies of great whites, rats, stoats and possums. Nature was balanced in favour of the dinosaurs until it wasn’t. The term is meaningless as an explanation for the course of evolution. But I think we can say with some degree of certainty that it is important for humans that the balance of nature should favour humans. And it is important for rats that the balance of nature should favour rats.

The concept is so simple. Life survives on available energy sources, which requires animal eating animal or plants. Of course the balance favors those who survived. We survived and are benefactors of that balance, so of course it is of importance to us. Your contorted discussion simply supports my point of view.

Balance of nature: biodiversity essential

by David Turell @, Wednesday, November 30, 2016, 19:34 (2676 days ago) @ David Turell

Unfortunately this article is behind a paywall, but the abstract makes the point. Nature requires biodiversity for natural balance. that is so obvious

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v536/n7617/full/nature19092.html

Biodiversity at multiple trophic levels is needed for ecosystem multifunctionality

Many experiments have shown that loss of biodiversity reduces the capacity of ecosystems to provide the multiple services on which humans depend. However, experiments necessarily simplify the complexity of natural ecosystems and will normally control for other important drivers of ecosystem functioning, such as the environment or land use. In addition, existing studies typically focus on the diversity of single trophic groups, neglecting the fact that biodiversity loss occurs across many taxa and that the functional effects of any trophic group may depend on the abundance and diversity of others. Here we report analysis of the relationships between the species richness and abundance of nine trophic groups, including 4,600 above- and below-ground taxa, and 14 ecosystem services and functions and with their simultaneous provision (or multifunctionality) in 150 grasslands. We show that high species richness in multiple trophic groups (multitrophic richness) had stronger positive effects on ecosystem services than richness in any individual trophic group; this includes plant species richness, the most widely used measure of biodiversity. On average, three trophic groups influenced each ecosystem service, with each trophic group influencing at least one service. Multitrophic richness was particularly beneficial for ‘regulating’ and ‘cultural’ services, and for multifunctionality, whereas a change in the total abundance of species or biomass in multiple trophic groups (the multitrophic abundance) positively affected supporting services. Multitrophic richness and abundance drove ecosystem functioning as strongly as abiotic conditions and land-use intensity, extending previous experimental results to real-world ecosystems. Primary producers, herbivorous insects and microbial decomposers seem to be particularly important drivers of ecosystem functioning, as shown by the strong and frequent positive associations of their richness or abundance with multiple ecosystem services. Our results show that multitrophic richness and abundance support ecosystem functioning, and demonstrate that a focus on single groups has led to researchers to greatly underestimate the functional importance of biodiversity.

Comment: Whether humans are the ultimate purpose or not is part of our debate. Accepting that we are here and in control, biodiversity is what made it happen. This explains the need for the bush of life. God knows what He is doing.

Balance of nature: saved in New Zealand

by dhw, Thursday, December 01, 2016, 13:17 (2675 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Let me keep this in context, as you sometimes try to conflate all these examples with your theory that all innovations and natural wonders were part of God’s plan to balance nature to provide food to keep life going so that humans could arrive on the scene. The question, as always, is “important for what”? If the great white butterfly, rats, stoats and possums all disappear, nature will be balanced in favour of all the enemies of great whites, rats, stoats and possums. Nature was balanced in favour of the dinosaurs until it wasn’t. The term is meaningless as an explanation for the course of evolution. But I think we can say with some degree of certainty that it is important for humans that the balance of nature should favour humans. And it is important for rats that the balance of nature should favour rats.

DAVID: The concept is so simple. Life survives on available energy sources, which requires animal eating animal or plants. Of course the balance favors those who survived. We survived and are benefactors of that balance, so of course it is of importance to us. Your contorted discussion simply supports my point of view.

And David’s comment: (under biodiversity) Whether humans are the ultimate purpose or not is part of our debate. Accepting that we are here and in control, biodiversity is what made it happen. This explains the need for the bush of life. God knows what He is doing.

I’m sure that if God exists he knows what he is doing. My scepticism concerns whether YOU know what your God is doing. All forms of life depend on and have always depended on there being food for them to eat, which means there has to be biodiversity. The fact that 99% of species have disappeared suggests to me a free-for-all (which would have been your God's intention). It does not suggest to me that your God designed the brontosaurus and the trilobite and the weaverbird’s nest and the duckbilled platypus in order to ensure that humans could appear on Earth. (But my theistic evolutionary hypothesis allows for him to dabble, perhaps in order to give humans their extra degrees of consciousness.) The concept is so simple….

Balance of nature: saved in New Zealand

by David Turell @, Thursday, December 01, 2016, 19:15 (2675 days ago) @ dhw


dhw: And David’s comment: (under biodiversity) Whether humans are the ultimate purpose or not is part of our debate. Accepting that we are here and in control, biodiversity is what made it happen. This explains the need for the bush of life. God knows what He is doing.
dhw: I’m sure that if God exists he knows what he is doing. My scepticism concerns whether YOU know what your God is doing. All forms of life depend on and have always depended on there being food for them to eat, which means there has to be biodiversity. The fact that 99% of species have disappeared suggests to me a free-for-all (which would have been your God's intention).

Define free-for-all. Environmental extinctions? Dog eat dog? Remember all early species have been replaced by now more advanced species until we arrived. Not a free-for-all but a cAreful plan. Just as reasonable.

dhw: It does not suggest to me that your God designed the brontosaurus and the trilobite and the weaverbird’s nest and the duckbilled platypus in order to ensure that humans could appear on Earth. (But my theistic evolutionary hypothesis allows for him to dabble, perhaps in order to give humans their extra degrees of consciousness.) The concept is so simple….

And anywhere near correct? I see steady planned advancement from simple to complex.

Balance of nature: illustrated

by David Turell @, Wednesday, December 21, 2016, 00:57 (2656 days ago) @ David Turell

What dead baby turtles leave behind on beaches lets other organisms live:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2116580-baby-turtles-leave-behind-fleeting-oases-o...

"Baby turtles that fail to make it to the sea help fuel life on otherwise deserted sandy beaches in the tropics.

"The remains of turtle eggs that have been attacked by predators lead to a short pulse of life in what are normally deserts, boosting the abundance of small invertebrates fourfold, a study has found.

"These bursts peak seven days after the broken eggs become available and are all but gone in just 20 days.

“'This discovery affirms the role of sandy beaches as unique ecosystems,” says Ronel Nel at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa, whose team studied the Maputaland beaches in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, in Kwa-Zulu-Natal. “They are not deserts, as many seem to think.”

"'Traditionally, we think of beaches being important to the fate of turtles, but these findings highlight the importance of turtles to beaches, she says. Her team sampled sand in naturally predated nests and set up experiments to track changes in microscopic life, known as meiofauna, as compared with control sites nearby that didn’t have broken eggs.

"The boost in meiofauna was especially pronounced in the abundance of nematode worms. Their densities increased from a single worm to 10,000 worms per cubic centimetre in just 10 days. Other creatures that benefited included mites, springtails and insect larvae.

“'Meiofaunal organisms are vital contributors to ecosystem functions, including nutrient cycling and the provision of energy to higher trophic levels,” says Daniela Zeppilli, from the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea. They frequently feed on detritus and act as food for bigger organisms. “They are an often-neglected component of marine biodiversity.”

"But Zeppilli says it’s not clear that the seasonal boost in nutrients is necessarily a good thing for meiofaunal communities.

"She says that after an event such as a pulse of organic matter, a few species, often nematodes, can dominate over all other meiofauna. “So you have a lot of individuals, but very low diversity.”

"Nevertheless, such pulses of nutrients might play an important role in these often overlooked marine ecosystems.

“'This is interesting because sea turtles in general migrate between feeding grounds and breeding beaches, so energy is transferred between widely-separated ecosystems,” says John Davenport of the University College Cork, in Ireland.

"For example, he says, leatherbacks transfer energy from food, such as jellyfish, collected off Nova Scotia, in Canada, to clutches of eggs on nesting beaches in the Caribbean, thousands of kilometres away.

“'The authors have shown experimentally that smaller animals also benefit from this energy,” he says. “Sandy beaches are generally energy-poor systems, so the regular seasonal inputs of turtle eggs are important to the microscopic and macroscopic animals that live there.'”

Comment: A very clear example of how ecosystems work and provide food for all layers of life. Without these ecosystems food energy supplies would disappear and life would cease. Which raises an interesting question with no answer: what did initial life eat if it was rare as it must have been? Did it live on basic elements as some bacteria do?

Balance of nature: illustrated

by David Turell @, Thursday, December 22, 2016, 05:15 (2654 days ago) @ David Turell

Wolves are returned to Yellowstone National Park about 20 years ago with amazing changes to flora, fauna and the local geography:

https://i0.wp.com/weloveanimals.me/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/bow-valley-ab-january-7-2...

Should be watched

Balance of nature: importance of rebalancing

by David Turell @, Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 18:39 (2614 days ago) @ David Turell

Researchers have taken a small area of a mountaintop and removed invading plants, returning it to proper balance:

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/48238/title/Restoring-a-Native-Is...

"Many ecosystems around the globe are negatively perturbed by the spread of non-native animal and plant species that become invasive in these communities. Researchers have previously demonstrated that restoring native plant communities is beneficial, yet it has been unclear—and difficult to study—whether plant community restoration can also restore ecosystem functions, including the interactions among plants and other species.

"Now, in a study published today (January 30) in Nature, researchers at the Technische Universität (TU) Darmstadt in Germany and their colleagues demonstrate that removing non-native plants within an inselberg—an isolated mountaintop—improved pollination by insect and vertebrate species and increased the growth and reproduction of native plant populations. The results suggest that even in habitats damaged by alien plants, productive pollination of native plants can be restored.

“'This is an important paper as it’s one of the few that has tried to assess how restoration of a habitat . . . can improve the ecological functioning of that habitat,” Jeff Ollerton, a professor of biodiversity at the University of Northampton, U.K., who was not involved in the work, wrote in an email to The Scientist. “Many tropical habitats, especially on islands, are similarly degraded so this gives us some hope that we can restore them successfully.”

***

"Ecologist Christopher Kaiser-Bunbury of TU Darmstadt and colleagues, including researchers at the Seychelles National Parks Authority on the Indian Ocean island of Mahé, removed all non-native plants—around 39,700 of them—on four hectare-size mountaintops and left four more mountaintop sites of equivalent size and inhabited by the same non-native species, unperturbed.

“'The scale of the restoration is amazing,” noted Memmott.
The non-native plants made up about one-quarter of all plants in all eight sites. The researchers then waited six months and observed and recorded detailed species interactions, pollination, and fruit growth continuously over an eight-month flowering season. They focused on studying the pollination of all native plants, mapping out 64 plant-pollinator interaction networks, and recorded fruit yields of the 10 most common plant species.

***

"At six to 14 months after the restoration, the team observed an uptick in both the quality and quantity of pollination—the number of pollinator species observed increased by an average of 21.6 percent across all four of the sites, compared with the unperturbed sites. The pollinators included flies, beetles, moths, butterflies, birds, and geckos—which, according to Kaiser-Bunbury, play a major pollination role within island ecosystems. The researchers found that the pollination was productive, resulting in a higher proportion of flower setting fruit and an overall larger fruit crop within the four restored sites.

“'I was surprised that, across eight sites, we could pick up such a strong interactional and functional effect [of non-native species removal],” said Kaiser-Bunbury.

“'[This study] was timely as pollinators are globally declining and plant invasions are also taking place worldwide,” ecologist Anna Traveset at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies in the Balearic Islands, Spain, who also was not involved in the work, wrote in an email to The Scientist. “The approach the authors use is also timely as ecological networks have shown to be a very useful tool to detect patterns of interactions at the community level.”

***

“'Removing alien invasive plants is costly and time-consuming, but this paper suggests that the rewards in terms of restoring previously degraded habitats makes it worthwhile,” Ollerton wrote.

"Still, Kaiser-Bunbury cautioned that ecosystem restoration is not a golden bullet. “It’s an assisted path back to a more natural balance. We don’t know how long we need to assist the process to make the native habitats sustainable.'”

Comment: Once again we see the scientific approach to how beneficial a proper balance is to areas of the Earth. If you think this is unimportant, ask yourself why are these efforts being tried in this instance and in New Zealand where there are removing foreign feral species, brought there in a recognized mistaken way.

Balance of nature: foxes climb for koalas

by David Turell @, Sunday, February 12, 2017, 00:46 (2603 days ago) @ David Turell

Koalas are tree dwelling in eucalyptus trees. Imported European foxes are climbing into those trees. So far no predation seen, but for how long?

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2120944-foxes-seen-climbing-trees-at-night-to-trac...

"The European red fox (Vulpes vulpes) was introduced to Australia in the mid-1800s for recreational hunting. It quickly developed a taste for ground-dwelling native species like bilbies, wallabies and numbats, leading to savage declines in their numbers.

"Until now, tree-dwelling animals have been considered safe. But recent work led by Valentina Mella at the University of Sydney, Australia, suggests this might not be the case.

"In mid-2016, Mella was studying koalas on a property in the Liverpool Plains, about 250 kilometres north-west of Sydney. As part of her research, she set up cameras to record the animals visiting drinking fountains in eucalyptus trees spaced several kilometres apart.

"When she watched the footage, she was astonished to find multiple instances of red foxes scaling the trees. “I was quite shocked because I’m from Europe and I’ve never seen a fox in a tree before,” she says.

"The owner of the property told Mella that he regularly sees red foxes in trees, sometimes as high as 4 metres off the ground.

"Although the footage did not capture any instances of active predation, the foxes could be seen sniffing around and following the scent of other animals that had been in the trees. This was good evidence they were on the hunt, says Mella.

"They did not touch the drinking fountains, suggesting they were not there because they were thirsty.

"Euan Ritchie at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia, says he has heard anecdotal evidence from other ecologists of red foxes climbing trees. It may be more common than we think, he says. “Red foxes are quite agile animals, so it makes sense,” he says.

"Foxes are most likely targeting tree-dwelling species because they are easier to sneak up on than ground-based animals that have become accustomed to them, says Mella.
“It’s probably hard to catch rabbits, for example, because they are used to foxes and are programmed to escape,” she says. “But if a little feathertail glider or baby koala is just sitting there, that’s easy prey.”

"Moreover, it is easier for foxes to climb trees in Australia than in Europe because eucalypts have lots of bumps that provide good footholds, says Mella. “They’re not like pine trees in Europe, which have very small branches,” she says. There are very few records of red foxes scaling trees in their native habitat, she says."

Comment: Another example of humans disrupting the balance of nature.

Balance of nature: wolves and bears

by David Turell @, Monday, February 13, 2017, 17:49 (2601 days ago) @ David Turell

Before wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone nature's balance was off kilter. Now they are back, elk are back to a normal population, and wolves and bears have worked out a balance. Bears never ere gone, only wolves:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2120620-why-grey-wolves-kill-less-prey-when-brown-...

"Wolves may be better at sharing their meals with bears than we thought.
Biologists have long assumed that when wolves and brown bears share territory, the wolves are forced to kill more often to make up for the food stolen by scavenging bears.

"But when Aimee Tallian, a biologist at Utah State University, and her colleagues looked for evidence of this, they found the opposite. Where wolves live alongside bears in Scandinavia and Yellowstone National Park in the US, they actually kill less often.

“'People had this general assumption, because you do see lynx and mountain lions abandon their kills once a bear takes it over, but no one had really looked at this in wolves before,” she says.

"It’s not yet clear why this might be, but Tallian has a few theories.

"One is that in winter, when wolves normally kill large animals like moose, there is enough meat on the carcass that it is worthwhile for the pack to spend a few extra days waiting around for leftovers after a scavenging bear is done with it, instead of going off to make another kill.
"Another is that in spring and summer both wolves and bears prey on baby moose, and this competition over a finite resource might make it harder for both of them to find prey.

"It’s probably some combination of the two, says Tallian, which will require further study to sort out. “We want to look at what component of that kill interval the bears are actually changing,” she says.

"Heather Bryan, a biologist at the University of Victoria, Canada, says it may be impossible to generalise the results to other wolf and bear populations, because the dynamics of carnivore populations can change drastically depending on everything from food availability, the season and individual members of a pack. So there may be no specific lessons for conservationists protecting wild populations.

"But the general principle of considering complex, multispecies interactions is vital. “The idea of thinking about the whole ecosystem and species interactions is important in conservation,” Bryan says."

Comment: Wild animals are perfectly capable of working out a necessary balance. Everything living has to have energy to survive. The bush of life is necessary, not just an accident of evolutionary invention.

Balance of nature: wolves and bears

by dhw, Tuesday, February 14, 2017, 12:11 (2600 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "But the general principle of considering complex, multispecies interactions is vital. “The idea of thinking about the whole ecosystem and species interactions is important in conservation,” Bryan says."

DAVID's comment: Wild animals are perfectly capable of working out a necessary balance. Everything living has to have energy to survive. The bush of life is necessary, not just an accident of evolutionary invention.

All animals were “wild” before humans appeared, and yet despite their ability to work out a balance, 99% of them disappeared. One might therefore ask what exactly the bush of life was necessary for. Ah yes, they all had to come and go because that was the only way your God could dabble with some of their descendants in order to give humans their big brains. Fair comment?

Balance of nature: wolves and bears

by David Turell @, Tuesday, February 14, 2017, 14:37 (2600 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "But the general principle of considering complex, multispecies interactions is vital. “The idea of thinking about the whole ecosystem and species interactions is important in conservation,” Bryan says."

DAVID's comment: Wild animals are perfectly capable of working out a necessary balance. Everything living has to have energy to survive. The bush of life is necessary, not just an accident of evolutionary invention.

dhw: All animals were “wild” before humans appeared, and yet despite their ability to work out a balance, 99% of them disappeared. One might therefore ask what exactly the bush of life was necessary for. Ah yes, they all had to come and go because that was the only way your God could dabble with some of their descendants in order to give humans their big brains. Fair comment?

Not fair. Skips balance of nature, providing energy for life to evolve.. Life dies. Evolution implies passage of form from simple to complex. Of course 99% are gone. That supports my analysis.

Balance of nature: wolves and bears

by dhw, Wednesday, February 15, 2017, 08:37 (2599 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "But the general principle of considering complex, multispecies interactions is vital. “The idea of thinking about the whole ecosystem and species interactions is important in conservation,” Bryan says."

DAVID's comment: Wild animals are perfectly capable of working out a necessary balance. Everything living has to have energy to survive. The bush of life is necessary, not just an accident of evolutionary invention.

dhw: All animals were “wild” before humans appeared, and yet despite their ability to work out a balance, 99% of them disappeared. One might therefore ask what exactly the bush of life was necessary for. Ah yes, they all had to come and go because that was the only way your God could dabble with some of their descendants in order to give humans their big brains. Fair comment?

DAVID: Not fair. Skips balance of nature, providing energy for life to evolve. Life dies. Evolution implies passage of form from simple to complex. Of course 99% are gone. That supports my analysis.

So wild animals are perfectly capable of working out a necessary balance for 99% of them to die. Anyway, I thought it was your God who worked all this out, by specially designing them so that life could keep going (with a 99% drop-out rate) until he could dabble with the brains of a few of their descendants. Why is this “not fair”? I thought that was your theory.

Balance of nature: wolves and bears

by David Turell @, Wednesday, February 15, 2017, 18:51 (2599 days ago) @ dhw


DAVID: Not fair. Skips balance of nature, providing energy for life to evolve. Life dies. Evolution implies passage of form from simple to complex. Of course 99% are gone. That supports my analysis.

dhw: So wild animals are perfectly capable of working out a necessary balance for 99% of them to die. Anyway, I thought it was your God who worked all this out, by specially designing them so that life could keep going (with a 99% drop-out rate) until he could dabble with the brains of a few of their descendants. Why is this “not fair”? I thought that was your theory.

God designed the species so balances could be maintained. It is my theory. You twist it.

Balance of nature: wolves and bears

by dhw, Thursday, February 16, 2017, 09:18 (2598 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Not fair. Skips balance of nature, providing energy for life to evolve. Life dies. Evolution implies passage of form from simple to complex. Of course 99% are gone. That supports my analysis.

dhw: So wild animals are perfectly capable of working out a necessary balance for 99% of them to die. Anyway, I thought it was your God who worked all this out, by specially designing them so that life could keep going (with a 99% drop-out rate) until he could dabble with the brains of a few of their descendants. Why is this “not fair”? I thought that was your theory.

DAVID: God designed the species so balances could be maintained. It is my theory. You twist it.

I thought I was merely restating your theory. Please tell me what I have twisted.

Balance of nature: wolves and bears

by David Turell @, Thursday, February 16, 2017, 20:39 (2598 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Not fair. Skips balance of nature, providing energy for life to evolve. Life dies. Evolution implies passage of form from simple to complex. Of course 99% are gone. That supports my analysis.

dhw: So wild animals are perfectly capable of working out a necessary balance for 99% of them to die. Anyway, I thought it was your God who worked all this out, by specially designing them so that life could keep going (with a 99% drop-out rate) until he could dabble with the brains of a few of their descendants. Why is this “not fair”? I thought that was your theory.

DAVID: God designed the species so balances could be maintained. It is my theory. You twist it.

dhw: I thought I was merely restating your theory. Please tell me what I have twisted.

Of course 99% die. That is evolution, and one of your twists. Balance of nature is absolutely necessary, and you sneer at it as a concept.

Balance of nature: wolves and bears

by dhw, Friday, February 17, 2017, 14:30 (2597 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Not fair. Skips balance of nature, providing energy for life to evolve. Life dies. Evolution implies passage of form from simple to complex. Of course 99% are gone. That supports my analysis.

dhw: So wild animals are perfectly capable of working out a necessary balance for 99% of them to die. Anyway, I thought it was your God who worked all this out, by specially designing them so that life could keep going (with a 99% drop-out rate) until he could dabble with the brains of a few of their descendants. Why is this “not fair”? I thought that was your theory.

DAVID: God designed the species so balances could be maintained. It is my theory. You twist it.

dhw: I thought I was merely restating your theory. Please tell me what I have twisted.

DAVID: Of course 99% die. That is evolution, and one of your twists. Balance of nature is absolutely necessary, and you sneer at it as a concept.

I have not twisted the extinction of 99%, and whatever happened constitutes the history of evolution. It does not mean that your God had to design all the species, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct in order to produce humans. A particular balance of nature is absolutely necessary if particular species are to survive (as in the articles you have quoted relating to foreign invaders). That is quite different from the ever changing balance of nature that marks the history of evolution. All you mean by it in that context is life must go on if evolution is to go on. Nothing whatsoever to do with your anthropocentric interpretation of evolution. There would still be a “balance of nature” if humans disappeared.

Balance of nature: wolves and bears

by David Turell @, Friday, February 17, 2017, 19:37 (2597 days ago) @ dhw


DAVID: Of course 99% die. That is evolution, and one of your twists. Balance of nature is absolutely necessary, and you sneer at it as a concept.

dhw: I have not twisted the extinction of 99%, and whatever happened constitutes the history of evolution. It does not mean that your God had to design all the species, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct in order to produce humans. A particular balance of nature is absolutely necessary if particular species are to survive (as in the articles you have quoted relating to foreign invaders). That is quite different from the ever changing balance of nature that marks the history of evolution. All you mean by it in that context is life must go on if evolution is to go on. Nothing whatsoever to do with your anthropocentric interpretation of evolution. There would still be a “balance of nature” if humans disappeared.

Looks like we really have some agreement. My 'anthropocentric interpretation' is based on the current end point of evolution, humans. If humans are gone, the Earth will return to previous states.

Balance of nature: ants fertilize trees they live on

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 31, 2017, 19:17 (2402 days ago) @ David Turell

A new study demonstrates this:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170830202144.htm

"You have often seen ants wandering about on leaves -- even in tall trees. In fact, it is the plants themselves that attract them by secreting sugar-containing nectar, which the ants eat with great pleasure. And on their journey around trunks and leaves, the ants snap insects that could otherwise damage the plants.

"This has been known for many years and Danish researchers now use this knowledge in the battle against harmful insects in organic apple orchards. They simply move wood ants from the forest and create new anthills in the orchards.


"Now researchers have found yet another positive effect of the ants' visit to the trees. Their urine or faeces, excreted together, contain amino acids and urea -- substances that are commercially used to spray on leaves to fertilise the plants.

***

"First, the researchers observed that the visited trees had a higher content of nitrogen than the trees to which the ants did not have access. The trees visited by the ants also had larger crowns than the trees without ants.

"On the 'visit trees' some of the leaves were wrapped so that the ants could not leave their waste here. But also in these leaves, the researchers were able to trace the labeled nitrogen.

"'For the first time, we have shown that nutrients from ant waste are taken up by the leaves and transported to other places in the tree," says senior scientist Joachim Offenberg, Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, who was in charge of the studies.

"'This has great ecological importance. The ants, which primarily feed on insects in the trees, digest the insects and hand the nutrients on a silver platter to the plants. You can almost say that the plants receive the nutrition intravenously exactly where they need it," explains Joachim Offenberg.

"The ants appear frequently on new shoots and on fruits -- both areas of the plant that can benefit from an additional nutrient input.

The nutritional supplement to the leaves can be a great advantage for many different plants, and the researchers will now investigate how widespread the phenomenon is.

"'We know that globally there are lots of plants inhabited by ants. The nutritional supplement for their leaves can have a major ecological significance and may also have been decisive for the evolution of ant-plant interactions," says Joachim Offenberg."

Comment: The balance of nature can be seen in many different ways.

Balance of nature: ants fertilize trees they live on

by dhw, Friday, September 01, 2017, 13:24 (2401 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: A new study demonstrates this:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170830202144.htm

David’s comment: The balance of nature can be seen in many different ways.

Yes, indeed. All forms of life have always depended on some sort of balance, and the balance is constantly shifting, which is why some species have survived and others have died out in the long history of the higgledy-piggledy bush. Thank you for this beautiful illustration of Margulis’s contention that evolution depends on cooperation as well as (if not more than) competition.

Balance of nature: ants fertilize trees they live on

by David Turell @, Friday, September 01, 2017, 15:07 (2401 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: A new study demonstrates this:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170830202144.htm

David’s comment: The balance of nature can be seen in many different ways.

dhw: Yes, indeed. All forms of life have always depended on some sort of balance, and the balance is constantly shifting, which is why some species have survived and others have died out in the long history of the higgledy-piggledy bush. Thank you for this beautiful illustration of Margulis’s contention that evolution depends on cooperation as well as (if not more than) competition.

This is why I question the significance of competition for survival as a major factor.

Balance of nature: loss of species may bring extinction

by David Turell @, Tuesday, February 20, 2018, 01:50 (2230 days ago) @ David Turell

This paper discusses exactly that possibity and backs it up with a study:

https://phys.org/news/2018-02-biodiversity-loss-extinction-cascades.html

"New research shows that the loss of biodiversity can increase the risk of "extinction cascades", where an initial species loss leads to a domino effect of further extinctions.

"The researchers, from the University of Exeter, showed there is a higher risk of extinction cascades when other species are not present to fill the "gap" created by the loss of a species.

"Even if the loss of one species does not directly cause knock-on extinctions, the study shows that this leads to simpler ecological communities that are at greater risk of "run-away extinction cascades" with the potential loss of many species.

***

"'Interactions between species are important for ecosystem (a community of interacting species) stability," said Dr Dirk Sanders, of the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall. "And because species are interconnected through multiple interactions, an impact on one species can affect others as well.

"'It has been predicted that more complex food webs will be less vulnerable to extinction cascades because there is a greater chance that other species can step in and buffer against the effects of species loss.

"'In our experiment, we used communities of plants and insects to test this prediction."

"The researchers removed one species of wasp and found that it led to secondary extinctions of other, indirectly linked, species at the same level of the food web.

"This effect was much stronger in simple communities than for the same species within a more complex food web.

"Dr Sanders added: "Our results demonstrate that biodiversity loss can increase the vulnerability of ecosystems to secondary extinctions which, when they occur, can then lead to further simplification causing run-away extinction cascades."

"How extinction cascades work:

"The loss of a predator can initiate a cascade, such as in the case of wolves, where their extinction on one mountain can cause a large rise in the number of deer. This larger number of deer then eats more plant material than they would have before. This reduction in vegetation can cause extinctions in any species that also relies on the plants, but are potentially less competitive, such as rabbits or insects."

Comment: this is full support for my contention that maintaining balance of nature is of prime importance. I've presented all of this before but this is a forceful presentation of an extremely important concept..

Balance of nature: loss of species may bring extinction

by David Turell @, Saturday, March 24, 2018, 17:54 (2197 days ago) @ David Turell

:This article is a warning that dangerous losses of food sources are appearing:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2164774-in-30-years-asian-pacific-fish-will-be-gon...

"Biodiversity will collapse everywhere on Earth if humans carry on as we are, according to 550 scientists from 100 countries. The biggest victims will be people, because we are so reliant on the natural world.

"A major assessment of Earth’s biodiversity concludes that exploitable fish stocks along Asia-Pacific coastlines will completely collapse by 2048. Meanwhile, half of all Africa’s mammals and birds face extinction by 2100, as do 37 per cent of Europe’s freshwater fish.

***

"The findings reinforce earlier warnings that, by failing to conserve biodiversity, the human race is sleepwalking towards disaster.

“'Failure to prioritise policies and actions to stop and reverse biodiversity loss, and the continued degradation of nature’s contributions to people, seriously jeopardises the chances of any region, and almost every country, meeting their global development targets,” says Anne Larigauderie, the executive secretary of IPBES.

"Reversing all the declines will be difficult, but if we do not take action, humans will suffer alongside the rest of the natural world, the reports say.

"Possibly the most shocking example is the predicted fate of fisheries stocks along the coastlines of the Asia-Pacific region. “If current fishing practices continue, there will be no exploitable fish stocks in the region by 2048,” warns the report.

"It also predicts that 90 per cent of corals in the region will suffer severe degradation by 2050, even under mild climate change scenarios.

"In the Americas, climate change is tipped to overtake habitat loss by 2050 as the key driver of biodiversity loss. Today, the average populations of species in an area are 31 per cent smaller than they were when Europeans settled in the Americas. By 2050, the losses could reach 40 per cent, compounded by the growing effects of climate change, such as severe heatwaves.

"Since the arrival of Europeans, says the report, humans have eradicated 95 per cent of North American tall grass prairies, 17 per cent of Amazon rainforest and 88 per cent of Atlantic tropical forest. The amount of renewable fresh water available per person has fallen 50 per cent since the 1960s.

"Africans stand to lose the most by failing to safeguard biodiversity. 62 per cent of the continent’s rural population depends directly on what nature provides, more than anywhere else.

"Yet the report says 500,000 hectares have been sterilised by a mix of deforestation, unsustainable agriculture, overgrazing, uncontrolled mining, invasive species and climate change – which have led to soil erosion, salinisation of soil, pollution and loss of vegetation. By 2100, climate change could wipe out half of Africa’s bird and mammal species, and deplete the bounty available from African lakes by 30 per cent.

"In Europe and central Asia, 42 per cent of land animals and plants have become less numerous just in the past decade. Some 26 per cent of marine fish have declining populations, due to unsustainable fishing and factors such as climate change. 37 per cent of freshwater fish face potential extinction.

“'Human-made threats are pushing more and more of our animals, and their habitats, to the very brink of extinction,” says Philip Mansbridge, UK regional director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. “With so many species at a tipping point, we must all act now to protect our land and marine environment and the vast array of animal and plant life, which are vital to healthy biodiversity and all our futures.'”

Comment: The balance of nature is much more important than the dhw approach that it always changes but life survives. This article is probably overstated, but we could starve ourselves out of existence if we are not careful. And we are currently running the Earth's systems to some degree.

Balance of nature: loss of species may bring extinction

by dhw, Sunday, March 25, 2018, 12:32 (2196 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: This article is a warning that dangerous losses of food sources are appearing:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2164774-in-30-years-asian-pacific-fish-will-be-gon...

DAVID’s comment: The balance of nature is much more important than the dhw approach that it always changes but life survives. This article is probably overstated, but we could starve ourselves out of existence if we are not careful. And we are currently running the Earth's systems to some degree.

A grossly unfair remark, totally ignoring the context of my “approach”! You know perfectly well that my comment concerns the history of evolution and not current ecology! I fully support your concern over what humans are doing to the environment. I do not support your argument that your God created the higgledy-piggledy evolutionary bush in order to “balance nature” so that life could continue until he was able to produce the human brain. There is no connection between the two subjects. Shame on you!:-(

Balance of nature: loss of species may bring extinction

by David Turell @, Sunday, March 25, 2018, 15:20 (2196 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: This article is a warning that dangerous losses of food sources are appearing:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2164774-in-30-years-asian-pacific-fish-will-be-gon...

DAVID’s comment: The balance of nature is much more important than the dhw approach that it always changes but life survives. This article is probably overstated, but we could starve ourselves out of existence if we are not careful. And we are currently running the Earth's systems to some degree.

dhw: A grossly unfair remark, totally ignoring the context of my “approach”! You know perfectly well that my comment concerns the history of evolution and not current ecology! I fully support your concern over what humans are doing to the environment. I do not support your argument that your God created the higgledy-piggledy evolutionary bush in order to “balance nature” so that life could continue until he was able to produce the human brain. There is no connection between the two subjects. Shame on you!:-(

Not unfair. Balance of nature is one pillar of my theory, which you constantly poo poo, as above. The two subjects are intimately connected providing energy for life to continue over 3.8 billion years for evolution to proceed to the present. Could the evolution have proceeded without food for the survivors? Of course not. Competition for food does mold how evolution proceeds.

Balance of nature: loss of species may bring extinction

by dhw, Monday, March 26, 2018, 12:53 (2195 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID’s comment: The balance of nature is much more important than the dhw approach that it always changes but life survives. This article is probably overstated, but we could starve ourselves out of existence if we are not careful. And we are currently running the Earth's systems to some degree.

dhw: A grossly unfair remark, totally ignoring the context of my “approach”! You know perfectly well that my comment concerns the history of evolution and not current ecology! I fully support your concern over what humans are doing to the environment. I do not support your argument that your God created the higgledy-piggledy evolutionary bush in order to “balance nature” so that life could continue until he was able to produce the human brain. There is no connection between the two subjects. Shame on you! :-(

DAVID: Not unfair. Balance of nature is one pillar of my theory, which you constantly poo poo, as above. The two subjects are intimately connected providing energy for life to continue over 3.8 billion years for evolution to proceed to the present. Could the evolution have proceeded without food for the survivors? Of course not. Competition for food does mold how evolution proceeds.

Of course life couldn’t go on without food. And the balance of nature changes according to which organisms can find enough food to survive. That has absolutely nothing to do with 1) your theory that evolution was guided towards the production of the human brain, and it has absolutely nothing to do with 2) the fact that humans are currently CHANGING the balance of nature in a manner that endangers both themselves and other species. You are simply using the term in two different contexts and trying to make out that 2) somehow bolsters your case for 1). It doesn’t. And I most emphatically do not underestimate the importance of the threat posed by 2).:-( :-(

Balance of nature: loss of species may bring extinction

by David Turell @, Monday, March 26, 2018, 18:12 (2195 days ago) @ dhw


DAVID: Not unfair. Balance of nature is one pillar of my theory, which you constantly poo poo, as above. The two subjects are intimately connected providing energy for life to continue over 3.8 billion years for evolution to proceed to the present. Could the evolution have proceeded without food for the survivors? Of course not. Competition for food does mold how evolution proceeds.

dhw: Of course life couldn’t go on without food. And the balance of nature changes according to which organisms can find enough food to survive. That has absolutely nothing to do with 1) your theory that evolution was guided towards the production of the human brain, and it has absolutely nothing to do with 2) the fact that humans are currently CHANGING the balance of nature in a manner that endangers both themselves and other species. You are simply using the term in two different contexts and trying to make out that 2) somehow bolsters your case for 1). It doesn’t. And I most emphatically do not underestimate the importance of the threat posed by 2).:-( :-(

The only point I am making is that evolution took a long time for the human brain to appear in the process. Of course it doesn't prove it was God's intent.

Balance of nature: loss of species may bring extinction

by dhw, Tuesday, March 27, 2018, 12:48 (2194 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Not unfair. Balance of nature is one pillar of my theory, which you constantly poo poo, as above. The two subjects are intimately connected providing energy for life to continue over 3.8 billion years for evolution to proceed to the present. Could the evolution have proceeded without food for the survivors? Of course not. Competition for food does mold how evolution proceeds.

dhw: Of course life couldn’t go on without food. And the balance of nature changes according to which organisms can find enough food to survive. That has absolutely nothing to do with 1) your theory that evolution was guided towards the production of the human brain, and it has absolutely nothing to do with 2) the fact that humans are currently CHANGING the balance of nature in a manner that endangers both themselves and other species. You are simply using the term in two different contexts and trying to make out that 2) somehow bolsters your case for 1). It doesn’t. And I most emphatically do not underestimate the importance of the threat posed by 2). :-( :-(

DAVID: The only point I am making is that evolution took a long time for the human brain to appear in the process. Of course it doesn't prove it was God's intent.

I don’t think any of us are unaware that humans came late on the evolutionary scene. I’m delighted that that is the only point you are making. We can now forget about the balance of nature as an explanation for God designing every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in order to keep life going until he could fulfil his “primary” purpose, the production of the human brain. And I’m sure you will withdraw your comment that I underestimate the importance of the balance of nature, since I fully agree with your criticisms of human interference with the current balance. :-)

Balance of nature: loss of species may bring extinction

by David Turell @, Tuesday, March 27, 2018, 14:45 (2194 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Not unfair. Balance of nature is one pillar of my theory, which you constantly poo poo, as above. The two subjects are intimately connected providing energy for life to continue over 3.8 billion years for evolution to proceed to the present. Could the evolution have proceeded without food for the survivors? Of course not. Competition for food does mold how evolution proceeds.

dhw: Of course life couldn’t go on without food. And the balance of nature changes according to which organisms can find enough food to survive. That has absolutely nothing to do with 1) your theory that evolution was guided towards the production of the human brain, and it has absolutely nothing to do with 2) the fact that humans are currently CHANGING the balance of nature in a manner that endangers both themselves and other species. You are simply using the term in two different contexts and trying to make out that 2) somehow bolsters your case for 1). It doesn’t. And I most emphatically do not underestimate the importance of the threat posed by 2). :-( :-(

DAVID: The only point I am making is that evolution took a long time for the human brain to appear in the process. Of course it doesn't prove it was God's intent.

dhw" I don’t think any of us are unaware that humans came late on the evolutionary scene. I’m delighted that that is the only point you are making. We can now forget about the balance of nature as an explanation for God designing every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in order to keep life going until he could fulfil his “primary” purpose, the production of the human brain. And I’m sure you will withdraw your comment that I underestimate the importance of the balance of nature, since I fully agree with your criticisms of human interference with the current balance. :-)

PAX

Balance of nature: viruses are a vital component

by David Turell @, Monday, April 16, 2018, 19:02 (2174 days ago) @ David Turell

An essay on why they are necessary and can drive evoluion:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/science/virosphere-evolution.html

"Each day, they calculated, some 800 million viruses cascade onto every square meter of the planet.

"Most of the globe-trotting viruses are swept into the air by sea spray, and lesser numbers arrive in dust storms.

***

"Generally it’s assumed these viruses originate on the planet and are swept upward, but some researchers theorize that viruses actually may originate in the atmosphere. (There is a small group of researchers who believe viruses may even have come here from outer space, an idea known as panspermia.)

"Whatever the case, viruses are the most abundant entities on the planet by far. While Dr. Suttle’s team found hundreds of millions of viruses in a square meter, they counted tens of millions of bacteria in the same space.

"Mostly thought of as infectious agents, viruses are much more than that. It’s hard to overstate the central role that viruses play in the world: They’re essential to everything from our immune system to our gut microbiome, to the ecosystems on land and sea, to climate regulation and the evolution of all species. Viruses contain a vast diverse array of unknown genes — and spread them to other species.

"Last year, three experts called for a new initiative to better understand viral ecology, especially as the planet changes. “Viruses modulate the function and evolution of all living things,” wrote Matthew B. Sullivan of Ohio State, Joshua Weitz of Georgia Tech, and Steven W. Wilhelm of the University of Tennessee. “But to what extent remains a mystery.”

***

"The virus injects its own DNA into the host; sometimes that new genes are useful to the host and become part of its genome.

"Researchers recently identified an ancient virus that inserted its DNA into the genomes of four-limbed animals that were human ancestors. That snippet of genetic code, called ARC, is part of the nervous system of modern humans and plays a role in human consciousness — nerve communication, memory formation and higher-order thinking. Between 40 percent and 80 percent of the human genome may be linked to ancient viral invasions.

***

“'If you could weigh all the living material in the oceans, 95 percent of it is stuff is you can’t see, and they are responsible for supplying half the oxygen on the planet,” Dr. Suttle said.

"In laboratory experiments, he has filtered viruses out of seawater but left their prey, bacteria. When that happens, plankton in the water stop growing. That’s because when preying viruses infect and take out one species of microbe — they are very specific predators — they liberate nutrients in them, such as nitrogen, that feed other species of bacteria. In the same way, an elk killed by a wolf becomes food for ravens, coyotes and other species. As plankton grow, they take in carbon dioxide and create oxygen.

***

"Viruses help keep ecosystems in balance by changing the composition of microbial communities. As toxic algae blooms spread in the ocean, for example, they are brought to heel by a virus that attacks the algae and causes it to explode and die, ending the outbreak in as little as a day.

***

"When species disappear, the changes can ripple through an ecosystem. A textbook example is a viral disease called rinderpest.

***

"The Italian army brought a few cattle into North Africa, and in 1887 the virus took off across the continent, killing a broad range of cloven-hoofed animals from Eritrea to South Africa — in some cases wiping out 95 percent of the herds.

***

“'Almost instantaneously, rinderpest swept away the wealth of tropical Africa,” wrote John Reader in his book “Africa: A Biography of a Continent.”

***

“'Viruses aren’t our enemies,” Dr. Suttle said. “Certain nasty viruses can make you sick, but it’s important to recognize that viruses and other microbes out there are absolutely integral for the ecosystem.”

Comment: Viruses are a necessary part of the ecosystem, and may be God's tool to drive evolution. Never ask why God would have made viruses; not evil.

Balance of nature: viruses are a vital component

by dhw, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, 11:58 (2173 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID’s comment: Viruses are a necessary part of the ecosystem, and may be God's tool to drive evolution. Never ask why God would have made viruses; not evil.

Thank you for yet another illuminating article on the importance of micro-organisms to life. We tend to forget that we ourselves – like ants and antelopes, weaverbirds and whales – are the result of micro-organisms cooperating to form different communities. I don’t know why you have to bring theodicy into it, but the sceptics would argue that some viruses are good and some are bad, so if your God is in complete control, why did he make the bad ones? I suggest we focus on the science rather than the theology.

Balance of nature: viruses are a vital component

by David Turell @, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, 14:54 (2173 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID’s comment: Viruses are a necessary part of the ecosystem, and may be God's tool to drive evolution. Never ask why God would have made viruses; not evil.

dhw: Thank you for yet another illuminating article on the importance of micro-organisms to life. We tend to forget that we ourselves – like ants and antelopes, weaverbirds and whales – are the result of micro-organisms cooperating to form different communities. I don’t know why you have to bring theodicy into it, but the sceptics would argue that some viruses are good and some are bad, so if your God is in complete control, why did he make the bad ones? I suggest we focus on the science rather than the theology.

As with all views of the engineering of our reality, our view of the bad may not be really bad but have an unrecognized purpose. The true value of the human retina comes to mind against the criticisms that have failed.

Balance of nature: viruses are a vital component

by David Turell @, Friday, July 19, 2019, 15:47 (1715 days ago) @ David Turell

A new article expands on the point:

https://biodesign.asu.edu/news/plant-viruses-may-be-reshaping-our-world-0

"Recent advances in the field of virology, however, suggest that viruses play a more significant and complex role than previously appreciated, and may be essential to the functioning of diverse ecosystems. (my bold)

***

"Recent studies in the field of virology have shown that viruses are sometimes beneficial to the organisms they infect.

***

"Vectors play an outsized role in the world of plant viruses. Unlike animal viruses, plant viruses are not usually transmitted through direct contact between infected and uninfected individuals. Instead, plant viruses disseminate through vectors, (especially insects) as well as through pollen and seeds.

***

"Many kinds of vectors can transmit plant viruses, including arachnids, fungi, nematodes, and some protists, though more than 70 percent of known plant viruses are transmitted by insects, most from the biological order Hemiptera, which includes cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers and shield bugs.

"Insects of this kind can make use of mouthparts constructed for piercing and extracting sap or plant cell material. Insect transmission of plant viruses can occur through excretion of virus particles in saliva following feeding on an infected plant. Alternately, the plant virus can become permanently incorporated into the insect’s salivary glands, allowing the vector to transmit the virus to new plants throughout the insect’s lifetime.

"Intriguingly, a number of insect-transmitted plant viruses may have evolved mechanisms to influence vector behavior, making infected plants more attractive to sap-feeding insects or ensuring that infected plants produce chemicals that promote insect behaviors that help facilitate transmission.

"In addition to their complex and varied chains of infection, some plant viruses have another unique property. Such viruses transmit their genomes in multiple packets, each containing only part of the virus’ complete genetic code, encapsulated in a separate virus particle. This peculiar strategy, which requires the co-transmission of several viral particles to a new host in order to ensure the integrity of the viral genome, is a feature believed to be unique to plant viruses. The nature and evolution of these so-called multipartite viruses remains a biological puzzle.

"Plant viruses display considerable ingenuity in their strategies, which are highly dependent on their given environment. Some are generalists, invading multiple species, while other viruses are specialists that favour a narrow range of plant hosts. This selectivity may develop with time, through a process known as adaptive radiation. This typically occurs when a virus faces a heterogeneous habitat and becomes adaptively specialized to exploit particular ecological resources while becoming maladapted to exploit others. Such specialization acts to limit competition between different viral lineages or species. Alternatively, generalist viruses infect multiple plant hosts but must compete for these resources with other viruses. This situation tends to result in a viral population of low diversity dominated by the most acutely adapted viral genotypes.

"While researchers agree that viruses lack a single common ancestor, a detailed picture of how (and when) they emerged in the web of life remains deeply contested. Three common hypotheses compete for dominance as an explanatory framework, though they are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps viruses evolved from free-living cells, as the devolution or regressive hypothesis states. They could also have originated from RNA and DNA molecules that somehow escaped from living cells. Alternatively, viruses may have once existed as self-replicating entities that evolved alongside cells, eventually losing their independent status.

"Ongoing metaviromic research of viral diversity is helping to uncover foundational relationships among viruses and pinpoint common origins among many plant, fungal and arthropod viruses. Of particular concern for the future are the ways in which human-caused disruptions to ecosystems across the planet, which are occurring at rates unprecedented in earth’s history, are reforming virus, vector and host relationships."

Comment: Once again the workings of vital ecosystems are enmeshed in newly discovered ways with viruses playing a large role. The last paragraph above notes the dangers in damaging those systems.

Balance of nature: protists in soil

by David Turell @, Saturday, January 25, 2020, 21:38 (1525 days ago) @ David Turell

They have a vital role in soil ecology:

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-skin-earth-home-pac-man-like-protists.html

the first study to characterize protists in soils from around the world—co-authored by Smithsonian scientists—found that the most common groups of soil protists behave exactly like Pac-Man: moving through the soil matrix, gobbling up bacteria.

***

"Protists reproduce quickly and are probably much more responsive to climate change than larger forms of life. Like the cartoon character Sheldon Plankton in Spongebob Squarepants, protists are not plants, animals or fungi. They are single-celled organisms but, unlike bacteria, they have a nucleus. They move through water using whip-like flagellae and tiny hairs called cilia. Some of the nastier protists cause sleeping sickness, malaria and red tide, but nearly all play important, if mysterious, roles in the energy- and nutrient-trading relationships that connect ecosystems. (my bold)

"Identifying millions of miniscule protists in soil used to be impossible, but recently-developed technology to classify protists based on their genetic code makes it possible to characterize them on a large scale. The team sequenced the 18S ribosomal RNA studied from soil samples from across six continents to better understand the ecological roles of the protists in the below-ground ecosystem.

"They discovered that most of the protists are the Pac-Man type that consume other, smaller organisms. But in tropical soils, a larger number of protists were parasites, living inside other organisms. In desert soils, there were more protists capable of photosynthesizing and using sunlight directly as an energy source. The best predictor of what types of protists exist in a sample is the annual precipitation at the site. This may seem intuitive because protists depend on water to move, but it was a surprise, since soil acidity, rather than precipitation, is what usually predicts which bacteria and fungi are in soil.

"'Soils are home to an astonishing diversity of organisms, the lives of which we are only beginning to understand," said Ben Turner, STRI staff scientist and co-author of the study.

"'Soil protists are an understudied group, so this work provides a foundation for future research on their ecology in ecosystems worldwide.'"

Comment; Note my bold. They cause illnesses but also have very beneficial roles in soil ecology. As very simple eukaryotes with a nucleus and mitochondria they are evolutionary steppingstones to more complex animals.

Balance of nature: viruses are a vital component

by David Turell @, Monday, July 24, 2023, 15:44 (249 days ago) @ David Turell

Giant viruses plentiful in forest soil:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.30.546935v1.full?et_rid=825383635&e...

"Abstract
Large DNA viruses of the phylum Nucleocytoviricota infect diverse eukaryotic hosts from protists to humans, with profound consequences for aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. While nucleocytoviruses are known to be highly diverse in metagenomes, knowledge of their capsid structures is restricted to a few characterized representatives. Here, we visualize giant virus-like particles (VLPs, diameter >0.2 µm) directly from the environment using transmission electron microscopy. We found that Harvard Forest soils contain a higher diversity of giant VLP morphotypes than all hitherto isolated giant viruses combined. These included VLPs with icosahedral capsid symmetry, ovoid shapes similar to pandoraviruses, and bacilliform shapes that may represent novel viruses. We discovered giant icosahedral capsids with structural modifications that had not been described before including tubular appendages, modified vertices, tails, and capsids consisting of multiple layers or internal channels. Many giant VLPs were covered with fibers of varying lengths, thicknesses, densities, and terminal structures. These findings imply that giant viruses employ a much wider array of capsid structures and mechanisms to interact with their host cells than is currently known. We also found diverse tailed bacteriophages and filamentous VLPs, as well as ultra-small cells. Our study offers a first glimpse of the vast diversity of unexplored viral structures in soil and reinforces the potential of transmission electron microscopy for fundamental discoveries in environmental microbiology."

From discussion:

[In a 2018 study] "Metagenome analysis of soil from the same location resulted in genome assemblies for 16 novel giant viruses. These included relatives of pithoviruses, tupanviruses, and klosneuviruses, for which we found potentially matching VLP types: large ovoid, tailed icosahedral, and plain or fibered icosahedral particles, respectively. Although we currently cannot link metagenome-assembled genomes to any of the morphotypes described here, we show that the morphological diversity of giant VLPs clearly exceeds the metagenomic diversity of giant viruses in Harvard Forest soil.

***

"We discovered an unexpected diversity of soil VLPs in the 0.2 µm to 1.2 µm size fraction, which is typically excluded from virome studies. The cornucopia of viral morphotypes found in Harvard Forest alone questions our current understanding of the virosphere and its structural heterogeneity. This fascinating window into the complex world of soil viruses leaves little doubt that the high genetic diversity of giant viruses is matched by diverse and previously unimaginable particle structures, whose origins and functions remain to be studied."

Comment: this huge descriptive study cannot be reduced to a size here. What it shows us is that there is a working macro-viral world at work in our soils and I assume improving their quality for vegetative fertility and productivity. This shows the vast population of viruses is working for the good. It answers theodicy criticisms of the existence of viruses.

Balance of nature: necessary viruses like bacteriophages

by David Turell @, Saturday, August 12, 2023, 22:45 (230 days ago) @ David Turell

Their job is to kill bacteria:

https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/library/item/11_august_2023/4123...

"Journalist Tom Ireland’s The Good Virus, which recounts the intriguing history of a different type of antibiotic principle, a process by which viruses known as bacteriophages or phages destroy bacteria, is thus incredibly timely for its potential to renew interest in an orthogonal antimicrobial modality.

"First indirectly observed in 1915 by the English physician Frederick Twort, bacteriophages are composed of a piece of DNA wrapped in a protein capsule. Their genetic instructions are entirely reliant on the hardware of their bacterial hosts, which perform all the phage’s metabolic and replicative functions. Ireland recounts how these ruthless predators penetrate bacteria “like pins in a voodoo doll,” forming conduits through which they inject their genes at high pressure. When they trigger their own replication and self-assembly, bacteriophages obliterate their hapless hosts.

"The antimicrobial properties of bacteriophages were first documented in 1896 by the Cambridge naturalist Ernest Hanbury Hankin, who traveled to India to investigate reports that outbreaks of cholera upstream of the river Ganges often did not spread downstream. There, he noted that “the unboiled water of the Ganges kills the cholera germ in less than three hours”. It was subsequently shown that the bacterial profusion swirling around the Ganges is accompanied by an abundance of bacteriophages."

***

"Although, to date, there are still no definitive randomized clinical study data demonstrating the efficacy of bacteriophage therapy, there is sufficient reason to believe that bespoke bacteriophage treatments targeting individual strains could be successfully developed and deployed on a global scale. A “universal” antimicrobial system of this sort might comprise large, automated libraries of therapeutic phages or the point-of-care de novo synthesis of natural and artificial bacteriophages (4) using sequence databases, synthetic genomics, and generative artificial intelligence. The astonishing prevalence of bacteriophages, which outnumber bacteria by at least 10 to 1, provides an almost limitless supply of genetic information for this purpose."

Comment: another theodicy issue in this subject. God made bacteriophages, which don't harm us, to help us control bacterial harm. What is our problem? We have the brains He gave us to solve this issue. We were mesmerized by penicillin, Streptomycin, etc. from molds. This was commercialized with no thought to bacteriophage production. Finally, faced with bacterial resistance growing to critically high levels over the past 40 years, this step offered by God, must be followed.

Balance of nature: necessary viruses like bacteriophages

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 24, 2023, 17:21 (218 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by David Turell, Thursday, August 24, 2023, 17:36

Another review:

https://bigthink.com/life/phage-most-abundant-life-form-license-kill/?utm_campaign=week...

"Bacteriophages, known simply as “phages” for short, are viruses that infect and kill bacteria. Essentially harmless to humans, they exist solely to inject their genes into bacterial cells, where they can either lurk indefinitely or replicate madly.

***

"For every type of cellular life on earth — bacterial, fungal, animal or plant, and the weird things somewhere in between — there are viruses that have evolved to infect them, and together these viruses outnumber all other living entities on Earth. While we commonly associate viruses with disease and death, just a tiny fraction are a danger to us. The vast majority are phages. And it is only very recently that we have begun to understand that phages are an essential part of the living fabric of the planet, drivers of innovation, diversification and change. (my bold)

***

"Confusingly, bacteria and viruses are often grouped together simply as “germs,” but they are distinct in important ways. The most basic difference between them is that bacteria are cells and viruses are not. Cells are biology’s basic units of life — microscopic capsules with everything needed for life and replication contained within a fat-based membrane and, sometimes, a tough outer wall. All life on the planet — except viruses — consists of cells, either working in concert with one another (like the human body, for example, a network of trillions of related cells arranged to form tissues and organs) or existing just fine as single cells.

"Viruses, conversely, are far less complex. At their simplest, they are little more than a length of genetic material (normally DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, but sometimes its chemical cousin, RNA, ribonucleic acid) wrapped in a protective protein capsule. Outside of a host, they are inert, lifeless even, lacking the biochemical components to do anything with the information contained in their genes.

"In order to replicate, the virus must get inside a cell. Viruses have been described as living “a kind of borrowed life,” only ever able to exert an influence on the world when inside a host cell. It’s a little like how a computer virus is just a piece of code on a USB stick — unable to do anything when lying in a drawer — until it is placed into a computer, when it can suddenly instruct that computer’s systems to send copies of itself to a thousand inboxes around the world. This reliance on other life is, in part, why there has always been a debate over whether viruses are “alive” or not. To me, the question is unhelpful, suggesting that viruses are somehow not a proper, paid-up member of our wonderful living world.

"Whether or not viruses meet the criteria we have decided characterizes a distinct living being, they are an essential biological component of the ecosystems that have developed on Earth. They are built from the same basic building blocks as life, use the same chemical language as life, evolve and replicate alongside life, and interact with and transform life. Some scientists believe that all life may have evolved from self-replicating entities more akin to viruses than cells. And by operating in the fascinating and illuminating grey area where complex chemistry becomes simple biology, they can arguably tell us more about what life is than living creatures so complex that they may never be fully understood.


"Bacteria are also essential to all life on Earth. Although we have “learnt to hate and fear them,” as the science writer Ed Yong puts it, just a hundred or so of the many thousands of species of bacteria in the world colonize our body in a way that makes us ill or causes disease. Even these mostly live quite happily on and around us without our noticing, only causing ill health when a vulnerability in our immune systems is exposed. The rest perform a suite of essential environmental services that make our planet hospitable. They capture chem­ical and solar energy to form the foundational layer of the food chains that support the rest of life on Earth; they take inorganic material, waste products, and dead things and re­cycle them back into forms that can be used by other life. They produce 20% of the atmospheric oxygen we breathe. They help us digest our food, help plants absorb nutrients, protect us from other microbes, and ferment some of our favorite foods. They have adapted and co-evolved to live in almost every environmental niche on the planet, from boiling vents at the bottom of the sea to the internal organs and tissues of other life, from lakes with the acidity of battery acid to the nodules in the roots of our most important crops. (my bold)

***

"Researchers estimate there may be as many as 10^31 phages on Earth — that’s 10 with 30 zeros after it — a truly preposterous number that equates to around a trillion phages for every grain of sand on the planet."

Comment: Wow! Phages and bacteria are very mostly good. What a surprise for dour dhw.

Balance of nature: corals farm algae

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 24, 2023, 17:45 (218 days ago) @ David Turell

Keeps them in food supply in barren areas:

https://www.science.org/content/article/hard-working-farmers-corals-cultivate-and-eat-t...

"A new study published today in Nature offers a solution. According to its authors, corals make up for nutrient scarcity by harvesting and feeding on their resident algae, like hungry farmers. It’s “a really, really beautiful study,” says coral biologist Mónica Medina of Pennsylvania State University, who was not involved in the work.

"Researchers have long known that corals maintain a mutually beneficial relationship with the single-celled algae that call the animals’ tissue home. There, sheltered from the harsh conditions of the open ocean, the algae feed on the corals’ waste products. In return, the algae convert sunlight into energy-rich food molecules that nourish themselves and their hosts. Corals also feed on drifting zooplankton to capture other essential nutrients.

***

:...sea creatures living in the vicinity excrete plenty of inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus, which the coral’s algal residents can readily consume. Jörg Wiedenmann, head of the coral reef laboratory at the University of Southampton, wondered whether there was a connection. Could the algae somehow be passing these nutrients along to their coral hosts?

***

"Over a period of 3 years, the researchers found that reefs near islands with lots of birds—and, therefore, plenty of algae food—grew twice as fast as those near islands where birds were scarce. A unique form of nitrogen that is plentiful in bird droppings, but not zooplankton, also reappeared in corals around bird-dense islands. To the researchers, this was further evidence that the algae were indeed shuttling nutrients from the birds to their coral hosts.

"The study nicely combines laboratory and fieldwork to crack a long-standing mystery, Medina says. It could also help scientists better understand the devastating effects of coral bleaching, she adds, in which the relationship between corals and their algal residents breaks down."

Comment: a vivid example of an ecosystem, all interlocking from birds to algae to corals. Not to mention the fish that hide in the corals.

Balance of nature: wolves influence elk adaptations

by David Turell @, Wednesday, September 05, 2018, 21:17 (2032 days ago) @ David Turell

It turns out Yellowstone wolves prefer to attack elks who have shed their horns, and that timing has shifted:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180905113232.htm

"They discovered that wolves in Yellowstone National Park preferentially hunted bulls who already had shed their antlers over those who still had them during late winter. The finding suggests that antlers are used for more than just competing for cows -- that they help deter predators, too -- which could help explain why bulls shed their antlers long after the rut.

"'Because wolves often prefer elk in these systems, male elk uniquely keep their antlers for much of the winter," Metz said. "Other species, say moose in our study system, shed their antlers beginning in December. We believe elk evolved to keep their antlers longer than any other North American deer because they use their antlers as an effective deterrent against wolf predation."

***

"Bulls shed their antlers beginning at the end of each winter and immediately start growing another set. Getting rid of antlers as soon as possible removes a cumbersome burden and gives individual bulls a jumpstart at growing antlers for next year's rut.

"But as a whole, elk shed their antlers months later compared to other North American deer species, and shedding is staggered over a two month period beginning in March, suggesting there might be other reasons to keep antlers around a little longer.

"'Antlers are the product of sexual selection, where males are competing over breeding opportunities in a short time window in the fall," Metz said. "Here we show that the evolution of antlers was also influenced by other things in an elk's environment, like wolf predation, and that a secondary function also helped to shape the characteristics of this structure, such as when antlers are shed."

***

"Wolves in Yellowstone often kill bull elk during the winter months, but Metz and his co-authors found that wolves strongly preferred to kill individuals who had already shed their antlers -- even though they were often in better condition than bulls who still had their rack. The results showed that antlers are indeed an important predatory deterrent for elk -- a secondary function that could help explain variation in antler retention time across species in temperate climates.

"'These males that shed their antlers first are more vulnerable to being killed by wolves despite being in better nutritional condition," Metz said. "The individuals who are in the best condition are the first to drop their antlers to get a leg up on growing larger antlers for the next season and therefore gain the greatest reproductive success. Wolves mostly target individuals who are very young, old or in poor nutritional condition, which are characteristics that make them vulnerable. Here we identified a new, unexpected vulnerability -- shedding antlers early."

"The study highlights an evolutionary Catch-22: Weapons come with both benefits and costs. Bulls who drop their antlers early may grow relatively larger antlers in the upcoming year, winning more cows, but they're also at greater risk to become dinner first."

Comment: Another ways a top predator influences the homeostasis of natures balance.

Balance of nature: wolves influence elk adaptations

by Balance_Maintained @, U.S.A., Thursday, September 06, 2018, 04:07 (2031 days ago) @ David Turell

It turns out Yellowstone wolves prefer to attack elks who have shed their horns, and that timing has shifted:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180905113232.htm

"They discovered that wolves in Yellowstone National Park preferentially hunted bulls who already had shed their antlers over those who still had them during late winter. The finding suggests that antlers are used for more than just competing for cows -- that they help deter predators, too -- which could help explain why bulls shed their antlers long after the rut.

"'Because wolves often prefer elk in these systems, male elk uniquely keep their antlers for much of the winter," Metz said. "Other species, say moose in our study system, shed their antlers beginning in December. We believe elk evolved to keep their antlers longer than any other North American deer because they use their antlers as an effective deterrent against wolf predation."

***

"Bulls shed their antlers beginning at the end of each winter and immediately start growing another set. Getting rid of antlers as soon as possible removes a cumbersome burden and gives individual bulls a jumpstart at growing antlers for next year's rut.

"But as a whole, elk shed their antlers months later compared to other North American deer species, and shedding is staggered over a two month period beginning in March, suggesting there might be other reasons to keep antlers around a little longer.

"'Antlers are the product of sexual selection, where males are competing over breeding opportunities in a short time window in the fall," Metz said. "Here we show that the evolution of antlers was also influenced by other things in an elk's environment, like wolf predation, and that a secondary function also helped to shape the characteristics of this structure, such as when antlers are shed."

***

"Wolves in Yellowstone often kill bull elk during the winter months, but Metz and his co-authors found that wolves strongly preferred to kill individuals who had already shed their antlers -- even though they were often in better condition than bulls who still had their rack. The results showed that antlers are indeed an important predatory deterrent for elk -- a secondary function that could help explain variation in antler retention time across species in temperate climates.

"'These males that shed their antlers first are more vulnerable to being killed by wolves despite being in better nutritional condition," Metz said. "The individuals who are in the best condition are the first to drop their antlers to get a leg up on growing larger antlers for the next season and therefore gain the greatest reproductive success. Wolves mostly target individuals who are very young, old or in poor nutritional condition, which are characteristics that make them vulnerable. Here we identified a new, unexpected vulnerability -- shedding antlers early."

"The study highlights an evolutionary Catch-22: Weapons come with both benefits and costs. Bulls who drop their antlers early may grow relatively larger antlers in the upcoming year, winning more cows, but they're also at greater risk to become dinner first."

Comment: Another ways a top predator influences the homeostasis of natures balance.

Did the bulls adapt to the wolves, or do the wolves just have an aversion to getting gored?

--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

Balance of nature: wolves influence elk adaptations

by David Turell @, Thursday, September 06, 2018, 14:01 (2031 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

It turns out Yellowstone wolves prefer to attack elks who have shed their horns, and that timing has shifted:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180905113232.htm

"They discovered that wolves in Yellowstone National Park preferentially hunted bulls who already had shed their antlers over those who still had them during late winter. The finding suggests that antlers are used for more than just competing for cows -- that they help deter predators, too -- which could help explain why bulls shed their antlers long after the rut.

"'Because wolves often prefer elk in these systems, male elk uniquely keep their antlers for much of the winter," Metz said. "Other species, say moose in our study system, shed their antlers beginning in December. We believe elk evolved to keep their antlers longer than any other North American deer because they use their antlers as an effective deterrent against wolf predation."

***

"Bulls shed their antlers beginning at the end of each winter and immediately start growing another set. Getting rid of antlers as soon as possible removes a cumbersome burden and gives individual bulls a jumpstart at growing antlers for next year's rut.

"But as a whole, elk shed their antlers months later compared to other North American deer species, and shedding is staggered over a two month period beginning in March, suggesting there might be other reasons to keep antlers around a little longer.

"'Antlers are the product of sexual selection, where males are competing over breeding opportunities in a short time window in the fall," Metz said. "Here we show that the evolution of antlers was also influenced by other things in an elk's environment, like wolf predation, and that a secondary function also helped to shape the characteristics of this structure, such as when antlers are shed."

***

"Wolves in Yellowstone often kill bull elk during the winter months, but Metz and his co-authors found that wolves strongly preferred to kill individuals who had already shed their antlers -- even though they were often in better condition than bulls who still had their rack. The results showed that antlers are indeed an important predatory deterrent for elk -- a secondary function that could help explain variation in antler retention time across species in temperate climates.

"'These males that shed their antlers first are more vulnerable to being killed by wolves despite being in better nutritional condition," Metz said. "The individuals who are in the best condition are the first to drop their antlers to get a leg up on growing larger antlers for the next season and therefore gain the greatest reproductive success. Wolves mostly target individuals who are very young, old or in poor nutritional condition, which are characteristics that make them vulnerable. Here we identified a new, unexpected vulnerability -- shedding antlers early."

"The study highlights an evolutionary Catch-22: Weapons come with both benefits and costs. Bulls who drop their antlers early may grow relatively larger antlers in the upcoming year, winning more cows, but they're also at greater risk to become dinner first."

Comment: Another ways a top predator influences the homeostasis of natures balance.


Tony: Did the bulls adapt to the wolves, or do the wolves just have an aversion to getting gored?

Probably both in a fluid situation.

Balance of nature: importance of death & decomposition

by David Turell @, Saturday, September 15, 2018, 15:52 (2022 days ago) @ David Turell

Everything dies and decomposition returns vital items for reuse:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180912133547.htm

"Thanks to a new study by Michigan State University, scientists now have a better way to investigate decomposing plants' and animals' contributions to the ecosystem. This necrobiome, the collective organisms both big and small that helps plants and animals decay, was first defined in 2013 by Eric Benbow, MSU forensic entomologist and microbial ecologist, who led the study. Together with his collaborators, they established a baseline of organisms that play key roles in carrion decomposition.

***

"This detailed study covers the spectrum of decomposition processes, from decaying seaweed to a catastrophe, such as an entire animal herd dying en masse, Benbow said.

"'Decomposer communities are critical, yet there's no standard framework to conceptualize their complex and dynamic interactions across both plant and animal necromass, which limits our comprehensive understanding of decomposition," he said. "Our findings also have implications for defining and testing paradigms related to nutrient recycling, gene flow, population dynamics and other ecosystem processes at the frontier of ecological research."

***

"A recent New York Times article featured an area's transformation when lightning killed 300 reindeer in Norway. The carcasses drew carnivores, birds, maggots and microbes. Jen Pechal, MSU forensic entomologist and microbial ecologist, who was quoted in the article, called the Norwegian site a hyperlocal "decomposition island," which created massive diversity in a short span of time.

"One change in the area resulted in greater plant diversity. Birds feasting on the carrion dropped feces filled with crowberry seeds. The reindeer remains created the perfect soil for crowberry seedlings -- an important food source for many animals in the region -- to flourish.

***

"Promoting the necrobiome lexicon in the scientific community also can open the door for new areas of research. Take, for example, the two seemingly unrelated concepts of distilling liquor and food security. Distilleries generate mash as a waste product. Rather than seeing a waste byproduct that needs to be disposed, entrepreneurs could view the mash through a lens of new product development.

"There are insects that thrive on decaying mash, consuming and converting it, and then they can be dried and transformed into animal feed. Or, in many countries outside the U.S., the insects themselves could be processed for human consumption."

Comment: Life and death. Dead material recycles and returns necessary material to the earth for reuse.

Balance of nature: importance of death & decomposition

by Balance_Maintained @, U.S.A., Sunday, September 16, 2018, 03:59 (2021 days ago) @ David Turell

Everything dies and decomposition returns vital items for reuse:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180912133547.htm

"Thanks to a new study by Michigan State University, scientists now have a better way to investigate decomposing plants' and animals' contributions to the ecosystem. This necrobiome, the collective organisms both big and small that helps plants and animals decay, was first defined in 2013 by Eric Benbow, MSU forensic entomologist and microbial ecologist, who led the study. Together with his collaborators, they established a baseline of organisms that play key roles in carrion decomposition.

***

"This detailed study covers the spectrum of decomposition processes, from decaying seaweed to a catastrophe, such as an entire animal herd dying en masse, Benbow said.

"'Decomposer communities are critical, yet there's no standard framework to conceptualize their complex and dynamic interactions across both plant and animal necromass, which limits our comprehensive understanding of decomposition," he said. "Our findings also have implications for defining and testing paradigms related to nutrient recycling, gene flow, population dynamics and other ecosystem processes at the frontier of ecological research."

***

"A recent New York Times article featured an area's transformation when lightning killed 300 reindeer in Norway. The carcasses drew carnivores, birds, maggots and microbes. Jen Pechal, MSU forensic entomologist and microbial ecologist, who was quoted in the article, called the Norwegian site a hyperlocal "decomposition island," which created massive diversity in a short span of time.

"One change in the area resulted in greater plant diversity. Birds feasting on the carrion dropped feces filled with crowberry seeds. The reindeer remains created the perfect soil for crowberry seedlings -- an important food source for many animals in the region -- to flourish.

***

"Promoting the necrobiome lexicon in the scientific community also can open the door for new areas of research. Take, for example, the two seemingly unrelated concepts of distilling liquor and food security. Distilleries generate mash as a waste product. Rather than seeing a waste byproduct that needs to be disposed, entrepreneurs could view the mash through a lens of new product development.

"There are insects that thrive on decaying mash, consuming and converting it, and then they can be dried and transformed into animal feed. Or, in many countries outside the U.S., the insects themselves could be processed for human consumption."

Comment: Life and death. Dead material recycles and returns necessary material to the earth for reuse.

It took a Phd to tell us what every farmer since the dawn of time has known? Or as the Marines say, "What makes the green grass grow? Blood! Blood makes the green grass grow!"

--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

Balance of nature: wolves used to control moose

by David Turell @, Tuesday, September 25, 2018, 17:20 (2012 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Another example of using a top predator to control a population. Too many moose damage the local environment balance:

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/save-the-wolves--control-the-moose-64852


For almost 60 years, the predator-prey relationship between wolves and moose on Isle Royale, a small island in the northwest part of Lake Superior in Michigan, has been the focus of ongoing research. In recent years, however, the number of wolves on the island has dwindled due to inbreeding; there now remain only two individuals—one male and one female—on the 200-square-mile island. This has led to unrestrained growth of the island’s moose herds, which graze extensively in the national park’s surrounding forest. The situation has sparked debate about whether to attempt a genetic rescue of the wolf population or forgo any intervention and allow extinction.

On September 22, the US National Park Service (NPS) announced its decision to restore the wolf population, and with it, the predator-prey dynamics. By the end of October, six wolves from Michigan and Minnesota will be airlifted to Isle Royale by the NPS. Additional transfers from Michigan as well as Ontario, Canada, are planned over the next three years in order to reach the goal of 20–30 relocated wolves. By reestablishing the wolf population, scientists hope to bring the expansion of moose herds under control.

The integration of the new wolves poses some interesting challenges. For example, it is not known whether there will be territorial conflicts between the remaining wolf pair and the newly integrated wolves. Park planners intend to release the new wolves outside of the remaining pair’s territory, but beyond that they do not plan to intervene.
Moreover, unlike Canadian wolves, Michigan and Minnesota wolves have little to no experience preying on moose. Rolf Peterson of Michigan Technical University tells Science that the relocated wolves will need to acquire the necessary skills. “Wolves are wonderful observational learners, and hunger is a strong motivation to test any potential prey.”

Comment: Same old story. A top predator is necessary. The bush of evolution provides this balance, nothing more.

Balance of nature: more on wolves effects

by David Turell @, Tuesday, October 16, 2018, 21:04 (1991 days ago) @ David Turell

Another study in Yellowstone shows unexpected good results:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181016150722.htm

"Since the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995, the park's ecosystem has become a deeply complex and heterogeneous system, aided by a strategy of minimal human intervention. The new study is a synthesis of 40 years of research on large mammals in Yellowstone National Park,

"'Yellowstone has benefited from the reintroduction of wolves in ways that we did not anticipate, especially the complexity of biological interactions in the park," explained Boyce, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Alberta Conservation Association Chair in Fisheries and Wildlife. "How the vegetation in one valley responded to wolf recovery can be very different than in the next valley."

"Some of these complex interactions include the increasing influence of bears on the survival of elk calves, the relationships between wolves and hunters, as well as the recovery of willow, cottonwood, and aspen trees in different areas of the park. In addition, bison have replaced elk as the dominant herbivore on Yellowstone's Northern Range, and bison numbers continue to increase.

"'We would have never seen these responses if the park hadn't followed an ecological-process management paradigm -- allowing natural ecological processes to take place with minimal human intervention," said Boyce."

Comment: The past studies have been presented here so this is just a review of all the changes in animal populations and the marked changes along the banks of streams. Top predators are vital to the balance.

Balance of nature: wind farms act as top predators

by David Turell @, Tuesday, November 06, 2018, 18:39 (1970 days ago) @ David Turell

Birds avoid the wind turbines and lizards prosper:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/wind-farms-bad-for-raptors-but-good-news-for-lizards

"Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science have found that there are far more lizards in areas with wind turbines than elsewhere, possibly because there are four times fewer predatory birds.

"The birds don’t like the turbines, and the lizards like that. Measuring the reptiles’ stress hormone levels shows they are pretty chilled and less wary of people than is normally the case.

"The findings indicate that the effects of wind farms on local ecology is not always as straightforward as it might seem.

"In a paper published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, the researchers note that the impact of farms on local ecosystems can cascade down the food chain, causing indirect impacts on lower-level animals. In essence, turbines function as added apex predators.

“'By reducing the impact of predatory birds in the area, wind turbines cause a cascade of changes in terrestrial prey, driven primarily by the ecological processes of predator release and density-mediated competition,” they write.

“'The loss of apex predators worldwide has resulted in far-reaching consequences for ecosystem processes and stability.

“'Since the locations of wind farms are mainly determined based on economic rather than environmental considerations, we stress that the consequences of wind farms are greatly underestimated.”

"More to the point, they note, wind farms in unique or biodiverse ecosystems illustrate “an unexpected conflict” between the goals from the United Nations Paris Agreement for climate change mitigation and Aichi Biodiversity Targets from the Convention on Biological Diversity.

"The study was carried out on the lateritic plateaus in the Western Ghats, a mountain range running parallel with India’s west coast, where there have been wind turbines for between 16 and 20 years."

comment: Further validation of the importance of top predators.

Balance of nature: return of top predators repairs balance

by David Turell @, Thursday, November 08, 2018, 21:40 (1968 days ago) @ David Turell

Another study of Yellowstone shows the return of wolves and cougars repair stream damage:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181108134136.htm

"The findings, published today in Ecohydrology, are important because they highlight the role big predators play in the health of aquatic and riparian ecosystems.

***

"Gray wolves and cougars had been hunted to extirpation in Yellowstone by the early 1900s, allowing for an abundance of elk that ate so much willow as to erode stream banks and damage waterways the shrubs had historically protected.

***

"'In the 1990s, elk were still keeping the willows short, usually less than 2 feet tall, and that led to stream widening -- oversized cross sections of channel and a drastically reduced frequency of overbank flows," Beschta said. "But by 2017, willow heights greater than 6 feet were prevalent and canopy cover over the stream, which had essentially been absent in 1995, had increased to 43 percent and 93 percent along the west fork and east fork, respectively."

"Increases in willow height, greater canopy cover, and stream-bank stabilizing courtesy of well-vegetated banks all point toward a recovering riparian/aquatic ecosystem, he said.
Beschta notes, however, that the healing is in its early stages and the recovery of stream channels may be slow in some areas.

"'The over-widened streams that resulted when elk were able to browse on willows as they did when wolves and cougar were absent, that's a big change that's taken place and may become a legacy effect," he said. "In some areas these geomorphic changes to channels may not be quickly reversible and could be there for a long time."

"Nevertheless, the ecosystem improvements that have already happened show the many positives of having a full guild of large carnivores present.

"'The cougars had been back for a while, and the bears have always been there, but they were unable to control the elk populations or at least their browsing," Beschta said. "It wasn't until wolves were returned that we got this reshuffle in what elk were doing and we began to see improvement in plant communities and streams. This is the first study showing improving stream morphology in Yellowstone's northern elk range, or anywhere else in the U.S. as it relates to the return of a large predator."

"With improvements in stream channels and to riparian vegetation, beavers are returning to parts of the study area, their dam building adding its own unique set of ecosystem enhancements.

"'They reinforce and reconnect streams with floodplains in a way that only beavers do," Beschta said. "They irrigate riparian areas in ways that won't occur otherwise, and that's not only good news for riparian vegetation but also a host of wildlife species, such as songbirds, waterfowl, amphibians, fish and others.'"

Comment: Case proven

Balance of nature: return of top predators repairs balance

by David Turell @, Sunday, February 17, 2019, 21:40 (1867 days ago) @ David Turell

Again shown in Australia:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190217142522.htm


"Australia has the highest rate of mammal extinction in the world. Resettlement of indigenous communities resulted in the spread of invasive species, the absence of human-set fires, and a general cascade in the interconnected food web that led to the largest mammalian extinction event ever recorded. In this case, the absence of direct human activity on the landscape may be the cause of the extinctions, according to a Penn State anthropologist.

***

"Australia's Western Desert, where Bird and her team work, is the homeland of the Martu, the traditional owners of a large region of the Little and Great Sandy Desert. During the mid-20th century, many Martu groups were first contacted in the process of establishing a missile testing range and resettled in missions and pastoral stations beyond their desert home. During their hiatus from the land, many native animals went extinct.

"In the 1980s, many families returned to the desert to reestablish their land rights. They returned to livelihoods centered around hunting and gathering. Today, in a hybrid economy of commercial and customary resources, many Martu continue their traditional subsistence and burning practices in support of cultural commitments to their country.

"Twenty-eight Australian endemic land mammal species have become extinct since European settlement. Local extinctions of mammals include the burrowing bettong and the banded hare wallaby, both of which were ubiquitous in the desert before the indigenous exodus,

"'During the pre-1950, pre-contact period, Martu had more generalized diets than any animal species in the region," said Bird. "When people returned, they were still the most generalized, but many plant and animal species were dropped from the diet."

"She also notes that prior to European settlement, the dingo, a native Australian dog, was part of Martu life. The patchy landscape created by Martu hunting fires may have been important for dingo survival. Without people, the dingo did not flourish and could not exclude populations of smaller invasive predators -- cats and foxes -- that threatened to consume all the native wildlife.

***

"...the absence of indigenous hunters in the web makes it easier for invasive species to infiltrate the area and for some native animals to become endangered or extinct. This is most likely linked to the importance of traditional landscape burning practices, said Bird.
Indigenous Australians in the arid center of the continent often use fire to facilitate their hunting success. Much of Australia's arid center is dominated by a hummock grass called spinifex.

"In areas where Martu hunt more actively, hunting fires increase the patchiness of vegetation at different stages of regrowth, and buffer the spread of wildfires. Spinifex grasslands where Martu do not often hunt, exhibit a fire regime with much larger fires. Under an indigenous fire regime, the patchiness of the landscape boosts populations of native species such as dingo, monitor lizard and kangaroo, even after accounting for mortality due to hunting.

"'The absence of humans creates big holes in the network," said Bird. "Invading becomes easier for invasive species and it becomes easier for them to cause extinctions.'"

Comment: This presents more evidence about the importance of top predators. Balance of nature has developed naturally since bacteria first appeared. Please note survival depends upon who happens to be around in your neighborhood, not just your own characteristics.

Balance of nature: where arthropods eat vertebrates

by David Turell @, Monday, March 04, 2019, 00:32 (1853 days ago) @ David Turell

In jungle areas:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/gallery-big-spiders-eating-small-vertebrates

"The comforting notion that an evolutionary hierarchy more or less governs predator-prey relationships – specifically, that vertebrates eat invertebrates, and not the other way around – has been roundly demolished by a team of researchers armed with cameras.

"'This is an underappreciated source of mortality among vertebrates,” says evolutionary biologist Daniel Rabosky from the University of Michigan in the US. “A surprising amount of death of small vertebrates in the Amazon is likely due to arthropods such as big spiders and centipedes.”

"For some years, Rabosky and colleagues have been venturing into the lowland Amazon rainforest, looking for examples of arthropods – invertebrate animals with exoskeletons – capturing and chowing down on victims with backbones.

"A paper published in the journal Amphibian & Reptile Conservation demonstrates that their missions were certainly not in vain.

"They report – and show – many incidences of spiders, as well as a few centipedes and in one case a giant water bug, taking vertebrate prey, including frogs, tadpoles, lizards, snakes, and even a small opossum.

“'These events offer a snapshot of the many connections that shape food webs, and they provide insights into an important source of vertebrate mortality that appears to be less common outside the tropics,” says co-author Rudolf von May."

Comment: Balance is everywhere so all can eat. Obviously, each environment will have different balances. Look at the great pictures of spiders chowing down on fish and frogs

Balance of nature: controls in the oceans

by David Turell @, Sunday, March 10, 2019, 00:13 (1847 days ago) @ David Turell

Phytoplanktons avoid toxic copepods:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190308102145.htm

"Copepods, the world's most common animal, release unique substances into the oceans. Concentrations of these substances are high enough to affect the marine food web, according to new research from the University of Gothenburg. The studies also show that phytoplankton in the oceans detect the special scent of copepods and do their utmost to avoid being eaten.
The substances that copepods release into seawater are called copepodamides.

"When phytoplankton in the water sense copepodamides, they activate their defence mechanisms to avoid being eaten. Some phytoplankton then produce light, bioluminescence; other plankton use chemical warfare and produce toxins or shrink in size.

"'Since the phytoplankton in the ocean are the basis of all marine life, the effects become large-scale," says Erik Selander at the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Gothenburg, who heads the research team.

"Selander compares the effect of copepodamides with the effect of hormones in the body.

"'The substances are remarkably potent. Very small quantities produce large systemic effects.

"The amount of copepodamide that would fit in a grain of salt are enough to cause phytoplankton in a whole swimming pool to mobilise their defences. Some of the defences involve very strong toxins, and as a result copepodamides can have far-reaching effects such as toxic algal blooms."

"The article, which has now been published in Science Advances, also shows that copepodamides affect more of the ocean's inhabitants than researchers previously recognised.

"Including a diatom that produces the domoic acid neurotoxin. It is toxic for many organisms and causes memory loss, among other things, in humans. Other diatoms respond by changing their appearance, going from long, contiguous chains of cells to shorter or single-celled variations.

"'Size is an important property in the ocean. When it changes, there are repercussions in a series of other processes.

"'For example, the amount of carbon exported from the surface to deeper water or who eats whom in the plankton community."

"The new discoveries increase our understanding of the marine food web, and especially the mechanisms that lead to toxic algal blooms."

Comment: Another demonstration that balance of nature is vital for life to continue. This is why God made the bush of life as He gradually developed each stage of evolution

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by David Turell @, Tuesday, March 26, 2019, 19:27 (1830 days ago) @ David Turell

They are now carefully studied as food webs:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/with-food-webs-jennifer-dunne-puts-humans-back-into-ecol...

“'Ecologists tend to study ecosystems ostensibly in the absence of humans,” she said. “Of course, humans are everywhere and impact everything.” When ecologists do consider humans, Dunne added, they often treat us as an external factor causing something like climate change. Throughout history, however, we’ve been enmeshed in the planet’s networks of life-forms eating one another.

"Dunne, who is vice president for science at the Santa Fe Institute, arrived at food web research after starting out in plant ecology. By painstakingly cataloging every species in an ecosystem and what it eats, Dunne and her colleagues can quantify an entire food web. In their data visualizations, every species in a food web — from plankton to panthers — is reduced to a little ball, or node, and every feeding interaction becomes a line between them.

"Those nodes don’t have to be alive today. Dunne has worked on several prehistoric food webs, including one represented in the 500-million-year-old Burgess Shale. To figure out feeding relationships among its weird, impossibly old fossil creatures, she and her co-authors looked at fossilized gut contents and bite marks for clues. They found that the structure of the ancient Cambrian explosion’s food web had remarkable similarities to that of food webs today.

***

"They arrived at the idea of a new kind of network: not a food web, but a web of use. Their working group, which first came together in early 2017, looks at six populations of preindustrial or nonindustrial humans, cataloging every way that people interacted with the species around them: pelts for clothing, wood for shelter, leaves for medicine and so on. To visualize the results, the researchers map a culture’s five or six most-used species onto a circular plot, along with a “taxonomy of uses.” The result resembles a thickly woven dreamcatcher.

***

"Humans are very omnivorous — and because of that, they are not at the top of the food web. Humans are usually kind of in the middle to upper third of the food web for the few systems that I’ve studied. People tend to think humans are at the top. Well, humans are often at the tops of their individual food chains, but because they’re eating everything from plants all the way up to top carnivores, they end up being in the middle of the whole food web.

"Of course, all that’s ignoring parasites and viruses. I have separate work on including parasites in food webs, but that’s a whole different story. But if you ignore parasites and viruses and our microbiome, humans are generally at the top of food chains now. In premodern times, other things would eat us. That’s not so much the case anymore.

"Humans also have short path lines to other species. They have basically two degrees of separation from over 90 percent of the species in the food web, to put it in “Kevin Bacon” terms: Often they’re directly feeding on a quarter to 50 percent of the species, and then almost everything else is connected to those species. So within two links you can get anywhere.

"In the systems I’m looking at right now, humans are super generalists. They feed on many more things than almost all other species.

"In any food web, most animals are fairly specialized in what they eat. Most eat 10 or fewer things. You have a few things that eat more and more. And then out at the very end of the long tail of the distribution is where humans tend to be. In a sense, that is special.

"However, there are always some kinds of generalists in a system. I mean, in the case of the Sanak Aleut nearshore marine food web, there are two super generalists: us and cod. Pretty much anything cod can stuff into their mouth and take a bite of, they do."

Comment: Many systems are described and how many of them are influenced by humans. It is a decisive discussion as to why the bush of life is so important as a food source. And it shows why God knew what He was doing in setting up the diversity so evolution could progress over time with a full energy supply.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by dhw, Tuesday, April 02, 2019, 10:37 (1823 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTES: "In the systems I’m looking at right now, humans are super generalists. They feed on many more things than almost all other species.
"In any food web, most animals are fairly specialized in what they eat. Most eat 10 or fewer things. You have a few things that eat more and more. And then out at the very end of the long tail of the distribution is where humans tend to be. In a sense, that is special."

DAVID: Many systems are described and how many of them are influenced by humans. It is a decisive discussion as to why the bush of life is so important as a food source. And it shows why God knew what He was doing in setting up the diversity so evolution could progress over time with a full energy supply.

A strange conclusion. Let me summarize this collection of obvious facts: all forms of life need food, so of course ecosystems are important for all organisms. Different forms of life need different types of food, some eating more types and some eating fewer. If they can get what they need, they survive. If they can’t get what they need, they die. There is always some kind of hierarchy in the food chain, but there is no such thing as “the” balance of nature, because it changes all the time, according to what eats what. If your God deliberately designed all the comings and goings of the ever changing bush of life and of ecosystems, this suggests anything but the single purpose of deliberately designing the brain of H. sapiens.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by David Turell @, Tuesday, April 02, 2019, 15:43 (1823 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTES: "In the systems I’m looking at right now, humans are super generalists. They feed on many more things than almost all other species.
"In any food web, most animals are fairly specialized in what they eat. Most eat 10 or fewer things. You have a few things that eat more and more. And then out at the very end of the long tail of the distribution is where humans tend to be. In a sense, that is special."

DAVID: Many systems are described and how many of them are influenced by humans. It is a decisive discussion as to why the bush of life is so important as a food source. And it shows why God knew what He was doing in setting up the diversity so evolution could progress over time with a full energy supply.

dhw: A strange conclusion. Let me summarize this collection of obvious facts: all forms of life need food, so of course ecosystems are important for all organisms. Different forms of life need different types of food, some eating more types and some eating fewer. If they can get what they need, they survive. If they can’t get what they need, they die. There is always some kind of hierarchy in the food chain, but there is no such thing as “the” balance of nature, because it changes all the time, according to what eats what. If your God deliberately designed all the comings and goings of the ever changing bush of life and of ecosystems, this suggests anything but the single purpose of deliberately designing the brain of H. sapiens.

You've skipped over, as usual, God's choice of evolution to reach the human level.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by dhw, Wednesday, April 03, 2019, 13:08 (1822 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTES: "In the systems I’m looking at right now, humans are super generalists. They feed on many more things than almost all other species.
"In any food web, most animals are fairly specialized in what they eat. Most eat 10 or fewer things. You have a few things that eat more and more. And then out at the very end of the long tail of the distribution is where humans tend to be. In a sense, that is special."

DAVID: Many systems are described and how many of them are influenced by humans. It is a decisive discussion as to why the bush of life is so important as a food source. And it shows why God knew what He was doing in setting up the diversity so evolution could progress over time with a full energy supply.

dhw: A strange conclusion. Let me summarize this collection of obvious facts: all forms of life need food, so of course ecosystems are important for all organisms. Different forms of life need different types of food, some eating more types and some eating fewer. If they can get what they need, they survive. If they can’t get what they need, they die. There is always some kind of hierarchy in the food chain, but there is no such thing as “the” balance of nature, because it changes all the time, according to what eats what. If your God deliberately designed all the comings and goings of the ever changing bush of life and of ecosystems, this suggests anything but the single purpose of deliberately designing the brain of H. sapiens.

DAVID: You've skipped over, as usual, God's choice of evolution to reach the human level.

We have dealt elsewhere and almost ad nauseam with YOUR choice of God’s purpose and means of achieving that purpose. Once again, balance of nature has absolutely no relevance to your hypothesis that he was unable to design H. sapiens until he had spent 3.5+ billion years designing anything but H. sapiens.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by David Turell @, Wednesday, April 03, 2019, 18:10 (1822 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You've skipped over, as usual, God's choice of evolution to reach the human level.

dhw: We have dealt elsewhere and almost ad nauseam with YOUR choice of God’s purpose and means of achieving that purpose. Once again, balance of nature has absolutely no relevance to your hypothesis that he was unable to design H. sapiens until he had spent 3.5+ billion years designing anything but H. sapiens.

You've admitted the need for a food supply necessary to cover the time evolution took until now. As usual you down play it because it doesn't fit your current suppositions as to God's choices. It is not my 'hypothesis that He was unable to design H. sapiens'. That is your twisted version of my thinking. All I can say is He used a delayed system of evolution for whatever are His reasons or possibly forced choices. Nothing illogical about that statement.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by dhw, Thursday, April 04, 2019, 12:32 (1821 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You've skipped over, as usual, God's choice of evolution to reach the human level.

dhw: We have dealt elsewhere and almost ad nauseam with YOUR choice of God’s purpose and means of achieving that purpose. Once again, balance of nature has absolutely no relevance to your hypothesis that he was unable to design H. sapiens until he had spent 3.5+ billion years designing anything but H. sapiens.

DAVID: You've admitted the need for a food supply necessary to cover the time evolution took until now. As usual you down play it because it doesn't fit your current suppositions as to God's choices. It is not my 'hypothesis that He was unable to design H. sapiens'. That is your twisted version of my thinking. All I can say is He used a delayed system of evolution for whatever are His reasons or possibly forced choices. Nothing illogical about that statement.

I “admit” that all forms of life need food, and food is necessary for life to go on! I do not admit to there being some sort of weird timetable demanding millions of life forms and econiches coming and going to enable life to go on until your God can at last design H. sapiens! As for your hypothesis, you keep varying it. You admit to not knowing why your God delayed fulfilling his one and only purpose for 3.5+ billion years, and you vacillate between the possibility of his being limited (and hence unable to do what he wants to do) or his being all-powerful, in which case you still don’t know why. Nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that life forms need food, which is true whichever of my different hypotheses you may subscribe to.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by David Turell @, Thursday, April 04, 2019, 15:30 (1821 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You've skipped over, as usual, God's choice of evolution to reach the human level.

dhw: We have dealt elsewhere and almost ad nauseam with YOUR choice of God’s purpose and means of achieving that purpose. Once again, balance of nature has absolutely no relevance to your hypothesis that he was unable to design H. sapiens until he had spent 3.5+ billion years designing anything but H. sapiens.

DAVID: You've admitted the need for a food supply necessary to cover the time evolution took until now. As usual you down play it because it doesn't fit your current suppositions as to God's choices. It is not my 'hypothesis that He was unable to design H. sapiens'. That is your twisted version of my thinking. All I can say is He used a delayed system of evolution for whatever are His reasons or possibly forced choices. Nothing illogical about that statement.

dhw: I “admit” that all forms of life need food, and food is necessary for life to go on! I do not admit to there being some sort of weird timetable demanding millions of life forms and econiches coming and going to enable life to go on until your God can at last design H. sapiens! As for your hypothesis, you keep varying it. You admit to not knowing why your God delayed fulfilling his one and only purpose for 3.5+ billion years, and you vacillate between the possibility of his being limited (and hence unable to do what he wants to do) or his being all-powerful, in which case you still don’t know why. Nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that life forms need food, which is true whichever of my different hypotheses you may subscribe to.

I cannot combine threads as you do. The answer is in the brain comparison thread today.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by David Turell @, Friday, June 28, 2019, 19:48 (1736 days ago) @ David Turell

Damage by imported feral cats in Australia:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02001-z?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_c...

"Millions of feral cats roam Australia, where they grow fat and sleek on a diet that includes large helpings of native mammals. Now, Brett Murphy at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia, and a large cast of co-authors have combined estimates of cat prevalence with surveys of mammalian remains in cat poo and stomachs to estimate the total number of their prey.

"According to the scientists’ data, feral cats living in natural landscapes kill 815 million mammals each year, of which 56% are native species. These numbers are considerably larger than the at least 2.1 million native mammals killed by land clearing each year.

"The researchers note that pet cats, even those that are amply provided for at home, still kill large numbers of mammals — about 180 million annually. These are predominately non-native species found in urban and suburban areas.

"A higher proportion of native-mammal remains was found in cat scats from northern Australia than in poos from the more urbanized south, where native creatures have fared poorly."

Comment: Econiches provide food for all living animals, as long as they maintain their precise balance with a proper apex predator. Introducing domestic cats was a disaster and humans have learned this only in retrospect. Econiches fill the bush of life for a necessary reason.

Balance of nature: importance of insects in ecosystems

by David Turell @, Thursday, July 04, 2019, 20:38 (1730 days ago) @ David Turell

Insects have existed long before dinosaurs and birds and are vital to ecosystems:

http://nautil.us/issue/73/play/we-need-insects-more-than-they-need-us

"In 'Buzz, Sting, Bite' you quote E.O. Wilson: “The truth is that we need invertebrates but they don’t need us. If human beings were to disappear tomorrow, the world would go on with little change… But if invertebrates were to disappear, I doubt that the human species could live more than a few months.” What did Wilson mean?

"If all insects were to disappear from today to tomorrow, if they were all gone when you wake up tomorrow, we would all be in big trouble. But the good thing is that insects have been here for 479 million years. They predated the dinosaurs by a wide margin. They were the sole flying creatures for 150 million years. They have survived five mass extinctions already. It’s not like we were going to kill them off, anyway. It’s not like that is something that is at all realistic. Of course, if we blow the entire planet to pieces, they will go, but then we definitely will, too. So they will be here long after we are gone, I think.

***

"I think it is strange more people don’t care about insects. They are so common—there are between 1 and 10 trillion individuals out there—and they are such an important part of all sorts of ecological processes that go on. A decline in insects that leads to a decline in birds, fish, small game, would certainly influence us. A paper from 2006—old now—estimated the annual value of the ecosystem services of recreation and wildlife watching, provided by primarily native insects in the United States, to be worth $50 billion. And there are other ecosystem services. According to the IPBES, the abundance and species diversity of wild pollinating species are declining, even as the cultivation of crops that require pollination has tripled in the last 40 years.

***

"My pure research is with deadwood insects: Insects that live in dead trees and hollow trees. Right now we are looking into how fungi and insects cooperate in this sort of janitor work that they’re doing out in nature, decomposing deadwood. The fungi have spores that will be blown by the wind in all directions—they don’t have any sort of directional dispersal—so they gain a lot by hitchhiking with a beetle, getting stuck on their side or in the gut. The beetle flies to a new and recently dead tree, which is right where this fungi wants to be, too. And that’s actually an advantage to the beetle, also, to have fungi along, because the fungi can break down some of these compounds that the insects have a hard time breaking down themselves. It’s a win-win thing, is our hypothesis.

"Otherwise, all those nutrients would be locked up in that dead biomass, especially in a forest. With trees being big plants, they have a lot of nutrients locked in. That’s the reason why, at least in the forests over here in Norway—and it’s probably not that different in other places—you will find almost one-third of all the species that live in the forest in the deadwood. A bit more than 20,000 species, and 6,000 or 7,000 of them are associated with deadwood. That’s not just insects, that’s fungi as well. And the rest of them, pretty much, are in the soil. So that’s really where you find the diversity: In the brown food web, in the decomposing organic material.

"Well, 5 percent of all plants on this planet have their seeds dispersed by insects. And it’s usually ants. But the coolest example would be this bush from the southern hemisphere, from the African continent. It produces seeds that both look like and smell like the dung of an antelope, one of these animals that live in the same area.....If it was dung, they would then lay eggs into it. But researchers found they didn’t do that! So probably the beetle realizes that she has been fooled, so she doesn’t lay eggs on it and she doesn’t eat it. But the plant has achieved what it really wants, which is to get the seed carried away a certain distance from the mother plant—and even planted!

***

"The ecosystem services provided by insects in the United States alone is valued at $50 billion.

***

"'But the life of an insect is pretty much governed by these basic things: eating, reproducing, and avoiding being eaten before you do the other two. So I don’t they would have time for play, just for fun. Everything pretty much has meaning. (my bold)

***

"We don’t really even understand how metamorphosis actually works. That is really quite a mystery. That this larvae changes, turns into this pupa or chrysalis, and then everything is just rebuilt inside there? It’s like if kids were playing with LEGO bricks, took those LEGO bricks and put them into the box, shook it, and then a completely new figure was inside when you opened it up."

Comment: dhw loves to discuss and denigrate animals eating animals in ecosystems, which are created by God in His design of evolution. This author would disagreed with dhw! Nature must be in superb balance, all during the time from the first bacteria to the current time with humans.

Balance of nature: importance of beavers in ecosystems

by David Turell @, Friday, July 05, 2019, 19:17 (1729 days ago) @ David Turell

Their dams change the local environment and benefit many animals:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7217451/Beavers-dams-useful-environment...

"An array of different animal species benefit from having beavers in their environments because they boost biodiversity, researchers claim.

"The semiaquatic rodents were capable of facilitating many groups of organisms to thrive near beaver patches including moose, otters, and weasels.

"According to the study, they do this by preventing drought, carbon sequestration, flood management and keeping streams cool.

"The team, from the University of Helsinki in Finland, describe them as 'ecosystem engineers' because their dam-building work has such a good effect on habitats.

***

"The researchers argue that promoting facilitative ecosystem engineering by beavers could be very valuable in habitat conservation or restoration, especially in landscapes deficient in wetlands.

"The team set up camera traps and looked at tracks in southern Finland where the American beaver was introduced in the 1950s.

"After analysing the footage they compared the composition of mammal fauna of 10 beaver-modified sites with 10 control sites.

"The tracks showed that moose, otters, weasels and pine martens were more active in beaver patches than other sites.

"'The otter is a species of some concern in Europe, so this may be important from that point of view,' Petri Nummi at the University of Helsinki, Finland told the New Scientist.

"They found that water from the dams beavers build flood large areas, creating shallow ponds that harbour lots of invertebrates, like insects and crustaceans, the study said.

"The trees they fell create open spaces in the forest where young saplings can grow, they said.

"Felled trees, saplings and aquatic plants can all provide food for moose.
When beavers leave a pond and their dams break, the previously flooded area is rich in nutrients and can become a meadow.

"In forests where beavers have been introduced in Finland, their presence is linked to increased activity of several species, according to [the research]."

Comment: All part of the important balance of nature as created by God in his management of evolution. In my view humans were the goal of the creation of the entire process.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by David Turell @, Wednesday, July 10, 2019, 18:09 (1724 days ago) @ David Turell

Another marine system involving sea urchins described:

https://phys.org/news/2019-07-marine-scientists-important-overlooked-role.html

"Sea urchins have gotten a bad rap on the Pacific coast. The spiky sea creatures can mow down entire swaths of kelp forest, leaving behind rocky urchin barrens. An article in the New York Times went so far as to call them "cockroaches of the ocean." But new research suggests that urchins play a more complex role in their ecosystems than previously believed.

***

"'We found that a whole host of detritivores can take advantage of kelp as long as urchins are there to process it for them, whereas otherwise they can't," said Miller. Indeed, only one species, a type of brittle star, ate a significant amount of kelp in the absence of sea urchins.

"'Even then, the brittle stars used much more kelp when the urchins were present," added Yorke.

"Urchins excel in their role of processing kelp for other detritivores. They are remarkably messy eaters, scattering all sorts of bits and pieces as they chow down on giant kelp. What's more, sea urchins digest remarkably little of what they actually eat. Meanwhile, their guts contain a rich assortment of microbes, some of which can pull nitrogen from the seawater itself, enriching the urchin's waste. Some studies have shown that urchin feces can be more nutritious than fresh algae, said Yorke.

"'Essentially, they create a kelp smoothie for the reef," Miller said.

"Yorke agreed and stated that "without the urchins there, it's possible that this kelp would just get washed out of the kelp forest by the current and be unavailable altogether."

***

"'A lot of times urchins are portrayed as grazers," said Yorke, "but that's actually an uncommon condition. Most of the time the urchins are just sedentary detritivores that wait for leaf litter from the kelp to fall and drift past them. They capture this detritus and consume it.

"'Urchins switch from this sedentary behavior to active grazing if drift kelp becomes limited," she explained. This can happen for a number of reasons. If urchins become super-abundant there may not be enough drift kelp to sustain them. Alternatively, oceanographic conditions like El Niño can impact kelp productivity.

"In this way, urchins are more like grasshoppers. Under normal conditions, grasshoppers are a healthy part of their ecosystem. But in certain circumstances, some species will swarm, becoming a plague of locusts.

"'Urchins are generally cast as the villain in the kelp forest," said Miller, "but this study shows that they can play an important role as an intermediary in the food web."
"We should not go around and vilify or smash sea urchins before we understand their role in the ecosystem better," he added. "They're not necessarily always the bad guy they're made out to be.'"

Comment: More evidence that the diversity of life is the source of the ecosystems that provide the food energy to support life and these systems supported the long time it took for evolution to occur to this point.

Balance of nature: bees need meat

by David Turell @, Friday, August 23, 2019, 18:35 (1680 days ago) @ David Turell

They eat microbes that help them use pollen:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/surprise-bees-need-meat/?utm_source=newslett...

"Bees are supreme pollinators because of what their babies eat. Most animals visit flowers to pilfer nectar, and they may or may not brush up against pollen and carry it to the next flower. Female bees, conversely, deliberately collect pollen, along with nectar, to feed their babes. This larval food choice is part of what defines a bee.

"Scientists have known for decades that fermenting microbes are present in pollen, but no one had seemed to consider whether they were also an important food for bees. The microbes function as an “external rumen” that breaks down parts of the pollen. It stands to reason that bees might ingest some microbes, but two researchers decided to investigate whether they eat enough to make them omnivores—and if the bees truly need those microbes to thrive.

***

"For most people, the idea that microorganisms can qualify as meat is radical. In the past four years, Steffan and his colleagues, including Dharampal, have published a series of papers laying out their evidence that microbes are an important part of a variety of food webs, including those that involve bees. Their findings confirm that fungi, bacteria and other microscopic players can fit anywhere in the food web, upending our vision of predator and prey, carnivore and herbivore—and what makes a bee a bee.

"Steffan and colleagues have also shown that microbial meat is a necessary part of bees’ diet. The researchers tested a species of mason bee that lays eggs in above ground tubes that are easy to access and transport. In each tube, the mason bee lays a series of eggs, each on its own wad of pollen and nectar. The researchers had a Utah beekeeper send them a batch of tubes immediately after the bees filled them. They then took the eggs off the wads and separated males from females, and used only the male bee larvae, divided into seven groups of 12. The scientists sterilized half the pollen and then fed different mixes of sterilized and unsterilized pollen to the groups. As the percentage of sterilized pollen in the food increased, so did the larvae’s likelihood of dying. The larvae also weighed less and took longer to mature. “Microbes are a very important source of nutrients for these bees,” Dharampal says. “If you take away this critical source, or portion, of their diet, they suffer tremendously.'”

Comment: Once again this study shows how the the econiche systems of the balance of nature are very complex and intricate and show why evolution had to develop such a huge diverse bush of life.

Balance of nature: bees need meat

by dhw, Saturday, August 24, 2019, 10:03 (1679 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Once again this study shows how the the econiche systems of the balance of nature are very complex and intricate and show why evolution had to develop such a huge diverse bush of life.

Of course all the econiches are complex and intricate and delicately balanced, and for billions of years they have appeared and disappeared, and they are still doing so even in our own day. According to you, it is not “evolution” that had to develop anything. According to you, your God designed every single econiche extant and extinct, and every one in the whole history of this huge diverse bush had the sole purpose of getting life forms to eat or be eaten by one another in order to “cover” the 3.X billion years your God had decided to spend before designing the only thing he wanted to design. This is why I complain that in our discussions you never COMBINE the different part of your theory, and it is the COMBINATION that defies all logic.

Balance of nature: bees need meat

by David Turell @, Saturday, August 24, 2019, 16:06 (1679 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Once again this study shows how the the econiche systems of the balance of nature are very complex and intricate and show why evolution had to develop such a huge diverse bush of life.

dhw: Of course all the econiches are complex and intricate and delicately balanced, and for billions of years they have appeared and disappeared, and they are still doing so even in our own day. According to you, it is not “evolution” that had to develop anything. According to you, your God designed every single econiche extant and extinct, and every one in the whole history of this huge diverse bush had the sole purpose of getting life forms to eat or be eaten by one another in order to “cover” the 3.X billion years your God had decided to spend before designing the only thing he wanted to design. This is why I complain that in our discussions you never COMBINE the different part of your theory, and it is the COMBINATION that defies all logic.

Of course it defies all of your logic. You are an agnostic who does not accept God, but is not sure about whether He might exist or what He does or is capable of doing. We are on different sides of the chasm. Agnosticism is not illogical, but a state of a mind's thoughts and decisions, in a framework of its own decisions.

Balance of nature: bees need meat

by dhw, Sunday, August 25, 2019, 09:38 (1678 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Of course all the econiches are complex and intricate and delicately balanced, and for billions of years they have appeared and disappeared, and they are still doing so even in our own day. According to you, it is not “evolution” that had to develop anything. According to you, your God designed every single econiche extant and extinct, and every one in the whole history of this huge diverse bush had the sole purpose of getting life forms to eat or be eaten by one another in order to “cover” the 3.X billion years your God had decided to spend before designing the only thing he wanted to design. This is why I complain that in our discussions you never COMBINE the different part of your theory, and it is the COMBINATION that defies all logic.

DAVID: Of course it defies all of your logic.

But you cannot explain why your God chose the method you impose on him in order to achieve the purpose you impose on him! Your one wiggle out of the problem is to tell us that God’s logic is different from human logic!

DAVID: You are an agnostic who does not accept God, but is not sure about whether He might exist or what He does or is capable of doing. We are on different sides of the chasm. Agnosticism is not illogical, but a state of a mind's thoughts and decisions, in a framework of its own decisions.

This discussion, as you well know, has nothing whatsoever to do with my agnosticism. An agnostic is just as free to speculate on a possible God’s motives and methods as a theist, and you have yet to quote a single theist who supports your combination of fixed beliefs as summarized above. (See also “Unanswered questions”.)

Balance of nature: bees need meat

by David Turell @, Sunday, August 25, 2019, 14:47 (1678 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Of course all the econiches are complex and intricate and delicately balanced, and for billions of years they have appeared and disappeared, and they are still doing so even in our own day. According to you, it is not “evolution” that had to develop anything. According to you, your God designed every single econiche extant and extinct, and every one in the whole history of this huge diverse bush had the sole purpose of getting life forms to eat or be eaten by one another in order to “cover” the 3.X billion years your God had decided to spend before designing the only thing he wanted to design. This is why I complain that in our discussions you never COMBINE the different part of your theory, and it is the COMBINATION that defies all logic.

DAVID: Of course it defies all of your logic.

dhw: But you cannot explain why your God chose the method you impose on him in order to achieve the purpose you impose on him! Your one wiggle out of the problem is to tell us that God’s logic is different from human logic!

You keep ignoring the fact that God has the right to choose his method. I don't know why He did.


DAVID: You are an agnostic who does not accept God, but is not sure about whether He might exist or what He does or is capable of doing. We are on different sides of the chasm. Agnosticism is not illogical, but a state of a mind's thoughts and decisions, in a framework of its own decisions.

This discussion, as you well know, has nothing whatsoever to do with my agnosticism. An agnostic is just as free to speculate on a possible God’s motives and methods as a theist, and you have yet to quote a single theist who supports your combination of fixed beliefs as summarized above. (See also “Unanswered questions”.)

I have said the ID folks feel He ran evolution.

Balance of nature: bees need meat

by dhw, Monday, August 26, 2019, 09:45 (1677 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You keep ignoring the fact that God has the right to choose his method. I don't know why He did.

Of course he had the right, but why do you assume he chose your illogical method when the historical facts can be explained by a number of different, perfectly logical methods, as you have agreed over and over again? The only objection left to you now is that since you have a fixed belief that your always-in-control God illogically chose not to fulfil his only purpose for 3.X billion years and therefore had to design the rest of the evolutionary bush, we can only conclude that his logic is different from ours! How about considering the possibility that his logic is not different from ours, and therefore your own personal, totally illogical interpretation of evolution might be wrong?

DAVID: You are an agnostic who does not accept God, but is not sure about whether He might exist or what He does or is capable of doing. We are on different sides of the chasm. Agnosticism is not illogical, but a state of a mind's thoughts and decisions, in a framework of its own decisions.

This discussion, as you well know, has nothing whatsoever to do with my agnosticism. An agnostic is just as free to speculate on a possible God’s motives and methods as a theist, and you have yet to quote a single theist who supports your combination of fixed beliefs as summarized above. (See also “Unanswered questions”.)

DAVID: I have said the ID folks feel He ran evolution.

So this discussion has nothing to do with my agnosticism. Thank you. Now do please tell us which of the ID folks or indeed any other folks support your fixed belief that your God’s sole purpose was to design H. sapiens, but he decided to wait 3.X billion years and therefore had to design all the life forms extant and extinct of the evolutionary bush so that they could “cover the time” by eating or being eaten by one another. (See also “Unanswered questions”.)

Balance of nature: bees need meat

by David Turell @, Monday, August 26, 2019, 15:37 (1677 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You keep ignoring the fact that God has the right to choose his method. I don't know why He did.

Of course he had the right, but why do you assume he chose your illogical method when the historical facts can be explained by a number of different, perfectly logical methods, as you have agreed over and over again? The only objection left to you now is that since you have a fixed belief that your always-in-control God illogically chose not to fulfil his only purpose for 3.X billion years and therefore had to design the rest of the evolutionary bush, we can only conclude that his logic is different from ours! How about considering the possibility that his logic is not different from ours, and therefore your own personal, totally illogical interpretation of evolution might be wrong?

DAVID: You are an agnostic who does not accept God, but is not sure about whether He might exist or what He does or is capable of doing. We are on different sides of the chasm. Agnosticism is not illogical, but a state of a mind's thoughts and decisions, in a framework of its own decisions.

dhw:This discussion, as you well know, has nothing whatsoever to do with my agnosticism. An agnostic is just as free to speculate on a possible God’s motives and methods as a theist, and you have yet to quote a single theist who supports your combination of fixed beliefs as summarized above. (See also “Unanswered questions”.)

DAVID: I have said the ID folks feel He ran evolution.

So this discussion has nothing to do with my agnosticism. Thank you. Now do please tell us which of the ID folks or indeed any other folks support your fixed belief that your God’s sole purpose was to design H. sapiens, but he decided to wait 3.X billion years and therefore had to design all the life forms extant and extinct of the evolutionary bush so that they could “cover the time” by eating or being eaten by one another. (See also “Unanswered questions”.)

For the umpteenth time, ID folks support the theory that God has designed all the irreducibly complex machines in living biochemistry. This means God ran evolution and created those designs. For me that translates to my theory about God and evolution. 'Covering time' is a nonsense notion since that is the time evolution took to reach the level of humans. And another nonsense idea is 'eating each other' as if it was not an absolute requirement in the process. A perfectly reasonable theory is God chose to evolve all of the bush of life ending with humans, whom I think are the endpoint.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems underground

by David Turell @, Tuesday, August 27, 2019, 19:08 (1676 days ago) @ David Turell

There is a complex of microbes, fungi and plant roots interacting through nutrients exchanges that is in the infancy of its scientific delineation:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/soils-microbial-market-shows-the-ruthless-side-of-forest...

"Beneath the green vegetable world we see is a dark microbial world we don’t. The crops we eat, the forests that sustain us and most other life forms, even the regulation of Earth’s climate — all benefit from a shadowy network of fungi and bacteria that mobilize soil nutrients and trade them with plants for sugars and fats. And yet the workings of this subterranean society are almost unknown to scientists. For example, researchers just mapped for the first time the global distribution of three major groups of these microbes. Even in 2019, what lies beneath our feet remains a true scientific frontier.

***

"Through innovative and groundbreaking studies, Kiers and her collaborators have gathered evidence that plants and their fungal conspirators are not just cooperating with each other but also engaging in a raucous and often cutthroat marketplace ruled by supply and demand, where everyone is out to get the best deal for themselves and their kind.

"Key to this picture is the revelation that the unseen underground world is just as complex, sophisticated and purposeful as the visible aboveground world we inhabit. Microbes are not simple, passive accessories to plants, but dynamic, powerful actors in their own right. Fungi can hoard nutrients, they can reward plants that are generous with their carbon reserves and punish ones that are stingy, and they can deftly move and trade resources to get the best “deal” for themselves in exchange.

***

"... tantalizing research hints at a capability that has been suspected but never proved: that fungi might not be just nutrient traders but also sophisticated information processors.
Kiers is the first to admit that scientists have far to go in puzzling out the hidden rules of the tiny networked organisms that somehow support all the rest of us. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd?” she said. “We know so much about other types of networks. This is undoubtedly the most important network for our ecosystems, but we just don’t know anything about it. … It’s radically under-studied.”

"When plants crept onto land some 500 million years ago, microbes were waiting. Fungi and bacteria struck up relationships with their new neighbors. Plants, after all, could do something most microbes could not: harness solar energy to split apart atmospheric carbon dioxide and construct energy-rich sugars and fats from the pieces. The microbes, in turn, had mastered the art of freeing up the nutrients that plants needed from the soil — phosphorus especially, but also nitrogen; there is evidence that microbes help plants gain access to water as well. Some 80 percent or more of today’s land plants form partnerships with fungi; still other plants partner with bacteria. If the soil were somehow purged of its microbes, the plant and animal worlds would take a big hit.

***

"Simard referred to forests as “supercooperators” and made the bold assertion that trees don’t just cooperate but communicate. She described birches and Douglas firs as engaging in a “lively two-way conversation” mediated by their underground collaborators. “I had found solid evidence of this massive belowground communications network,” she said, adding later in the talk, “Through back and forth conversations, they increase the resilience of the whole community.”

***

"But what really distinguishes the fungal world is its diversity and complexity. A spoonful of soil contains more microbial individuals than there are humans on Earth. “It’s the most species-dense habitat we have,” said Edith Hammer, a soil ecologist at Lund University in Sweden. A single plant might be swapping molecules with dozens of fungi — each of which might in turn be canoodling with an equal number of plants.

***

"Hammer reported evidence from experiments that fungi have a second trick: They can store nutrients when a plant isn’t paying well, withholding them until they get a better offer.
Together, the results turned scientists’ understanding of the plant-fungal relationship on its head. No longer could mycorrhizal fungi be seen as servants or passive accessories to their plant masters. Rather, life forms below the surface control their own fate, just as much as those above. It’s a dynamic marriage of equals."

Comment: Huge article barely touched upon. Key point: the entire Earth's life systems consist of these interlocking relationships at macroscopic or microscopic levels. Balances of nature are essential to the maintenance of living organisms. Individual systems may come and go over time as dhw notes, but at any given moment there must be necessary systems operating to support the life forms depending upon them.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems underground

by dhw, Wednesday, August 28, 2019, 08:24 (1675 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: There is a complex of microbes, fungi and plant roots interacting through nutrients exchanges that is in the infancy of its scientific delineation:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/soils-microbial-market-shows-the-ruthless-side-of-forest...

Many thanks for this absolutely brilliant article, and also for editing it! In turn, I’d like to cherry pick and comment on a few quotes:
***
"Key to this picture is the revelation that the unseen underground world is just as complex, sophisticated and purposeful as the visible aboveground world we inhabit. Microbes are not simple, passive accessories to plants, but dynamic, powerful actors in their own right.
***
"... tantalizing research hints at a capability that has been suspected but never proved: that fungi might not be just nutrient traders but also sophisticated information processors.
***
"Simard referred to forests as “supercooperators” and made the bold assertion that trees don’t just cooperate but communicate. She described birches and Douglas firs as engaging in a “lively two-way conversation” mediated by their underground collaborators. “I had found solid evidence of this massive belowground communications network,” she said, adding later in the talk, “Through back and forth conversations, they increase the resilience of the whole community.”
***
“[…] life forms below the surface control their own fate, just as much as those above. It’s a dynamic marriage of equals."


What shines through all these quotes is the observation that all forms of life have their own means of processing information, communicating, cooperating, taking decisions and generally working out their own ways of survival. This goes back to the theory of the autonomous intelligent cell as the basis of all evolution, adapting to or exploiting whatever conditions it is confronted with. The same principle applies to the tiniest of micro-organisms and to the most complex of cell communities, just as David points out:

DAVID: Huge article barely touched upon. Key point: the entire Earth's life systems consist of these interlocking relationships at macroscopic or microscopic levels. Balances of nature are essential to the maintenance of living organisms. Individual systems may come and go over time as dhw notes, but at any given moment there must be necessary systems operating to support the life forms depending upon them.

Absolutely right. Every econiche and every relationship speaks of deliberate design by the organisms existing at any particular time. They seem to know what they are doing. And it would, in my view, be perfectly reasonable to claim that their extraordinary intelligence suggests that it too may be the product of design (enter David’s God). But I feel obliged to point out that the vastness of this unseen world and the variety of econiches that come and go are irrelevant to David’s theory that his God designed them all to cover the time he had decided to take before designing the only thing he wanted to design: H. sapiens.

Under “clever corvids

QUOTE: "'Our study shows that crows can be taught to control their vocalizations, just like primates can, and that their vocalizations are not just a reflexive response. This finding not only demonstrates once again the cognitive sophistication of the birds of the crow family. It also advances our understanding of the evolution of vocal control.'"

DAVID: Amazingly clever as usual.

I think it is highly likely that ALL organisms are able to control their own particular means of communication, but we humans have not yet fully grasped the nature of their “cognitive sophistication”. The wonderful article above shows, however, that we are now on the way. The word “sophisticated” is also used in some of the quotes.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems underground

by David Turell @, Wednesday, August 28, 2019, 14:19 (1675 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: There is a complex of microbes, fungi and plant roots interacting through nutrients exchanges that is in the infancy of its scientific delineation:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/soils-microbial-market-shows-the-ruthless-side-of-forest...

dhw: Many thanks for this absolutely brilliant article, and also for editing it! In turn, I’d like to cherry pick and comment on a few quotes:
***
"Key to this picture is the revelation that the unseen underground world is just as complex, sophisticated and purposeful as the visible aboveground world we inhabit. Microbes are not simple, passive accessories to plants, but dynamic, powerful actors in their own right.
***
"... tantalizing research hints at a capability that has been suspected but never proved: that fungi might not be just nutrient traders but also sophisticated information processors.
***
"Simard referred to forests as “supercooperators” and made the bold assertion that trees don’t just cooperate but communicate. She described birches and Douglas firs as engaging in a “lively two-way conversation” mediated by their underground collaborators. “I had found solid evidence of this massive belowground communications network,” she said, adding later in the talk, “Through back and forth conversations, they increase the resilience of the whole community.”
***
“[…] life forms below the surface control their own fate, just as much as those above. It’s a dynamic marriage of equals."


What shines through all these quotes is the observation that all forms of life have their own means of processing information, communicating, cooperating, taking decisions and generally working out their own ways of survival. This goes back to the theory of the autonomous intelligent cell as the basis of all evolution, adapting to or exploiting whatever conditions it is confronted with. The same principle applies to the tiniest of micro-organisms and to the most complex of cell communities, just as David points out:

DAVID: Huge article barely touched upon. Key point: the entire Earth's life systems consist of these interlocking relationships at macroscopic or microscopic levels. Balances of nature are essential to the maintenance of living organisms. Individual systems may come and go over time as dhw notes, but at any given moment there must be necessary systems operating to support the life forms depending upon them.

dhw: Absolutely right. Every econiche and every relationship speaks of deliberate design by the organisms existing at any particular time. They seem to know what they are doing. And it would, in my view, be perfectly reasonable to claim that their extraordinary intelligence suggests that it too may be the product of design (enter David’s God). But I feel obliged to point out that the vastness of this unseen world and the variety of econiches that come and go are irrelevant to David’s theory that his God designed them all to cover the time he had decided to take before designing the only thing he wanted to design: H. sapiens.

Total distortion as usual in the bolded section. God knew, full well, that all of evolution had to be designed before He got to designing humans and He WANTED to design it all.


Under “clever corvids

QUOTE: "'Our study shows that crows can be taught to control their vocalizations, just like primates can, and that their vocalizations are not just a reflexive response. This finding not only demonstrates once again the cognitive sophistication of the birds of the crow family. It also advances our understanding of the evolution of vocal control.'"

DAVID: Amazingly clever as usual.

dhw: I think it is highly likely that ALL organisms are able to control their own particular means of communication, but we humans have not yet fully grasped the nature of their “cognitive sophistication”. The wonderful article above shows, however, that we are now on the way. The word “sophisticated” is also used in some of the quotes.

And it all could have been designed into organisms.

Balance of nature: importance of ocean ecosystems

by David Turell @, Friday, October 18, 2019, 19:57 (1624 days ago) @ David Turell

Krill play a major role in the carbon cycle and supplying protein fertilization of the ocean floor:

https://phys.org/news/2019-10-whale-food-krill-carbon-dioxide.html

Antarctic krill are well-known for their role at the base of the Southern Ocean food web, where they're food for marine predators such as seals, penguins and whales.

Less well-known is their importance to the ocean's carbon sink, where CO2 is removed from the atmosphere during photosynthesis by phytoplankton and sequestered to the seafloor through a range of processes.

***

"By eating phytoplankton and excreting carbon and nutrient-rich pellets that sink to the seafloor, Antarctic krill are an integral part of the carbon cycle and a key contributor of iron and other nutrients that fertilize the ocean," Dr. Cavan said.

"Krill fecal pellets constitute the majority of sinking carbon particles that scientists have identified in both shallow and deep waters in the Southern Ocean.

"Antarctic krill grow up to 6-centimeters long and weigh around one gram, but they swarm in such vast numbers that their combined contribution to the movement of ocean carbon and other nutrients can be huge.

"The Southern Ocean is one of the largest carbon sinks globally, so krill have an important influence on atmospheric carbon levels and therefore the global climate."

***

But there is no consensus on the effect that harvesting Antarctic krill could have on atmospheric carbon and ocean chemistry nor, for that matter, how growing whale populations might also affect krill numbers.

"Southern Ocean ecosystems and chemical processes are highly complex and poorly understood, and our lack of knowledge about the extent of krill's ability to affect the carbon cycle is a concern, given that it is the region's largest fishery.

"We don't know, for example, whether a decline in krill might actually lead to an increase in the biomass of phytoplankton, which are also integral in transporting carbon to the seafloor.

Comment: another example of the importance of ecosystems and how tightly controlled they are and must not be disturbed by humans. But we humans are put in charge and must be careful in how we manage these systems. These had to be set up before H. sapiens arrived with the ability to learn to handle them. Yet dhw wants God to rush to create humans.

Balance of nature: importance of ocean ecosystems

by David Turell @, Sunday, October 18, 2020, 21:43 (1258 days ago) @ David Turell

Another ocean migration system at the basis of ocean food supply:

http://oceans.nautil.us/feature/625/the-earth-shaping-animal-migration-no-one-ever-sees...
"Each night, as the sun goes down behind the horizon, a tidal wave of life rises up out of the deep ocean—everything from crustaceans smaller than a grain of rice to see-through jellies, blood-red squid, and gigantic, boiling schools of glow-in-the-dark lanternfish.

"They’re cold. They’re ravenous for surface-living plankton. And they’re on a tight schedule. For as soon as the sun returns, all these creatures must once again descend back to the black, lest they get gobbled up by the hungry mouths that patrol the ocean’s surface in the light of day.

"This dance between light and dark, warm and cold, and predator and prey is called diel vertical migration (pronounced dial). It’s believed to be the largest movement of animal mass on earth.

***

"The depth at which phytoplankton can still undergo photosynthesis is determined by things like water clarity, says Philip Hosegood, a physical oceanographer at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom. And water clarity is the result of a whole host of other variables, such as water temperature, wind speeds, tides, currents, salinity, and light.

“'The ocean is a three-dimensional place,” says Hosegood. “But really, of course, it's four-dimensional, because instead of just changing horizontally and vertically, it also changes in time.”

"The lengths to which extra-tiny organisms go to make this migration is also made more impressive with a little knowledge of fluid dynamics. Otters, octopuses, and even humans can glide through water with relatively little resistance, but as a creature gets smaller, the more difficult it becomes for it to overcome water’s natural stickiness.

***

"When all those tiny phytoplankton undergo photosynthesis at the surface, they consume carbon dioxide, says Helm. And then when they are eaten, that carbon is dragged back down below.

In fact, when scientists created a model in 2019 to determine just how much carbon DVM is responsible for depositing in the deep sea, they learned that all those squid, fish larvae, and baby shrimp push around 1 PgC—1 petagram of carbon, equal to 1 billion metric tons—into the depths each year.

***

"DVM only accounts for about 16 percent of the carbon captured by the ocean, says Archibald. Other contributors include natural water movements, sinking phytoplankton cells, and plain old poop, which at oceanic scales is a vast phenomenon indeed—and of course one supported by DVM’s bounty. DVM also accelerates the rate at which digested nutrients travel. Some research suggests DVM shuttles nutrients downward at an order of magnitude faster than they could sink on their own, allowing them to reach the deep ocean rather than drifting interminably.

"This means that creatures who have never seen the sun still depend on its processes up above. We’re not all that unlike them, actually. For though we live out our days far away from all of this action, the vertical flow of life puts food on our tables and plays a role in our rapidly changing climate. "

Comment: All ecosystems are about food supply, and they have existed and been self-organizing since the start of life. That is why we have the huge bush that now supports a human population currently reaching toward eight billion folks. When I was very young There were only two billion!! Growth exponentially. It is easy to see that God knew all this would happen when we took control of the Earth and the bush of life He provided is thus explained.

Balance of nature: importance of ocean ecosystems

by David Turell @, Wednesday, November 18, 2020, 22:57 (1227 days ago) @ David Turell

A study in loss of top predators and ocean effects:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/otters-show-how-predators-can-blunt-climate-...

"As sea otters declined (for reasons scientists are still trying to understand), their favorite prey—sea urchins—exploded in number. The voracious echinoderms not only mowed down the kelp but are also tearing apart and devouring the massive, slow-forming limestone reefs on which this seaweed grows, Rasher and his colleagues recently reported in Science. Rising ocean temperatures and acidification are compounding the damage.

"Restoring otter populations could rein in the urchins and help protect the larger ecosystem, and ecologists are increasingly interested in applying this idea more broadly. “Our study ... highlights the power of trophic cascades in nature and the potential for large predators to ameliorate some of the effects of climate change in the near term,” Rasher and his co-authors wrote. (“Trophic cascade” refers to the compounding effects of removing an organism from an ecosystem.) Many climate impact studies on species have not adequately acknowledged this kind of ecosystem complexity as a factor, according to Rasher and other scientists.

***

'The idea of restoring predators to blunt the impacts of warming has been simmering in ecology for decades. Fifteen years ago Christopher Wilmers, a wildlife ecologist now at the University of California, Santa Cruz, published studies looking at how warmer winters in Yellowstone National Park meant fewer elk foundering in deep snow and dying. The result was less early-winter carrion for the park’s many scavengers, such as grizzly bears and ravens, with dead elk bunching up at the end of relatively severe winters. After wolves were reintroduced in 1995, though, they became the main cause of elk mortality and created a steadier carrion supply that helped sustain other animals throughout the cold months. “Wolves provide this kind of temporal subsidy, where they’re making food for scavengers that would be overabundant at one time of year and underabundant at another and smoothing it out,” says Wilmers, who tracked Yellowstone wolf packs for four years.

***

"Rudolf created four habitats with pond water at present-day temperatures and four with heated pond water. He raised some tadpoles separated by species, some with mixed species, and others with mixed species and the dragonfly larvae. One species had lower survival rates in heated water when it was on its own—but when exposed to either competition or predation, the rates between heated and nonheated ponds were virtually equal. It could be that warmer conditions slow the larvae’s metabolism, prompting the predators to eat less, Rudolf says. Or the tadpoles might grow so fast in warmer water that it is harder for the larvae to capture them. “You might have reduced survival because of the direct effect of heat,” he says, “but [changes caused by] predation and competition can compensate for those direct losses. It buffers it out a bit.”

***

“'Everything we know about ecology is that as things get more complex, they change,” Rudolf says. That perspective is echoed in a soon to be published paper by University of Colorado Boulder ecologist Laura Dee, who points to the many indirect effects warmer temperatures can have on a species. These include increasing or decreasing prey, changing competitive abilities, shifting feeding rates and altering trophic cascades.

***

"In 2017 his team resurveyed the reefs’ status across the Aleutian archipelago and discovered that some had shrunk precipitously in just three years. Large areas that had been alive for centuries or millennia were crumbling and bleached, indicating urchins had recently killed them. Such devastation underscores the urgency of restoring balance to the ecosystem by bringing the otters back. And similar situations likely hold true for other ecosystems across the globe. Scientists still need to understand the reasons behind the otters’ disappearances, but Rasher Is hopeful. “Bringing the otters back would bring many ecological benefits,” he says, “and would also buy us time to get our act together on curbing carbon emissions.'”

Comment: Each ecosystem has its contribution to the whole. As the Earth has warmed in this recent past current sunspot cycles and now they may start cooling us, this article shows climate is related to how ecosystems are influenced, maintained or damaged. All the branches of the bush of life are interrelated through the common DNA code and how a food supply is precariously sustained.

Balance of nature: importance of ocean ecosystems

by David Turell @, Sunday, January 23, 2022, 18:31 (796 days ago) @ David Turell

Shift work creates a balance:

https://phys.org/news/2022-01-shift-marine-microbes-scarce-ocean.html

"Though they may be small, microorganisms are the most abundant form of life in the ocean. Marine microbes are responsible for making roughly half of the organic carbon that's usable by life. Many marine microbes live near the surface, depending on energy from the sun for photosynthesis.

"Yet between the low supply of and high competition for some key nutrients, like nitrogen, in the open ocean, scientists have puzzled over the vast diversity of microbial species found there. Researchers from the University of Washington, in collaboration with researchers from 12 other institutions, show that time of day is key, according to a study published Jan. 20 in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

***

"By integrating data on the timing of metabolic processes of different microbes in the surface ocean throughout the 24-hour light cycle—from the transcription of genes for proteins used in metabolism to the synthesis of molecules, like lipids, into the microbes' cells—the researchers discovered that the coexistence of such diverse microbes may not be dictated by competition, but by the timing of their nitrogen uptake.

"With staggered uptake of the essential nutrient nitrogen, "instead of having to compete with the whole field, [microbes] only have to compete with the organisms that share that specific shift with [them]. Perhaps that's one way that the competition is slightly alleviated and can facilitate all of these diverse microbes being able to live off of the same nutrient source," said co-first author Daniel Muratore, a doctoral student at Georgia Tech.

***

"The data revealed that most of the activity occurred at four time points: dusk (6 p.m.), night (2 a.m.), morning (6 a.m.) and afternoon (between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.). While these times were important for many types of microbes, different groups' activities at each time weren't uniform.

"'Realizing that various types of microbes acquire nitrogen at different times of day helps to answer a long-standing question in oceanography: How can there be such an incredible diversity of life, all essentially in the same place at the same time?" said co-author Anitra Ingalls, a UW professor of oceanography. "Being able to explain the underlying reasons for this diversity will help oceanographers better predict how these communities may shift as the ocean changes.'"

Comment: another ecosystem explained in large part. It points out how important day, night Earth rotation is part of the explanation of why this is designed as a privileged planet.

importance of tiny ecosystems

by David Turell @, Thursday, April 21, 2022, 15:20 (708 days ago) @ David Turell

What happens in sloth fur relates to their poop placement:

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-furry-ecosystem-of-algae-moths-and-sl...

"It turns out that the humble sloth is at the center of a fascinating three-way mutualism, one that connects with a puzzling aspect of their behavior — they spend almost their entire lives in trees, but venture down to the ground to poop.

***

"Sloths move so slowly that tons of organisms, including beetles, cockroaches, fungi and algae live on them. One species of green algae in particular lives nowhere else on earth except in the fuzzy comfort of sloth fur. These algae provide a portable food source for sloths, who happily dine on their microscopic stowaways. But while the sloths provide a hirsute home, the algae also need nutrients in order to survive. That’s where another resident of Slothtown swoops in: moths.

"Specifically, we’re talking about pyralid moths in the genus Cryptoses. These are “largely flightless moths that live in the fur of both two-toed and three-toed sloths,” says Jonathan Pauli, an associate professor of wildlife ecology at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The moths will lay their eggs in sloth dung, and the moth larvae … are coprophagous, they eat sloth poo.”

"Once the larvae mature, they fly up to the forest canopy to colonize a sloth, and the cycle continues. Sloths pooping on the ground allows the moths in their fur to get close to the feces, which is vital to continue their lifecycle. Given that the moths spend their entire adult lives in sloth fur and aren't strong fliers, it would be difficult for a moth to successfully locate and lay eggs in sloth poop if it was falling from trees to the ground far below. But why would sloths help out the moths like this? Just because their names rhyme? Surely there’s more to it.

“'The moth lifecycle is really dependent on the sloth for survival,” says Pauli. “The moths ultimately die within the fur of these sloths.” Once the moths die, a “host of decomposers that occur within sloth fur” break down their bodies. In a sense, this creates sloth fertilizer, Pauli says with a laugh.

"Studies have shown that the more moths living in sloth fur, the more nutrients — or “fertilizer” — that can be found there as well, which leads to more tasty algae. “There appears to be this three-way mutualism between moths, algae and the sloth,” Pauli says. Risking being eaten by predators in order to facilitate this multi-partner relationship may just be worth it for the sloths."

Comment: A fascinating relationship between three very different players. But note everyone gets to eat. Still why sloths must poop on ground is strange. It could be 'bombs away' just as easily. They are programmed to descend. Now I wonder if God intervened. After all the ground is not sloth safe! No survival advantage there.

human disruption of an ecosystem

by David Turell @, Thursday, April 21, 2022, 16:37 (708 days ago) @ David Turell

Involves mammal body size and food supply:

https://phys.org/news/2022-04-humans-disrupting-million-year-old-feature-ecosystems.html

"The U-shaped relationship between diet and size in modern land mammals could also stand for "universal," says a new study, which has found that the relationship spans at least 66 million years and a range of vertebrate animal groups.

"It's been several decades since ecologists realized that graphing the diet-size relationship of terrestrial mammals yields a U-shaped curve when aligning those mammals on a plant-to-protein gradient. As illustrated by that curve, the plant-eating herbivores on the far left and meat-eating carnivores on the far right tend to reach sizes much larger than those of the all-consuming omnivores and the invertebrate-feasting invertivores in the middle.

"To date, though, virtually no research had looked for the pattern beyond mammals or the modern day. In a new study, researchers from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and institutions on four continents have concluded that the pattern actually dates back to deep time and applies to land-dwelling birds, reptiles and even saltwater fishes.

"But the study also suggests that human-related extinctions of the largest herbivores and carnivores are disrupting what appears to be a fundamental feature of past and present ecosystems, with potentially unpredictable consequences.

***

"The evolutionary and ecological histories of animal species can be told in part through the intertwined influences of diet and size, Gearty said. A species' diet determines its energy consumption, which in turn drives growth and ultimately helps dictate its size. Yet that size can also limit the quality and quantity of food available to a species, even as it sets thresholds for the quality and quantity needed to survive.

"'You can be as big as your food will allow you to be," Gearty said. "At the same time, you're often as big as you need to be to catch and process your food. So there's an evolutionary interplay there."

***

"The ultimate result: a U-shaped distribution of both average and maximum body sizes in mammals. To analyze the generalizability of that pattern in the modern day, the team compiled body-size data for a huge number of surviving species: 5,033 mammals, 8,991 birds, 7,356 reptiles and 2,795 fishes.

"Though the pattern was absent in marine mammals and seabirds, probably due to the unique demands of living in water, it did emerge in the other vertebrate groups—reptiles, saltwater fishes and land-based birds—examined by the team. The pattern even held across various biomes—forests vs. grasslands vs. deserts, for instance, or the tropical Atlantic Ocean vs. the temperate North Pacific—when analyzing land mammals, land birds and saltwater fishes.

***

"'To my knowledge, this is the most extensive investigation of the evolution of body size and especially diet in mammals over time," Gearty said.

"It revealed that the U-curve stretches back at least 66 million years, when non-avian dinosaurs had just been wiped out but mammals had yet to diversify into the dominant animal class that they are today.

***

"In that vein, the team has projected a greater than 50% chance that multiple large- and medium-sized mammals—including the tiger and Javan rhinoceros, both of which count humans as their only predators—will go extinct within the next 200 years. Those predicted extinctions would only exacerbate the disruption of the U-curve, the researchers said, especially to the extent that the loss of large herbivores could trigger or accelerate the loss of the large carnivores that prey on them.

"'It's certainly possible that as we take some of these animals off the top (of the U-curve), and as we collapse some of these ranges of body sizes, that we're altering the way the energy is divvied up," Gearty said. "That could perhaps have fundamental repercussions for the environment and ecosystem as a whole.'"

"It's also possible, the researchers concluded, that the forthcoming decline in mammal body sizes could outpace even the unprecedented drop observed over the past few hundred thousand years.

"'You keep seeing, in ecological literature, people speculating about how ecosystems are less stable now, and less resilient, and more prone to collapse," Lyons said. "I think this is just another line of evidence suggesting that that may indeed be the case in the future.'"

Comment: more evidence of my insistence on the importance of ecosystems as developed by the vast bush of life provided by evolution. dhw's view of evolution as it led to humans is totally distorted in his complaint as why God bothered with all of this on the way to humans. It was befoe and is required now.

Balance of nature: importance of ocean ecosystems

by David Turell @, Monday, August 08, 2022, 23:30 (599 days ago) @ David Turell

Another article describing oceans ecosystems importance:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-ocean-sustains-complex-life/

"How the Ocean Sustains Complex Life
Detailed data about a host of physical and chemical forces are shaping a new view of the sea

"Search “ocean zones” online, and you will see hundreds of illustrations that depict the same vertical profile of the sea. The thin, top layer is the “sunlight” or epipelagic zone, which receives enough light for photosynthesis by phytoplankton, algae and some bacteria. Below it is the twilight zone, where the light fades but is still strong enough for some animals to see by and where many animals make their own light through bioluminescence. Next is the midnight zone, with no measurable light, followed by the relentlessly cold abyss. Finally, there are the incredibly deep seafloor trenches known as the hadal zone, named after Hades, Greek god of the underworld.

"In this classic view, the amount of light and the water pressure—which increases steadily with depth—largely define which creatures live where. Those factors are important, but so are water temperature, salinity, amounts of oxygen and nitrogen, and the changing currents. Data collected worldwide have revealed that ocean dynamics, and ocean life, are far more complex than we thought, surprising us again and again as we explore."

Comment: Unfortunately, the remainder of the article is illustrations I cannot copy, but their point is the oceans contain an enormous biomass of organisms with probably a million unknown species, to quote. If the website will open for you it is worth a look.

Balance of nature: importance of ocean ecosystems

by David Turell @, Tuesday, August 09, 2022, 19:20 (598 days ago) @ David Turell

Phytoplankton's at the base if life's ecosystems:

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-daynight-global-ocean.html

"Phytoplankton is the foundation of all life on the planet. Understanding how these photosynthetic organisms react to their ocean environment is important to understanding the rest of the food web.

"In spite of that, computer models of the global ocean biogeochemistry typically don't include the day/night (diel) light cycle, even though that cycle is critical for photosynthesis in the ocean's primary producers.

"For the first time, scientists from the Ecosystems Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) have incorporated the diel cycle into a global ocean model in order to investigate its effects on phytoplankton.

***

"The researchers found that the diel cycle did indeed matter to the simulated phytoplankton.

"'We know that a lot of traits of different phytoplankton are based on the day/night cycle. Some dinoflagelletes go deeper [in the water column] to get more nutrients and then go up to photosynthesize. Some store carbon during the day, so they can use it at night," says Ioannis Tsakalakis, MBL postdoctoral researcher and first author on the paper.

"The model showed that diel cycles are associated with higher concentrations of limited nutrients, which meant that at lower latitudes (−40° to 40°), the simulated opportunists were more abundant than the gleaners compared to the control simulation. This includes phytoplankton like diatoms. This mechanism became less important at higher latitudes, where the effects of the seasonal light cycle were stronger than the day/night cycles.

"If scientists don't understand how phytoplankton are getting their energy as primary producers at the base of the food web, it's hard to make inferences about the interactions of the rest of that global ocean food web—all the way up to humans.

***

"'This model contributes to advancing our fundamental understanding of how the ocean works," says Vallino, adding that as scientists make better ocean models, eventually they may use them to investigate possible solutions to climate change while minimizing unintended consequences.

"'Being able to predict how the distribution of phytoplankton will change is going to have repercussions higher up the food web," says Vallino. "If you can't get that base change right, you can't get anything that's connected to that above it.'"

Comment: this shows how some of the earliest evolved forms contribute to today's food supply. And it supports my claim that all of evolution was necessary to produce humans.

Balance of nature: importance of specific animals

by David Turell @, Tuesday, August 09, 2022, 19:36 (598 days ago) @ David Turell

Reintroduce wolves and beavers are proposed to restore old ecosystems now damaged:

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-wolves-beavers-western-states-habitats.html

"In a paper published today in BioScience, "Rewilding the American West," co-lead author William Ripple and 19 other authors suggest using portions of federal lands in 11 states to establish a network based on potential habitat for the gray wolf—an apex predator able to trigger powerful, widespread ecological effects.

"In those states the authors identified areas, each at least 5,000 square kilometers, of contiguous, federally managed lands containing prime wolf habitat. The states in the proposed Western Rewilding Network, which would cover nearly 500,000 square kilometers, are Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

***

"'Still, the gray wolf's current range in those 11 states is only about 14% of its historical range," said co-lead author Christopher Wolf, a postdoctoral scholar in the College of Forestry. "They probably once numbered in the tens of thousands, but today there might only be 3,500 wolves across the entire West."

"Beaver populations, once robust across the West, declined roughly 90% after settler colonialism and are now nonexistent in many streams, meaning ecosystem services are going unprovided, the authors say.

"By felling trees and shrubs and constructing dams, beavers enrich fish habitat, increase water and sediment retention, maintain water flows during drought, improve water quality, increase carbon sequestration and generally improve habitat for riparian plant and animal species.

"'Beaver restoration is a cost-effective way to repair degraded riparian areas," said co-author Robert Beschta, professor emeritus in the OSU College of Forestry. "Riparian areas occupy less than 2% of the land in the West but provide habitat for up to 70% of wildlife species."

"Similarly, wolf restoration offers significant ecological benefits by helping to naturally control native ungulates such as elk, according to the authors. They say wolves facilitate regrowth of vegetation species such as aspen, which supports diverse plant and animal communities and is declining in the West.

"The paper includes a catalogue of 92 threatened and endangered plant and animal species that have at least 10% of their ranges within the proposed Western Rewilding Network; for each species, threats from human activity were analyzed."

Comment: I've presented this before confined to the Yellowstone wolf replacement experiment which had fabulous success. Our existence on this planet requires maintaining all=l existing ecosystems as they were originally, before we damaged them.

Balance of nature: food supply

by David Turell @, Tuesday, October 22, 2019, 15:53 (1620 days ago) @ David Turell

Giant dinosaurs had special plant food:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6463/291

"Summary
Sauropod dinosaurs were the biggest creatures ever to have thundered across Earth. Researchers have long wondered how these beasts managed to bulk up to the weight of more than 10 African bull elephants on a spartan diet of prehistoric greens. Many herbivores today grow fat on energy-rich grasses, but these and other nutritious flowering plants didn't become common until near the end of the dinosaurs' reign. Now, researchers think they have glimpsed the answer: a surprisingly nutrient-rich plant still living today that could have been a mainstay of these dinosaurs' diets, and turtlelike beaks that buttressed sauropods' peglike teeth as they relentlessly stripped foliage from plants.

More info:

https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/did-the-mega-dinosaurs-grow-so-big-on-a-living-fo...

From the article:

"Horsetails appeared to be poor fodder in previous tests, which simply burned the plants to measure carbon content, Gee says. Instead, her team adapted the Hohenheim gas test, a method for assessing the quality of fodder for farm animals. They fermented modern horsetails for 3 days to simulate the journey through a sauropod’s gut and measured the volume of gas produced—an indicator of energy content. The researchers were astounded to find that horsetails released more energy than any other plant group, including 16 modern grasses. Equisetum is rich in protein, they say, and far more nutritious than the ferns, cycads, and conifers common in the dinosaur era. Gee argues that horsetails by rivers and lakes would have offered sauropods, especially young ones, “a plentiful, accessible, and extremely nutritious food.'”

Comment: This shows how God set up econiches for balance in nature. Special plants for giant dinosaurs, milkweed for monarchs. The bush of life is an absolute requirement for the evolutionary appearance of humans. Perhaps dhw will understand this explanation as to why God took all that time to reach humans. He seems confused to me.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by David Turell @, Friday, April 17, 2020, 21:10 (1442 days ago) @ David Turell

A new study showing the importance of balance with loss of megafauna:

https://phys.org/news/2020-04-extinction-threatened-marine-megafauna-huge.html

"Defined as the largest animals in the oceans, with a body mass that exceeds 45kg, examples include sharks, whales, seals and sea turtles.

"These species serve key roles in ecosystems, including the consumption of large amounts of biomass, transporting nutrients across habitats, connecting ocean ecosystems, and physically modifying habitats.

"Traits, such as how large they are, what they eat, and how far they move, determine species' ecological functions. As a result, measuring the diversity of traits allows scientists to quantify the contributions of marine megafauna to ecosystems and assess the potential consequences of their extinction.

***

"The results showed a diverse range of functional traits held by marine megafauna, as well as how the current extinction crisis might affect their functional diversity.

"If current trajectories are maintained, in the next 100 years we could lose, on average, 18% of marine megafauna species, which will translate in the loss of 11% of the extent of ecological functions. Nevertheless, if all currently threatened species were to go extinct, we could lose 40% of species and 48% of the extent of ecological functions.

"Sharks are predicted to be the most affected, with losses of functional richness far beyond those expected under random extinctions.

***

"If we lose species, we lose unique ecological functions. This is a warning that we need to act now to reduce growing human pressures on marine megafauna, including climate change, while nurturing population recoveries.'"

Comment: The importance of econiches (ecosystems) is again demonstrated. The current bush of life is required and anticipated by God as He evolved life on Earth.

Balance of nature: importance of algae in ecosystems

by David Turell @, Sunday, November 29, 2020, 20:40 (1216 days ago) @ David Turell

They supply sugars at the base of systems:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201125154808.htm

The next time you visit a lake or the seashore, take a deep breath. As you exhale, take a moment to be thankful for the little things: specifically, for the microscopic, single-celled algae in the soil and waters all around you that are extracting the carbon dioxide you just exhaled and incorporating it into sugars that will eventually be used by every other organism in the biosphere. About 30% of this activity, globally, is carried out by a specialized structure in algae called the pyrenoid.

To visualize a pyrenoid, think of a pomegranate. The pyrenoid contains kernels of Rubisco, the enzyme that carries out the molecular work of incorporating carbon dioxide into sugars. These kernels are embedded in a supportive flesh, or matrix, of other proteins, that is itself surrounded by an outer shell made of starch. The fruit is a bit worm-eaten; it is riddled with fingerlike channels -- actually, tubules enclosed by membrane -- that deliver concentrated carbon dioxide to the Rubisco kernels. The tubules are important to pyrenoid function because waterborne algae such as Chlamydomonas reinhardtii would otherwise struggle to get enough carbon dioxide to keep Rubisco operating at peak capacity.

***

"We noticed that the antibody directly bound to several pyrenoid-localized proteins," says Jonikas. In other words, they'd just discovered that all these proteins possess a lock matching their antibody's key. Closer examination of the proteins revealed the existence of a sequence of amino acids, or motif, that is present in the antibody's original target and also appears in all of the other proteins.

***

Meyer and colleagues found that the motif binds to Rubisco. This explains how the pyrenoid forms: its component proteins remain loose in the cell until they bump into Rubisco and become trapped.

"Several of the proteins do not simply localize to the pyrenoid matrix, but rather appear to localize to the interfaces between the matrix and the pyrenoid's two other sub-compartments, the pyrenoid tubules and the starch sheath," notes Jonikas. This may allow the proteins to self-organize into the complex pyrenoid structure.

Comment: Food supply lies with the simplest forms (algae) in the beginning of providing nutrition. Pyrenoids are not simply formed and highly suggest an original design. Evolution as designed from the simplest to the most complex follows a very logical progression in which the simplest supports the existence of the complex. dhw constantly tries to dismiss this continuum as not important an incidental consideration in viewing evolution.

Balance of nature: importance of algae in ecosystems

by dhw, Monday, November 30, 2020, 14:33 (1215 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Food supply lies with the simplest forms (algae) in the beginning of providing nutrition. Pyrenoids are not simply formed and highly suggest an original design. Evolution as designed from the simplest to the most complex follows a very logical progression in which the simplest supports the existence of the complex. dhw constantly tries to dismiss this continuum as not important an incidental consideration in viewing evolution.

How many more times must we go over this? It is blindingly obvious that all organisms need food. Most organisms also need air and water. That is a continuum. And all organisms are part of an econiche, and if the balance of Nature is disturbed, then there will be changed ecosystems. It is also blindingly obvious that if life began with bacteria, evolution has developed from the simple to the complex. I have never disputed this, and you know it. What I dispute is your attempt to link these blindingly obvious facts to your anthropocentric theory of evolution, so here is a reminder: evolution branched out into millions of now extinct life forms, econiches etc., 99% of which had no direct connection with humans. There was no continuum from brontosaurus to sapiens, or from his food supply to ours. In your own words: “The current huge bush is NOW for humans NOW. There were smaller bushes in the PAST for PAST forms.” So please stop trying to use the obvious continuum of the importance of food for all life forms (which is beyond dispute) as a logical cover for your illogical theory that all the extinct life forms and food supplies were “part of the goal of evolving humans”.

Balance of nature: importance of algae in ecosystems

by David Turell @, Monday, November 30, 2020, 14:40 (1215 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Food supply lies with the simplest forms (algae) in the beginning of providing nutrition. Pyrenoids are not simply formed and highly suggest an original design. Evolution as designed from the simplest to the most complex follows a very logical progression in which the simplest supports the existence of the complex. dhw constantly tries to dismiss this continuum as not important an incidental consideration in viewing evolution.

dhw: How many more times must we go over this? It is blindingly obvious that all organisms need food. Most organisms also need air and water. That is a continuum. And all organisms are part of an econiche, and if the balance of Nature is disturbed, then there will be changed ecosystems. It is also blindingly obvious that if life began with bacteria, evolution has developed from the simple to the complex. I have never disputed this, and you know it. What I dispute is your attempt to link these blindingly obvious facts to your anthropocentric theory of evolution, so here is a reminder: evolution branched out into millions of now extinct life forms, econiches etc., 99% of which had no direct connection with humans. There was no continuum from brontosaurus to sapiens, or from his food supply to ours. In your own words: “The current huge bush is NOW for humans NOW. There were smaller bushes in the PAST for PAST forms.” So please stop trying to use the obvious continuum of the importance of food for all life forms (which is beyond dispute) as a logical cover for your illogical theory that all the extinct life forms and food supplies were “part of the goal of evolving humans”.

Did humans evolve , or not? Is God in charge, or not? End of logic. No more needed.

Balance of nature: importance of algae in ecosystems

by dhw, Tuesday, December 01, 2020, 14:13 (1214 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Food supply lies with the simplest forms (algae) in the beginning of providing nutrition. Pyrenoids are not simply formed and highly suggest an original design. Evolution as designed from the simplest to the most complex follows a very logical progression in which the simplest supports the existence of the complex. dhw constantly tries to dismiss this continuum as not important an incidental consideration in viewing evolution.

dhw: How many more times must we go over this? It is blindingly obvious that all organisms need food. Most organisms also need air and water. That is a continuum. And all organisms are part of an econiche, and if the balance of Nature is disturbed, then there will be changed ecosystems. It is also blindingly obvious that if life began with bacteria, evolution has developed from the simple to the complex. I have never disputed this, and you know it. What I dispute is your attempt to link these blindingly obvious facts to your anthropocentric theory of evolution, so here is a reminder: evolution branched out into millions of now extinct life forms, econiches etc., 99% of which had no direct connection with humans. There was no continuum from brontosaurus to sapiens, or from his food supply to ours. In your own words: “The current huge bush is NOW for humans NOW. There were smaller bushes in the PAST for PAST forms.” So please stop trying to use the obvious continuum of the importance of food for all life forms (which is beyond dispute) as a logical cover for your illogical theory that all the extinct life forms and food supplies were “part of the goal of evolving humans”.

DAVID: Did humans evolve , or not? Is God in charge, or not? End of logic. No more needed.

Yes, humans evolved, as did every other life form from single cells onward. Yes, if God exists, he is "in charge" in the sense that he decides what he wants and sets up the mechanisms to achieve it. That does not mean he directly designed every life form and econiche, or that all the extinct life forms and econiches that had no direct connection with humans were “part of the goal of evolving humans”, or that dhw doesn’t realize that all forms of life need food.

Balance of nature: importance of algae in ecosystems

by David Turell @, Tuesday, December 01, 2020, 19:54 (1214 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Food supply lies with the simplest forms (algae) in the beginning of providing nutrition. Pyrenoids are not simply formed and highly suggest an original design. Evolution as designed from the simplest to the most complex follows a very logical progression in which the simplest supports the existence of the complex. dhw constantly tries to dismiss this continuum as not important an incidental consideration in viewing evolution.

dhw: How many more times must we go over this? It is blindingly obvious that all organisms need food. Most organisms also need air and water. That is a continuum. And all organisms are part of an econiche, and if the balance of Nature is disturbed, then there will be changed ecosystems. It is also blindingly obvious that if life began with bacteria, evolution has developed from the simple to the complex. I have never disputed this, and you know it. What I dispute is your attempt to link these blindingly obvious facts to your anthropocentric theory of evolution, so here is a reminder: evolution branched out into millions of now extinct life forms, econiches etc., 99% of which had no direct connection with humans. There was no continuum from brontosaurus to sapiens, or from his food supply to ours. In your own words: “The current huge bush is NOW for humans NOW. There were smaller bushes in the PAST for PAST forms.” So please stop trying to use the obvious continuum of the importance of food for all life forms (which is beyond dispute) as a logical cover for your illogical theory that all the extinct life forms and food supplies were “part of the goal of evolving humans”.

DAVID: Did humans evolve , or not? Is God in charge, or not? End of logic. No more needed.

dhw: Yes, humans evolved, as did every other life form from single cells onward. Yes, if God exists, he is "in charge" in the sense that he decides what he wants and sets up the mechanisms to achieve it. That does not mean he directly designed every life form and econiche, or that all the extinct life forms and econiches that had no direct connection with humans were “part of the goal of evolving humans”, or that dhw doesn’t realize that all forms of life need food.

A partial acceptance of my God and how He proceeds.

Balance of nature: amazing new ecosystem found

by David Turell @, Tuesday, January 19, 2021, 15:43 (1165 days ago) @ David Turell

Australian monitor lizard burrows are a hotel for hoards of life:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/monitor-lizards-huge-burrow-systems-shelter-small-a...

Meters below the copper, sun-broiled dirt of northwestern Australia, an entire community hides in the dark. Geckos lay their eggs as centipedes and scorpions scuttle by. A snake glides deeper underground, away from the light. This subterranean menagerie is capitalizing on an old burrow, gouged into the earth by a massive lizard.

Now, a new study shows that two different species of Australian monitor lizard dig arrays of these burrows into the earth and that the openings have a great impact on local biodiversity, providing shelter to a surprisingly wide assortment of animal life. The findings, published December 18 in Ecology, indicate that the lizards are “ecosystem engineers,” akin to beavers that flood streams with dams or seabirds that fertilize reefs with their guano, the researchers say.

***

The team found arthropods, snakes, toads and other lizards in the nests of yellow-spotted monitors and sand goanna monitors (Varanus gouldii), which dig similar burrows. At first it was a few creatures here and there, Doody says, but then the team found 418 Uperoleia frogs in a single warren. In all, the team found nearly 750 individuals of 28 different vertebrate species in a combination of 16 warrens made up of many individual nesting burrows and a handful of foraging burrows, made when the lizards dig for prey.

Some animals are using the burrows for overwintering, Doody says. Others use them as refuges when the creatures need to go dormant during the hot dry summer. Still others catch prey in there, while “some are probably hiding from predators. And some are even laying their eggs in the burrow.”

***

Given the widespread use of the burrows by wildlife, Doody has concerns about the broader ecological effects of the ongoing cane toad invasion in Australia’s tropical north. Monitor lizards — naïve to the toads’ potent toxins — will eat the amphibians, with lethal consequences. As a result, monitors are rapidly dying, Doody says, and their warrens are filling in, leaving less refuge for other animals using the burrows. “You go from hundreds of animals using a warren system to zero.”

Comment: Most ecosystems are important but happen accidently. And as in our other discussion, poison is deadly at the wrong times.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by David Turell @, Wednesday, August 04, 2021, 15:36 (968 days ago) @ David Turell

A study on an isolated island system, once disrupted, now recovering:

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2021/08/04/the_importance_of_giant_bird-eatin...


"On tiny Phillip Island, part of the South Pacific’s Norfolk Island group, the Phillip Island centipede (Cormocephalus coynei) population can kill and eat up to 3,700 seabird chicks each year.

"And this is entirely natural. This unique creature endemic to Phillip Island has a diet consisting of an unusually large proportion of vertebrate animals including seabird chicks.

***

"This centipede can grow to almost one foot (or 30.5cm) in length. It is armed with a potent venom encased in two pincer-like appendages called “forcipules”, which it uses to immobilise its prey. Its body is protected by shield-like armoured plates that line each of the many segments that make up its length.

***

"The centipede hunts an unexpectedly varied range of quarry, from crickets to seabird chicks, geckos and skinks. It even hunts fish — dropped by seabirds called black noddies (Anous minuta) that make their nests in the trees above.

***

"From the rates of predation we observed, we calculated that the Phillip Island centipede population can kill and eat between 2,109 and 3,724 petrel chicks each year. The black-winged petrels — of which there are up to 19,000 breeding pairs on the island — appear to be resilient to this level of predation.

"And the predation of black-winged petrels by Phillip Island centipedes is an entirely natural predator-prey relationship. By preying on vertebrates, the centipedes trap nutrients brought from the ocean by seabirds and distribute them around the island.

"Up until just a few decades ago the Phillip Island Centipede was very rare. In fact, it was only formally described as a species in 1984.

"After an intensive search in 1980, only a few small individuals were found. The species’s rarity back then was most likely due to severely degraded habitats caused by pigs, goats and rabbits introduced by humans to the island.

"The removal of these invasive pests enabled black-winged petrels to colonise. Their population has since exploded and they’re now the most abundant of the 13 seabird species that breed on Phillip Island.

"They provide a high-quality food source for the Phillip Island centipede and have therefore likely helped centipede population to recover.

***
"Now, thanks to the conservation efforts of Norfolk Island National Park, the island’s forest is regenerating alongside endemic species like the centipede, as well as the critically endangered Phillip Island hibiscus (Hibiscus insularis)."

Comment: when humans change the top predator by bringing in foreign animals, the ecosystem falls part. The giant bush of life is made of of many thousand such systems, which should not be disturbed

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 26, 2021, 19:30 (946 days ago) @ David Turell

They are delicate when balanced only by nature. Humans mess them up introducing foreign species:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02317-9?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_c...

"The list of ‘deadly animals in Australia’ just got a little weirder. The cane toad, a toxic, invasive species notorious for devouring anything it can fit in its mouth — household rubbish, small rodents and even birds — has become highly cannibalistic in the 86 years since it was introduced to the continent, according to a new study. Its counterpart in South America, where cane toads originated, is far less cannibalistic.

***

"Farmers first introduced about 100 cane toads (Rhinella marina) to Australia from their native range in South America in 1935 to control cane beetles (Dermolepida albohirtum), which were wreaking havoc on sugarcane plantations. The giant toads failed to knock down the beetle populations, but they succeeded in epically multiplying. Because of their highly poisonous skin, which is coated in bufotoxins, they had no natural predators and went on to invade large swaths of the northern and eastern parts of the country.

"Although adult cane toads are fearsome — they grow up to 25 centimetres in length — it’s their tadpoles that are usually the cannibals. Multiple tadpoles together can gobble more than 99% of the hatchlings that emerge from the tens of thousands of eggs in a single clutch.

***

"Although the speed with which the toads evolved this behaviour is impressive, the team was even more surprised by how fast the animals evolved a defence to protect against it. The researchers found that when invasive Australian hatchlings shared a tank with caged, older tadpoles from the same group, the hatchlings were more likely to have a shorter developmental period than that of the South American hatchlings. Older tadpoles don’t tend to eat older tadpoles — so the toads might have evolved to speed up their hatchling phase, the researchers found. This would limit the amount of time they spend vulnerable to cannibalism, even if the adaptation eventually stunts their growth, says DeVore.

***

"Although there are still mysteries around the cane toads’ cannibalistic tendencies, one thing is for certain, says Shine: “The cane toads that are currently hopping across Australia are extraordinarily different animals from the ones that were first taken out of the native range.'”

Comment: The usual problem when foreign species are introduced is damage to the finely balanced natural system. These ecosystems are the Earth's necessary food supply for the huge bush of existing life on Earth.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by David Turell @, Wednesday, November 17, 2021, 15:36 (863 days ago) @ David Turell

Flowering plants appearing after the dinosaurs greatly influenced ecosystems:

https://phys.org/news/2021-11-impact-evolution-life-earth.html

"Researchers at the University of Bristol have identified the huge impact of flowering plants on the evolution of life on Earth.

"Flowering plants today include most of the plants humans eat or drink, such as grains, fruits and vegetables, and they build many familiar landscapes such as wetlands, meadows, and forests. From 100 to 50 million years ago, the flowering plants dramatically boosted Earth's biodiversity and rebuilt entire ecosystems.

***

"'Flowering plants might have been around for some time, but they began to appear more commonly in the Cretaceous, in the last 70 million years of the age of dinosaurs," said Prof Benton. "But it seems that dinosaurs didn't choose to eat them, and continued chomping ferns and conifers such as pines. However, it was only after the dinosaurs had gone that angiosperms really took off on evolutionary terms."

***

"'The Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution, as we call it, marked a huge change in ecosystems and biodiversity on land," said Prof Wilf. "More than a million species of modern insects owe their livelihoods to angiosperms, as pollinators such as bees and wasps, as leaf-eaters such as beetles, locusts and bugs, or feeding on nectar such as butterflies. And these insects are eaten by spiders, lizards, birds and mammals. After the dinosaur extinction, the great tropical rainforests began to flourish, and angiosperms began to dominate life on land."

"'Angiosperms owe their success to a whole series of special features," said Dr. Sauquet. "Biology students all know that the angiosperm flower was an amazing innovation, with special colors and adaptations to make sure particular insects pollinate them successfully. But angiosperms also drive the evolution of the animals that pollinate them, mainly insects, and they can build complex forest structures which are homes to thousands of species. They can also capture much more of the Sun's energy than conifers and their relatives, and this extra energy passes through the whole ecosystem."

"Prof Wilf explained: "Although angiosperms first appeared and then became very diverse during the age of dinosaurs, it was only after dinosaurs disappeared 66 million years ago that flowering plants really made big changes and restructured the world's ecosystems.

"'It is even possible that the removal of the dinosaurs and their constant trampling and disturbance was the trigger for these events. Today, two-thirds of all species of plants and animals live in rainforests."

"'A typical angiosperm-dominated rainforest may contain hundreds of species of flowering plants, as well as hundreds of species of other plants like ferns and mosses, and thousands of species of fungi, insects, spiders, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals," added Dr. Sauquet. "On the other hand, conifer forests, based around the pine family, for example, contain fewer species of other plants or animals, and they probably were never as species-rich."

"'The big change happened in the Cretaceous, when angiosperms with their amazing flowers gradually took over, step by step," continued Prof Benton. "Cretaceous forests and open spaces probably contained far fewer species. So, when the dinosaurs died out, modern groups of animals could fill their places, but it seems they did much more than just replace them like-for-like. The angiosperms became hugely diverse themselves, but they also created enormous numbers of niches for other plants and animals, so you get tens more species on each hectare of the Earth's surface than you would if angiosperms had not become established when they did.'"

Comment: The current environment on Earth developed stepwise over giant amounts of time. These systems supply our food. Note that humans arrived long after all of this was in place. We could not have grown to current population size if this were not present. Looks like great planning to me.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by David Turell @, Monday, December 20, 2021, 19:59 (830 days ago) @ David Turell

A new part of the ocean's ecosystems is found:

https://phys.org/news/2021-12-photosynthetic-algae-survive-dark.html

"As part of the new study, the team conducted laboratory experiments that showed some coccolithophores could survive without light. This revealed that the organisms must have another way to produce the energy and carbon that they need.

"'We've been stuck on a paradigm that algae are just photosynthetic organisms, and for a long time their capability to otherwise feed was disregarded," said Jelena Godrijan, the paper's first author, who conducted the research as a postdoctoral scientist at Bigelow Laboratory. "Getting the coccolithophores to grow and survive in the dark is amazing to me, especially if you think about how they managed to survive when animals like the dinosaurs didn't."

"The study revealed how some coccolithophore species could use previously unrecognized organic compounds as carbon sources instead of carbon dioxide, which is what plants usually use. They can process dissolved organic compounds and immediately utilize them in a process called osmotrophy. The findings may explain how these organisms survive in dark conditions, such as after the asteroid impact, or deep in the ocean beneath where sunlight can reach.

***

"Coccolithophores are integral to processes that control the global ocean and atmosphere, including the carbon cycle. They take in dissolved carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which gets transported to the ocean floor when they die.

"'That's hugely important to the distribution of carbon dioxide on Earth," said Balch. "If we didn't have this biological carbon pump, the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere would be way higher than it is now, probably over two times as much."

"Coccolithophores also play an important role in mitigating ocean acidity, which can negatively affect organisms like shellfish and corals. The single-celled algae remove carbon from the water to build protective mineral plates made of limestone around themselves, which sink when they die. The process effectively pumps alkalinity deeper into the ocean, which chemically bolsters the water's ability to resist becoming more acidic.

"The new study revealed that the algae also take in carbon from previously unrecognized sources deeper in the water column. This could connect coccolithophores to a new set of global processes and raises fundamental questions about their role in the ocean.

"'Coccolithophores are integrated into global cycles in ways that we never imagined," Balch said. "This research really changes my thinking about food webs in dark regions where photosynthesis clearly isn't happening. It changes the paradigm."

***

"Coccolithophores are tiny, tiny creatures, but they have such huge impacts on all life that most people are not even aware of," Godrijan said. "It brings me hope for our own lives to see how such small things can have such an influence on the planet.'" (my bold)

Comment: all of life on Earth is integrated in the way this study illustrates. All created by God-0designed evolution. My bold enhances the point that this is an answer to dhw's complaint that all God wanted was 'humans and food'. The complaint is thoughtless, and points out how incompletely dhw has thought through the issue. Every tiny organism is required to sustain the Earth in balance for huge human population.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems underground

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 27, 2020, 14:48 (1310 days ago) @ David Turell

Further comment:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/hidden-webs-fungi-protect-some-forests-drought-...

"The future of the world’s flora may depend as much, if not more, on what’s below the ground as what’s above. Beneath 90% of all plants lies an invisible support system—subterranean fungal partners that form a network of filaments connecting plants and bringing nutrients and water to their roots. In return, the plants provide a steady supply of carbon to the fungi. Now, researchers are learning that these hidden partners can shape how ecosystems respond to climate change.

"The right fungal partners can help plants survive warmer and drier conditions, according to a study reported earlier this month at the online annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America. But other studies at the meeting showed climate change can also disrupt these so-called mycorrhizal fungi, possibly speeding the demise of their host plants. “The picture is becoming clearer that we really cannot ignore the responses of mycorrhizal fungi to climate change,” says Matthias Rillig, an ecologist at the Free University of Berlin.

"These fungal associates come in two forms. Arbuscular mycorrhizae (AM), common in tropical and some temperate forests as well as fields and meadows, invade root cells and extend thin hairs called hyphae into the soil. Ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi, in contrast, associate with conifers as well as oak, hickory, alder, and beech. They settle on the outside of roots, and their networks of hyphae give rise to the mushrooms that pop up on moist forest floors.

"Both types absorb phosphorus and other nutrients, capture nitrogen from decaying organic matter, and help store carbon in the soil. “Mycorrhizal associations are arguably the most important symbioses in terrestrial ecosystems because of their importance for plant productivity,” says Christopher Fernandez, a soil ecologist at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

***

“'We found that ectomycorrhizal fungi played a critical role in drought tolerance,” Gehring reported at the meeting. Sanna Sevanto, a biophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, watched the fungi in action by dousing seedlings’ roots in heavy water, which served as a tracer. Water moved into the drought-tolerant roots infected with their fungus much faster than when they were sterile, Gehring reported."

Comment: A different kind of ecosystem. Large parts of the bush of life are really interconnected webs of support. All necessary to support the massive populations now living in the confines of Earth. God's planning dhw doesn't recognize.

Balance of nature: ecosystem top predator reversal

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 27, 2020, 18:02 (1310 days ago) @ David Turell

Weird. Normally a top predator continues to dominate. not if the local environment changes along shorelines:

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-sticklebacks-dominate-perch.html

"A research project on algal blooms along the Swedish coast, caused by eutrophication, revealed that large predators such as perch and pike are also necessary to restrict these blooms. Ecologist Britas Klemens Eriksson from the University of Groningen and his colleagues from Stockholm University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden have now shown that stickleback domination moves like a wave through the island archipelagos, changing the ecosystem from predator-dominated to algae-dominated.

***

"This coast consists of countless archipelagos that stretch up to 20 kilometers into the sea, creating a brackish environment. Here, perch and pike are the top predators, feeding on sticklebacks, which themselves eat the small crustaceans that live off algae.

***

"'If you just look at the abundances of fish, you find a mixed system in which different species dominate," Eriksson explains. But looking at the changes in these fishery data over time showed an increase in sticklebacks that started in the late 1990s, initially in the outer parts of the archipelagos. "This is presumably caused by a reduction in the number of large predators. The reduction is the combined result of habitat destruction, fishing and increased predation by cormorants and seals." Sticklebacks migrate from the outer archipelagos inwards to reproduce, linking coastal and offshore processes.

***

"Reduced predation increases the survival of sticklebacks, while both eutrophication and warming help to increase their numbers even further. As the sticklebacks reduced the number of grazers, algae began to replace seagrass and other vegetation. Furthermore, the sticklebacks also fed on the larvae of perch and pike, thereby further reducing their numbers. "This is a case of predator-prey reversal," explains Eriksson. Instead of top predators eating sticklebacks, the smaller fish strongly reduced the number of perch and pike larvae.

"Over time, the stickleback domination moved inwards like a wave: regional change propagated throughout the entire ecosystem. This has important consequences for ecosystem restoration. "To counter algal blooms, you should not only reduce the eutrophication of the water but also increase the numbers of top predators." It means that those organizations that manage fisheries must start working together with those that manage water quality. "We should not look at isolated species but at the entire food web," says Eriksson. "This is something that the recent EU fishery strategy is slowly starting to implement.'"

Comment: All caused by brackish water and the addition of unwanted extra minerals (eutrophication). All ecosystems are in delicate balance and the sum total of them is the bush of life.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by David Turell @, Monday, February 08, 2021, 15:57 (1145 days ago) @ David Turell

A book review of a book describing human damage to nature:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/under-white-sky-kolbert-book-save-nature-ecosystems

"In 1900, the city of Chicago completed a 45-kilometer-long canal that altered the hydrology of two-thirds of the United States.

"That wasn’t the intention, of course. The plan was to reverse the flow of the Chicago River to divert waste away from the city’s source of drinking water: Lake Michigan. The engineering feat worked, but it also connected the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins, two of the world’s largest — and until then, isolated — freshwater ecosystems, allowing invasive species to pour through the opening and wreak ecological havoc.

"Elizabeth Kolbert opens Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future with this parable of humans’ hubristic attempts to control nature. We’ve put our minds toward damming or diverting most of the planet’s rivers, replacing vast tracts of natural ecosystems with crops, and burning so much fossil fuel that 1 in 3 molecules of atmospheric carbon dioxide came from human action, she writes. We’ve warmed the atmosphere, raised sea levels, erased countless species and forged an uncertain future for humankind and the planet.

***

"Kolbert takes a firsthand look at many of these interventions. She begins on a boat, traveling up the Chicago canal to inspect electric barriers meant to keep invasive Asian carp from forever altering the Great Lakes. Asian carp were introduced to the Mississippi River basin in the 1960s as a biological Weedwacker to control invasive plants. But the carp have swum amok throughout the basin and are now knocking at the door of Lake Michigan. Simply closing the canal would protect the lakes, but that’s largely dismissed as being too disruptive to the city. Instead, humans innovate. “First you reverse a river,” Kolbert writes. “Then you electrify it.”

***

"Saving larger ecosystems may require more powerful tools. In Australia, we meet researchers trying to genetically engineer less toxic cane toads, an invasive species that’s poisoning untold numbers of native animals. Gene drive technology, which loads the dice of inheritance to propel certain mutations through a population (SN: 12/12/15, p. 16), could make all cane toads safer to eat within generations. Other scientists are considering the possibility of using gene drives to eliminate invasive rodents from islands like New Zealand.

Such power could prove difficult to wield, and many worry it would backfire. Mouse-eliminating gene drives might escape an island and spread across the globe.

***

"...we’ve kicked the can down the road for too long. Gene editing species or geoengineering may be entirely crazy and disconcerting, Kolbert writes, but if they can pull us from the hole we’ve dug for ourselves, don’t we have to at least consider them? Whether such technologies can save us and the planet, or only further muck it up, Kolbert cannot say.

Comment: human stupidity or hubris? We not smart enough to leave alone the structure God have us to start with. With this evidence of stupidity and poor analysis of consequences who are we to judge God's works critically?

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by David Turell @, Wednesday, March 24, 2021, 19:07 (1101 days ago) @ David Turell

A new study on deforestation and its bad effects:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/24/disease-outbreaks-more-likely-in-de...

"Outbreaks of infectious diseases are more likely in areas of deforestation and monoculture plantations, according to a study that suggests epidemics are likely to increase as biodiversity declines.

***

"Even tree-planting can increase health risks to local human populations if it focuses too narrowly on a small number of species, as is often the case in commercial forests, the research found.

"The authors said this was because diseases are filtered and blocked by a range of predators and habitats in a healthy, biodiverse forest. When this is replaced by a palm oil plantation, soy fields or blocks of eucalyptus, the specialist species die off, leaving generalists such as rats and mosquitoes to thrive and spread pathogens across human and non-human habitats. The net result is a loss of natural disease regulation.

***

"The researchers examined the correlation between trends for forest cover, plantations, population and disease around the globe using statistics from international institutions such as the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the Food and Agricultural Organization and the Gideon epidemic database. Over the period of study from 1990 to 2016, this covered 3,884 outbreaks of 116 zoonotic diseases that crossed the species barrier and 1,996 outbreaks of 69 vector-borne infectious diseases, mostly carried by mosquitoes, ticks or flies.

"The paper shows outbreaks increased over time, while plantations expanded rapidly and overall forest cover declined gradually. By itself, a correlation is not proof of causality because other factors may be involved, such as climate disruption. The authors bolster their argument with multiple references to individual case studies that highlight the links between epidemics and land use change.

***

"The new study adds to a growing body of evidence that viruses are more likely to transfer to humans or animals if they live in or near human-disturbed ecosystems, such as recently cleared forests or swamps drained for farmland, mining projects or residential projects.

"This is shaped by trade patterns and consumer behaviour. A quarter of global forest loss is driven by the production of commodities such as beef, soy, palm oil and wood fibre. Mining adds to this problem by contaminating rivers and streams that are vital for a resilient ecosystem, carbon sequestration and soil quality.

"Morand said his study showed that disease risks needs to be added to risk-benefit analysis of new projects. “We should take the costs of public health into account when considering new plantations or mines. The risks are first to local people, but then worldwide because we have seen with Covid how quickly diseases can spread.'”

Comment: Same old point: all original ecosystems are exquisitely balanced. They should not be disturbed.

Balance of nature: bird and seed distribution evolution

by David Turell @, Friday, May 14, 2021, 17:23 (1050 days ago) @ David Turell

A careful study of seed distribution by bird species:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/682

"Mutually beneficial interactions between plants and frugivorous birds have evolved for at least 80 million years (1). Now, more than 70% of flowering plants rely on birds to disperse their seeds, and about 56% of bird families consume fruits as part of their diet (2, 3). Plants often have more than one seed disperser, and birds consume different types of fruits from different plant species, thus establishing a complex network of interactions. These networks can change considerably across space and time (4). Over short time spans, seed-dispersal interactions are dynamic and change in response to factors such as competition or abundance of the interacting partner (5, 6). However, the effects of evolutionary processes that take place over deep time are not clear (7). On page 733 of this issue, Burin et al. (8) suggest that evolutionary stability is associated with the specific role of the bird species in seed-dispersal networks.

"The role of each bird species depends on the number of interactions it establishes with potential partner plant species and how it links different parts of the larger bird-plant network (9). These interactions are the result of a set of evolutionary factors, such as coevolution, trait convergence, and diversification (10, 11). Now, Burin et al. add one more factor by demonstrating that birds with a central role in a network (that is, they interact with more plants) tend to have greater persistence through evolutionary time. A bird lineage persists longer through time if it has lower extinction rates and/or higher speciation rates, which the authors refer to as “macroevolutionary stability.” Having a low extinction rate implies longer longevities through evolutionary time, which in turn facilitates the establishment of more connections within the network because bird species have more time to coevolve with plants, whereas having high speciation rates suggests the accumulation of more sister species that are expected to have similar traits and play similar roles in the network and can therefore act as a replacement if a species goes extinct

***

"Most studies on the assembly of seed-dispersal networks are centered at ecological time scales—that is, the time of a change in the environment that affects the relationships of organisms with each other (tens to thousands of years). These studies have shown that the cores of seed dispersal networks are stable to annual fluctuations in fruit availability or the presence of specific bird species (12). Conversely, studies that focused on evolutionary aspects of seed-dispersal networks (time scale of thousands to millions of years) are primarily centered on reconstructing trait evolution of the interacting species as a proxy to detect coevolution (13). Accurately estimating speciation, and particularly extinction rates, from phylogenies composed solely of extant species is still a challenge (14, 15), making it hard to detect the footprint of evolutionary dynamics on species interactions. Although these methods are still controversial, Burin et al. take the leap to merge macroevolution and interaction networks and find a consistent and robust effect, even when accounting for the uncertainty of the rate estimates and the phylogenetic hypothesis.

***

"The direction and causality between macroevolutionary stability and the central role of a species in a network is still not understood. It is unclear whether bird species that persist over deep time become central in the interaction networks because they had more time to coevolve with the plants or whether bird species with a central role in interaction networks are more resilient to temporal changes in the availability of resources and therefore have greater evolutionary stability. Or is it a combination of the two? Moreover, exploring the processes underlying the relationship between macroevolution and species interactions improves understanding of current ecological processes."

Comment: Another ecosystem we have not considered before. All ecosystems play an enormous role in a stabilized ecology to support an enormous human population. 99% of all evolutionary forms are gone but required in the process of creating this giant bush of life in its interacting and interlocking forms. I view it as a magnificent plan by God to offer a stabilized system for all of current life forms to have a broad access for food.

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems

by David Turell @, Tuesday, September 06, 2022, 18:17 (570 days ago) @ David Turell

Damage by imported feral cats in Australia:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02001-z?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_c...

"Millions of feral cats roam Australia, where they grow fat and sleek on a diet that includes large helpings of native mammals. Now, Brett Murphy at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia, and a large cast of co-authors have combined estimates of cat prevalence with surveys of mammalian remains in cat poo and stomachs to estimate the total number of their prey.

Now implant a poison pill is tried:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2336375-making-australias-native-animals-poisonous...

"An implant that makes Australian animals lethally poisonous to cats that prey on them could help save species on the verge of extinction.

"The rice-sized implant is inert when it is inserted under the native mammal’s skin at the back of the neck. If a cat eats the mammal, it is likely to swallow the implant, because cats usually eat the whole bodies of their prey. Once the cat ingests the implant, the acid inside the cat’s stomach breaks it open and releases a fatal poison.

***

"The poison – sodium fluoroacetate, or “1080” – leads to unconsciousness then death in cats by causing an energy shutdown in their cells. It is already widely used in poison baits for feral cats because it is relatively non-toxic to native animals, so it shouldn’t harm other predators that may end up consuming the implant. This is because sodium fluoroacetate naturally occurs in many Australian plants and native animals have evolved resistance to it.

"In an unpublished laboratory trial, feral cats were given rabbit carcasses that each contained one of the rice-sized implants. The cats all died within 6 to 12 hours of consuming the carcasses, seemingly in a relatively painless way. “They just kind of curl up and slow down,” says Blencowe.

"In a subsequent unpublished field trial in 2021, the researchers inserted the implants under the skin of 30 native bilbies at a large wildlife reserve in South Australia where feral cats are also present. Bilbies are small, furry, long-eared marsupials that are threatened by cat predation.

"Unfortunately for the researchers, the trial coincided with a mouse plague that created so much food for the cats that they didn’t try to eat any of the bilbies. “But at least all the bilbies survived fine, so that tells us the implants are safe,” says Blencowe."

Comment: Australia is still the best example of how humans destory ecosystems.

Balance of nature: fragility of ecosystems

by David Turell @, Monday, March 06, 2023, 17:44 (389 days ago) @ David Turell

A new worrisome study:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/simpler-math-predicts-how-close-ecosystems-are-to-collap...

"....the tipping of ecosystems like forests and meadows is arguably harder to forecast because of the extraordinary complexity that comes with so many distinct interactions, said Tim Lenton, who works on climate tipping points at the University of Exeter in England.

"...interactions between species, which field ecologists dutifully record in their observations, can seem inconsequential, taken individually. In aggregate, however, they describe the detailed dynamics of the species interactions that make up an ecosystem.

"Those dynamics are critical. Many natural environments are incredibly complex systems wavering near a “tipping point” of nearly irreversible transition from one distinct state to another. Each disruptive shock — caused by wildfires, storms, pollution and deforestation but also by species loss — perturbs an ecosystem’s stability. Past the tipping point, recovery is often impossible.

"Understanding what determines these environmental tipping points and their timing is increasingly urgent. A widely cited 2022 study found that the Amazon rainforest is teetering on the edge of a transition into dry grassland, as deforestation and climate change make drought more frequent and severe over larger areas. The effects of that transition could ripple out globally to other ecosystems. (my bold)

***

"A recent breakthrough in the mathematical modeling of ecosystems could make it possible for the first time to estimate precisely how close ecosystems are to disastrous tipping points. The applicability of the discovery is still sharply limited, but Jianxi Gao, a network scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who led the research, is hopeful that in time it will be possible for scientists and policymakers to identify the ecosystems most at risk and tailor interventions for them.

***

"Thousands of calculations may be needed to capture the distinctive interactions of every species in a system, Barabas said. The calculations make the models immensely complex, especially as the size of the ecosystem increases.

"Last August in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Gao and an international team of colleagues showed how to squish thousands of calculations into just one by collapsing all the interactions into a single weighted average. That simplification reduces the formidable complexity to just a handful of key drivers.

“'With one equation, we know everything,” Gao said. “Before, you have a feeling. Now you have a number.”

"Previous models that could tell whether an ecosystem might be in trouble relied on early warning signals, such as a decreasing recovery rate after a shock. But early warning signals can give only a general sense that an ecosystem is approaching the edge of a cliff, said Egbert van Nes, an ecologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands who specializes in mathematical models. The new equation from Gao and his colleagues uses early warning signals too, but it can tell exactly how close ecosystems are to tipping.

"Even two ecosystems showing the same warning signals, however, are not necessarily equally close to the brink of collapse. Gao’s team therefore also developed a scaling factor that allows better comparisons.

***

"It took 10 years to develop this equation, Gao said, and it will take many more for the equations to accurately predict outcomes for real-world ecosystems — years that are precious because the need for interventions seems pressing. But he isn’t disheartened, perhaps because, as Barabas noted, even foundational models that provide a proof of concept or a simple illustration of an idea can be useful. “By making it easier to analyze certain types of models … they can help even if they are not used to make explicit predictions for real communities,” Barabas said."

Comment: the thrust of this article is an excited interest in protecting ecosystems. dhw refers to them as our food and constantly tries to diminish their importance. They were a major aspect of evolution, evolving as animals and plants evolved.

Balance of nature: our gut is filled with viruses

by David Turell @, Tuesday, February 23, 2021, 21:03 (1130 days ago) @ David Turell

It is all in balance between loads of viruses, many bacteriophages and oodles of bacteria:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210218142739.htm

"Viruses are the most numerous biological entities on the planet. Now researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) have identified over 140,000 viral species living in the human gut, more than half of which have never been seen before.

"The paper, published today (18 February 2021) in Cell, contains an analysis of over 28,000 gut microbiome samples collected in different parts of the world. The number and diversity of the viruses the researchers found was surprisingly high, and the data opens up new research avenues for understanding how viruses living in the gut affect human health.

"The human gut is an incredibly biodiverse environment. In addition to bacteria, hundreds of thousands of viruses called bacteriophages, which can infect bacteria, also live there.

***

"...relatively little is known about the role our gut bacteria, and the bacteriophages that infect them, play in human health and disease.

***

"...these samples came mainly from healthy individuals who didn't share any specific diseases. It's fascinating to see how many unknown species live in our gut, and to try and unravel the link between them and human health."

"Among the tens of thousands of viruses discovered, a new highly prevalent clade -- a group of viruses believed to have a common ancestor -- was identified, which the authors refer to as the Gubaphage. This was found to be the second most prevalent virus clade in the human gut, after the crAssphage, which was discovered in 2014."

Comment: As with all ecosystems, in this one bacteriophages undoubtedly control bacterial population size. What this seems to mean is that viruses are not an aberrant life form but necessary to the overall balance scheme for living organisms. That tells us there are good and bad viruses just like good and bad bacteria, good and bad predator animals, and good and bad humans, all playing a role in our reality.

Balance of nature: Oaks and acorns and Lyme disease

by David Turell @, Saturday, November 02, 2019, 18:00 (1609 days ago) @ David Turell

Note how moths, mice and acorns all interact to further the spread of Lyme disease:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/279/5353/1023.full

Chain Reactions Linking Acorns to Gypsy Moth Outbreaks and Lyme Disease Risk

"Abstract
In eastern U.S. oak forests, defoliation by gypsy moths and the risk of Lyme disease are determined by interactions among acorns, white-footed mice, moths, deer, and ticks. Experimental removal of mice, which eat moth pupae, demonstrated that moth outbreaks are caused by reductions in mouse density that occur when there are no acorns. Experimental acorn addition increased mouse density. Acorn addition also increased densities of black-legged ticks, evidently by attracting deer, which are key tick hosts. Mice are primarily responsible for infecting ticks with the Lyme disease agent. The results have important implications for predicting and managing forest health and human health."

***

"Lyme disease in the northeastern and north central United States is transmitted to humans by black-legged ticks infected with B. burgdorferi. Adult ticks feed and mate on white-tailed deer before dropping to the ground in autumn, laying eggs the following spring or early summer. Larvae hatch in midsummer and are free from infection with B. burgdorferi because of extremely low rates of transovarial transmission. White-footed mice are primarily responsible for infecting ticks with B. burgdorferi during the larval blood meal. Larvae then molt to nymphs that overwinter on the forest floor. In spring or early summer 1 year after egg hatch, infected nymphs seek vertebrate hosts, including humans, and may transmit B. burgdorferi to the host at this blood meal. The abundance of infected nymphs is the primary determinant of Lyme disease risk. Nymphs molt into adults that seek a deer host in the autumn. The location of deer in autumn determines the location of egg-laying adults and thus where host-seeking larvae should occur the following summer."

Comment: Lyme disease is a severe infection in humans in this country. It is an amazing example of how the parts of econiches are so tightly interrelated. I have actually had an adult deer tick on my leg several years ago. Luckily not a larval tick. We live in an oak forest with lots of deer.

Balance of nature: ecosystems change from human waste food

by David Turell @, Tuesday, October 13, 2020, 18:40 (1263 days ago) @ David Turell

The study is fascinating in that top predators may change their population sizes and bring competition:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201012164219.htm

"Ecologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that carnivores living near people can get more than half of their diets from human food sources, a major lifestyle disruption that could put North America's carnivore-dominated ecosystems at risk. The researchers studied the diets of seven predator species across the Great Lakes region of the U.S. They gathered bone and fur samples for chemical analysis from areas as remote as national parks to major metropolitan regions like Albany, New York. They found that the closer carnivores lived to cities and farms, the more human food they ate.

"While evolution has shaped these species to compete for different resources, their newfound reliance on a common food source could put them in conflict with one another. That conflict could be reordering the relationship between different carnivores and between predators and prey, with an unknown but likely detrimental impact on ecosystems that evolved under significant influence of strong predators.

***

"'Isotopes are relatively intuitive: You are what you eat," says Manlick. "If you look at humans, we look like corn."

"Human foods, heavy in corn and sugar, lend them distinctive carbon signatures. In contrast, the diets of prey species in the wild confer their own carbon signatures. The ratio of these two isotope fingerprints in a predator's bone can tell scientists what proportion of their diet came from human sources, either directly or from their prey that ate human food first.

***

"'When you change the landscape so dramatically in terms of one of the most important attributes of a species -- their food -- that has unknown consequences for the overall community structure," says Pauli. "And so I think the onus is now on us as ecologists and conservation biologists to begin to understand these novel ecosystems and begin to predict who are the winners and who are the losers.'"

Comment: We humans affect everything. Hopefully we can help correct unwanted changes.

Balance of nature: ecosystems are losing diversity

by David Turell @, Wednesday, October 28, 2020, 00:32 (1249 days ago) @ David Turell

And it is said that this hurts humans:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201027105409.htm

Biodiversity on Earth, including the diversity of species, genetic diversity within species, and the diversity of ecosystems, is the basis of life of all organisms, including humans. Fundamental processes depend on biodiversity, such as plant growth and the stability of material cycles. However, biological diversity is decreasing continuously. According to researchers, this loss has meanwhile reached an alarming extent. For this reason, numerous scientific studies and experiments cover the importance of biodiversity to the functioning of ecosystems and their use for humans.

***

"The findings of the Jena Experiment confirm that current species loss has directly consequences for humankind," Wilcke says. "As a result, functions of nature that may apparently be taken for granted break off." According to the geoecologist, examples are the production of biomass for food, fabrics, construction materials, and fuels as well as water and nutrient cycles. Their changes have severe impacts, such as floods, drought, or groundwater pollution. "To stop this development and to protect species diversity, further research and practical measures on all levels are needed, from the individual consumer to national governments to international bodies," Wilcke continues.

In a series of three publications in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the Jena consortium published major results between 2018 and 2020: The more ecosystem functions, such as a closed nutrient cycle, and resulting ecosystem services (e.g. biomass production) are to be achieved, the more plant species are needed, the scientists say.

Together with the BioDIV Experiment in the USA, the Jena consortium found that the results of artificial experiments, in which mixes of plant species were usually composed randomly, are stable and may be transferred to the natural world.

In its most recent publication, the Jena Experiment concludes that ecosystem functions and services cannot only be predicted from the properties of plants. It is rather necessary to consider the entire complexity of biotic and abiotic interactions of an ecosystem, i.e. all interactions in the living and non-living nature.

Comment: delivers the same constant message. The huge bush must maintain its ecosystems and the inherent diversity or humans will suffer. God knew what He was doing setting up the current system, knowing how large a population of humans would eventually appear. It seems dhw doesn't view t his in the same way I do. If God started with bacteria, and He did, He had to know where He was going and what He needed to create while on the way to achieving a completeness of his creation of self-sustaining living organisms. All dhw sees is a God experimenting, creating spectacles, looking for interesting organisms, and then if He wanted humans as an endpoint, He seems to have done it all wrong, inventing things not needed and taking too long, like stopping to make dinosaurs along the way, all the while using the same DNA code control for everyone. God uses a better code than any we ever devised. A very smart purposeful God.

Balance of nature: ecosystems are losing diversity

by dhw, Wednesday, October 28, 2020, 08:40 (1248 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: delivers the same constant message. The huge bush must maintain its ecosystems and the inherent diversity or humans will suffer. God knew what He was doing setting up the current system, knowing how large a population of humans would eventually appear. It seems dhw doesn't view t his in the same way I do.

Which huge bush? The huge bush whose diversity is threatened is the current one! What do you mean by “setting up the current system”? You have said explicitly that “extinct life plays no role in current time”. There is no connection between past ecosystems and our current system! That is one of the points at issue between us when you tell us that your God designed every extinct life form and ecosystem as “part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans”. But I totally agree that humans will suffer from the loss of diversity in the current bush of ecosystems.

DAVID: If God started with bacteria, and He did, He had to know where He was going and what He needed to create while on the way to achieving a completeness of his creation of self-sustaining living organisms.

What do you mean by a “completeness of his creation of self-sustaining organisms”? If God exists, then of course he knew that all self-sustaining living organisms would need food. How does that come to mean that all self-sustaining living organisms were “part of the goal of evolving (= directly designing] humans”? It doesn’t even mean that your God directly designed every species and natural wonder himself. If he designed cellular intelligence with a view to allowing a free-for-all, he would also have known that self-sustaining living organisms require food!

DAVID: All dhw sees is a God experimenting, creating spectacles, looking for interesting organisms, and then if He wanted humans as an endpoint, He seems to have done it all wrong, inventing things not needed and taking too long, like stopping to make dinosaurs along the way, all the while using the same DNA code control for everyone. God uses a better code than any we ever devised. A very smart purposeful God.

If God exists, then of course he is smart and purposeful, and since we can’t invent life or evolution, of course his code is way ahead of anything we can devise. The first part of your statement is the usual desperate attempt to divert attention away from the illogicality of your theory. Firstly you attack my own alternatives, every one of which you have agreed fits in logically with life’s history, but secondly at no stage have I ever suggested that your God did things all wrong! It is your interpretation of his purpose and method that makes no sense, and that is why you continually dodge the issue of why your all-powerful God, whose one and only purpose was to directly design H. sapiens, would have spent 3.X billion years designing millions of other non-human, now extinct life forms and natural wonders which you admit had no direct connection to humans! You have no idea why. This does not mean I am criticizing God. It means that if you can’t find a reason, maybe your theory is wrong: maybe designing H. sapiens was NOT his one and only purpose; maybe he designed all those other millions of life forms because he wanted to; maybe he was experimenting; maybe he loves designing and does so in order to create interesting things for himself to watch (after all, you yourself are sure that he watches with interest). You do not strengthen your defence of your theory by attacking my alternatives or by pretending that I am criticizing your God when you know very well that I am criticizing your interpretation of his motives and methods.:-(

Balance of nature: ecosystems are losing diversity

by David Turell @, Wednesday, October 28, 2020, 17:55 (1248 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: delivers the same constant message. The huge bush must maintain its ecosystems and the inherent diversity or humans will suffer. God knew what He was doing setting up the current system, knowing how large a population of humans would eventually appear. It seems dhw doesn't view t his in the same way I do.

dhw: Which huge bush?

Obviously the current bush!!!

dhw: You have said explicitly that “extinct life plays no role in current time”. There is no connection between past ecosystems and our current system!

An obvious of course not!!

dhw: That is one of the points at issue between us when you tell us that your God designed every extinct life form and ecosystem as “part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans”. But I totally agree that humans will suffer from the loss of diversity in the current bush of ecosystems.

I hold that God ran/designed/conducted the process of evolution with the goal and endpoint of producing humans, just as history factually shows.


DAVID: If God started with bacteria, and He did, He had to know where He was going and what He needed to create while on the way to achieving a completeness of his creation of self-sustaining living organisms.

dhw: What do you mean by a “completeness of his creation of self-sustaining organisms”? If God exists, then of course he knew that all self-sustaining living organisms would need food. How does that come to mean that all self-sustaining living organisms were “part of the goal of evolving (= directly designing] humans”? It doesn’t even mean that your God directly designed every species and natural wonder himself. If he designed cellular intelligence with a view to allowing a free-for-all, he would also have known that self-sustaining living organisms require food!

That kind of agrees with me in a round about way, while you deny God did anything related to evolution.


DAVID: All dhw sees is a God experimenting, creating spectacles, looking for interesting organisms, and then if He wanted humans as an endpoint, He seems to have done it all wrong, inventing things not needed and taking too long, like stopping to make dinosaurs along the way, all the while using the same DNA code control for everyone. God uses a better code than any we ever devised. A very smart purposeful God.

dhw: If God exists, then of course he is smart and purposeful, and since we can’t invent life or evolution, of course his code is way ahead of anything we can devise. The first part of your statement is the usual desperate attempt to divert attention away from the illogicality of your theory. Firstly you attack my own alternatives, every one of which you have agreed fits in logically with life’s history, but secondly at no stage have I ever suggested that your God did things all wrong! It is your interpretation of his purpose and method that makes no sense, and that is why you continually dodge the issue of why your all-powerful God, whose one and only purpose was to directly design H. sapiens, would have spent 3.X billion years designing millions of other non-human, now extinct life forms and natural wonders which you admit had no direct connection to humans! You have no idea why. This does not mean I am criticizing God. It means that if you can’t find a reason, maybe your theory is wrong: maybe designing H. sapiens was NOT his one and only purpose; maybe he designed all those other millions of life forms because he wanted to; maybe he was experimenting; maybe he loves designing and does so in order to create interesting things for himself to watch (after all, you yourself are sure that he watches with interest). You do not strengthen your defence of your theory by attacking my alternatives or by pretending that I am criticizing your God when you know very well that I am criticizing your interpretation of his motives and methods.:-(

Your long illogical set of humanizing theories offering a God who is not sure of what to do, but they fit reality if one accepts your type of insecure God not working on a specific purpose of creating a very superior form of organism, the only one which can recognize His plausible existence. Your presentation is a totally critical discussion of the God I envision. You ignore the personality difference I've continuously pointed out in your God and my God. That is the key to our difference. It all goes back to Adler's arguments, as far as I am concerned and our totally unexplained arrival. Assuming evolution changes organisms to improve survival, there is no reason for our appearance of survival. The apes, our direct ancestors, did just fine until we overpopulated their areas. Finally to answer the bold, I don't know God's reasoning, nor do you, for producing us, but does not negate He wanted our arrival. We are here. Why should I have to find a reason??? I just accept His works. ;-)

Balance of nature: ecosystems are losing diversity

by dhw, Thursday, October 29, 2020, 08:46 (1247 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You have said explicitly that “extinct life plays no role in current time”. There is no connection between past ecosystems and our current system!

DAVID: An obvious of course not!!

At last. So please stop telling us that “God knew we would populate the Earth as He designed the entire bush of life for our food supply”. There is no connection!

dhw: That is one of the points at issue between us when you tell us that your God designed every extinct life form and ecosystem as “part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans”. […]

DAVID: I hold that God ran/designed/conducted the process of evolution with the goal and endpoint of producing humans, just as history factually shows.

History does NOT show that God exists and that if he does, his goal was producing humans. (See “error corrections”.) History only shows that humans are the latest species. We may be the endpoint, but I would be unwilling to prophesy what species will exist on Earth in ten million years’ time. Please stop calling your opinions “factual”.

Your claim that every extinct non-human organism and food supply was directly designed as “part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans” has been demolished on the “errors correction” thread, and much of the material here merely repeats your attempts to dodge the issue, which is why your all-powerful God, whose one and only purpose was to directly design H. sapiens, would have spent 3.X billion years designing millions of other non-human, now extinct life forms and natural wonders which you admit had no direct connection to humans! I shall deal with each dodge in turn:

DAVID:…you deny God did anything related to evolution.

I do not. If he exists, he would have invented the mechanisms for life and evolution.

DAVID: All dhw sees is a God experimenting, creating spectacles, looking for interesting organisms, and then if He wanted humans as an endpoint, He seems to have done it all wrong, inventing things not needed and taking too long […]

You have correctly reproduced my alternative theistic explanations of evolution, the logic of which you have acknowledged, but I have never said God did it “all wrong”. The illogicality of the argument bolded above suggests that it is a flawed interpretation of your God’s intentions and/or methods. I am criticizing your interpretation, not God.


DAVID: Your long illogical set of humanizing theories offering a God who is not sure of what to do, but they fit reality if one accepts your type of insecure God not working on a specific purpose of creating a very superior form of organism.

Only the experimenting theory suggests that he did not know how to achieve the purpose you impose on him. Even that does not make him “insecure”, unless you think that any inventor who is looking to create something new is “insecure”. My other alternatives also have him working on a specific purpose.

DAVID: Your presentation is a totally critical discussion of the God I envision. You ignore the personality difference I've continuously pointed out in your God and my God. That is the key to our difference.

It is a totally critical discussion of your claim that every extinct non-human life form was a “part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans”, that the brontosaurus was our ancestor, and that every extinct econiche was a preparation for our food supply (now ridiculed even by yourself). What personality difference? I have him knowing what he wants and getting it. (This even applies to the experiment theory, but this allows him to learn instead of being omniscient.) On the theodicy thread we both have him interested in what he has created.

DAVID: It all goes back to Adler's arguments, as far as I am concerned and our totally unexplained arrival. Assuming evolution changes organisms to improve survival, there is no reason for our appearance of survival. The apes, our direct ancestors, did just fine until we overpopulated their areas.

Dealt with over and over again. According to your reasoning, there is no reason for ANY multicellular organism to have appeared, since bacteria have always done just fine. As regard the apes, I have repeatedly proposed that a local group of apes may have encountered conditions which required a change of habitat and of behaviour. You seem to think that all apes lived in the same location under the same unchanging conditions.

DAVID: Finally to answer the bold, I don't know God's reasoning, nor do you, for producing us, but does not negate He wanted our arrival. We are here. Why should I have to find a reason??? I just accept His works.

We don’t know God’s reason for producing ANY organism, but that does not negate the possibility that he wanted ALL organisms to arrive. You do not “just accept his works”. You have built a whole theory concerning his “goal” and his methods, and you want us to swallow it whole by avoiding the question why your all-powerful God, whose one and only purpose was to directly design H. sapiens, would have spent 3.X billion years designing millions of other non-human, now extinct life forms and natural wonders which you admit had no direct connection to humans.

Balance of nature: ecosystems are losing diversity

by David Turell @, Thursday, October 29, 2020, 18:22 (1247 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: At last. So please stop telling us that “God knew we would populate the Earth as He designed the entire bush of life for our food supply”. There is no connection!

So now God can't think and foresee the giant human population appearing!!! Haven't you noticed all my entries about the importance of the construction of ecosystems?


DAVID: I hold that God ran/designed/conducted the process of evolution with the goal and endpoint of producing humans, just as history factually shows.

dhw: History does NOT show that God exists and that if he does, his goal was producing humans. (See “error corrections”.) History only shows that humans are the latest species. We may be the endpoint, but I would be unwilling to prophesy what species will exist on Earth in ten million years’ time. Please stop calling your opinions “factual”.

just my logical beliefs based on God's works


Your claim that every extinct non-human organism and food supply was directly designed as “part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans” has been demolished on the “errors correction” thread, ... I shall deal with each dodge in turn:

DAVID:…you deny God did anything related to evolution.

dhw: I do not. If he exists, he would have invented the mechanisms for life and evolution.

DAVID: All dhw sees is a God experimenting, creating spectacles, looking for interesting organisms, and then if He wanted humans as an endpoint, He seems to have done it all wrong, inventing things not needed and taking too long […]

dhw: You have correctly reproduced my alternative theistic explanations of evolution, the logic of which you have acknowledged, but I have never said God did it “all wrong”. The illogicality of the argument bolded above suggests that it is a flawed interpretation of your God’s intentions and/or methods. I am criticizing your interpretation, not God.

Not surprisingly you have agreed God, if existing ran evolution. And we are here. Doesn't that make us God's goal, even if you only feel it is currently??


DAVID: Your long illogical set of humanizing theories offering a God who is not sure of what to do, but they fit reality if one accepts your type of insecure God not working on a specific purpose of creating a very superior form of organism.

dhw: Only the experimenting theory suggests that he did not know how to achieve the purpose you impose on him. Even that does not make him “insecure”, unless you think that any inventor who is looking to create something new is “insecure”. My other alternatives also have him working on a specific purpose.

You make Him sound insecure by discussing experimentation by God. Now He has purpose?


DAVID: Your presentation is a totally critical discussion of the God I envision. You ignore the personality difference I've continuously pointed out in your God and my God. That is the key to our difference.

dhw: What personality difference? I have him knowing what he wants and getting it. (This even applies to the experiment theory, but this allows him to learn instead of being omniscient.)

You are denying your usual image of God in the past. Why the change now? And you are, IMHO, still making him weaker than I ever imagined from his works.


DAVID: It all goes back to Adler's arguments, as far as I am concerned and our totally unexplained arrival. Assuming evolution changes organisms to improve survival, there is no reason for our appearance of survival. The apes, our direct ancestors, did just fine until we overpopulated their areas.

dhw: Dealt with over and over again. According to your reasoning, there is no reason for ANY multicellular organism to have appeared, since bacteria have always done just fine.

That is exactly the point of my thinking!!! Evolution could not have advanced beyond
bacteria without God pushing evolution, after their invention by God!!!

DAVID: Finally to answer the bold, I don't know God's reasoning, nor do you, for producing us, but does not negate He wanted our arrival. We are here. Why should I have to find a reason??? I just accept His works.

dhw: We don’t know God’s reason for producing ANY organism, but that does not negate the possibility that he wanted ALL organisms to arrive. You do not “just accept his works”. You have built a whole theory concerning his “goal” and his methods, and you want us to swallow it whole by avoiding the question why your all-powerful God, whose one and only purpose was to directly design H. sapiens, would have spent 3.X billion years designing millions of other non-human, now extinct life forms and natural wonders which you admit had no direct connection to humans.

Again, you ignore God's right to first create life and evolve it following His purposes. Remember evolution over time has to create extinct forms as biological complexity is created.

Balance of nature: ecosystems are losing diversity

by dhw, Friday, October 30, 2020, 08:50 (1246 days ago) @ David Turell

The absurd theory that God “designed the entire bush of life for our food supply” and every extinct life form was “part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans” is dealt with on the “error corrections" thread.

DAVID:[...]you deny God did anything related to evolution.

dhw: I do not. If he exists, he would have invented the mechanisms for life and evolution.

Not answered.

DAVID: All dhw sees is a God experimenting, creating spectacles, looking for interesting organisms, and then if He wanted humans as an endpoint, He seems to have done it all wrong, inventing things not needed and taking too long […]

dhw: You have correctly reproduced my alternative theistic explanations of evolution, the logic of which you have acknowledged, but I have never said God did it “all wrong”. The illogicality of the argument bolded above suggests that it is a flawed interpretation of your God’s intentions and/or methods. I am criticizing your interpretation, not God.

DAVID: Not surprisingly you have agreed God, if existing ran evolution. And we are here. Doesn't that make us God's goal, even if you only feel it is currently??

If, as you believe, he designed every life form, the ogre-based spider and the extreme extremophiles (today’s natural wonders) are also here, so by your reasoning they are also your God’s goal. And if “extinct life has no role in present time”, obviously his purpose in designing every extinct species that ever lived could not have been to design us!

DAVID: Your long illogical set of humanizing theories offering a God who is not sure of what to do, but they fit reality if one accepts your type of insecure God not working on a specific purpose of creating a very superior form of organism.

You have accepted the logic of my alternatives, you have demolished your silly “humanizing” objection yourself (see “Theodicy”), I’m surprised that you think experimental scientists and inventors must be insecure, and ALL my theories involve a specific purpose, but the purpose does not have to be designing humans (see “error corrections” and “Theodicy”).

dhw: Only the experimenting theory suggests that he did not know how to achieve the purpose you impose on him. [...] My other alternatives also have him working on a specific purpose.

DAVID: Your presentation is a totally critical discussion of the God I envision. You ignore the personality difference I've continuously pointed out in your God and my God. That is the key to our difference.

dhw: What personality difference? I have him knowing what he wants and getting it. (This even applies to the experiment theory, but that allows him to learn instead of being omniscient.)

DAVID: You are denying your usual image of God in the past. Why the change now? And you are, IMHO, still making him weaker than I ever imagined from his works.

What change? Another of your manufactured straw men. I have opposed your presentation of a God who designed a system that caused errors he couldn’t prevent or correct. My proposal is that the system he built (if he exists) is precisely the system he wanted to build. Which of those images is “weaker”?

DAVID: […] Assuming evolution changes organisms to improve survival, there is no reason for our appearance of survival. The apes, our direct ancestors, did just fine until we overpopulated their areas.

Dealt with over and over again. According to your reasoning, there is no reason for ANY multicellular organism to have appeared, since bacteria have always done just fine. As regards survival, I have repeatedly proposed that changing local conditions may have necessitated new forms of behaviour by a local group of apes – just as pre-whales may have left the land because the water offered them a better chance of survival.

DAVID: Finally to answer the bold, I don't know God's reasoning, nor do you, for producing us, but does not negate He wanted our arrival. We are here. Why should I have to find a reason??? I just accept His works.

dhw: We don’t know God’s reason for producing ANY organism, but that does not negate the possibility that he wanted ALL organisms to arrive. You do not “just accept his works”. You have built a whole theory concerning his “goal” and his methods, and you want us to swallow it whole by avoiding the question why your all-powerful God, whose one and only purpose was to directly design H. sapiens, would have spent 3.X billion years designing millions of other non-human, now extinct life forms and natural wonders which you admit had no direct connection to humans.

DAVID: Again, you ignore God's right to first create life and evolve it following His purposes. […].

I do no such thing! Of course if he exists he had the right to create life and follow his purposes. That does not provide the slightest justification for the totally illogical theory bolded above.

Balance of nature: ecosystems are losing diversity

by David Turell @, Friday, October 30, 2020, 21:48 (1246 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: All dhw sees is a God experimenting, creating spectacles, looking for interesting organisms, and then if He wanted humans as an endpoint, He seems to have done it all wrong, inventing things not needed and taking too long […]

dhw: You have correctly reproduced my alternative theistic explanations of evolution, the logic of which you have acknowledged, but I have never said God did it “all wrong”. The illogicality of the argument bolded above suggests that it is a flawed interpretation of your God’s intentions and/or methods. I am criticizing your interpretation, not God.

DAVID: Not surprisingly you have agreed God, if existing ran evolution. And we are here. Doesn't that make us God's goal, even if you only feel it is currently??

dhw: If, as you believe, he designed every life form, the ogre-based spider and the extreme extremophiles (today’s natural wonders) are also here, so by your reasoning they are also your God’s goal. And if “extinct life has no role in present time”, obviously his purpose in designing every extinct species that ever lived could not have been to design us!

What a weird contorted confused conclusion. God purposely designed all stages of evolution to eventually produce our level of complexity. My version of God always knows exactly what His purposes are and how to reach them. But then there is your wild supposition He has to experiment and look for spectacular spectacles..


DAVID: Your long illogical set of humanizing theories offering a God who is not sure of what to do, but they fit reality if one accepts your type of insecure God not working on a specific purpose of creating a very superior form of organism.

dhw: You have accepted the logic of my alternatives, you have demolished your silly “humanizing” objection yourself (see “Theodicy”), I’m surprised that you think experimental scientists and inventors must be insecure, and ALL my theories involve a specific purpose, but the purpose does not have to be designing humans (see “error corrections” and “Theodicy”).

Your alternatives following human logic, but not what God wanted to do, are with th at exception logical


dhw: What personality difference? I have him knowing what he wants and getting it. (This even applies to the experiment theory, but that allows him to learn instead of being omniscient.)

DAVID: You are denying your usual image of God in the past. Why the change now? And you are, IMHO, still making him weaker than I ever imagined from his works.

dhw: What change? Another of your manufactured straw men. I have opposed your presentation of a God who designed a system that caused errors he couldn’t prevent or correct. My proposal is that the system he built (if he exists) is precisely the system he wanted to build. Which of those images is “weaker”?

Nice twist on my proposal that He built the only system He knew He had to design in order to have life emerge..


DAVID: […] Assuming evolution changes organisms to improve survival, there is no reason for our appearance of survival. The apes, our direct ancestors, did just fine until we overpopulated their areas.

dhw: Dealt with over and over again. According to your reasoning, there is no reason for ANY multicellular organism to have appeared, since bacteria have always done just fine. As regards survival, I have repeatedly proposed that changing local conditions may have necessitated new forms of behaviour by a local group of apes – just as pre-whales may have left the land because the water offered them a better chance of survival.

Again, pure Darwin, with survival demands forcing complex new designs. Passive Natural Selection does not drive evolution.


DAVID: Finally to answer the bold, I don't know God's reasoning, nor do you, for producing us, but does not negate He wanted our arrival. We are here. Why should I have to find a reason??? I just accept His works.

dhw: We don’t know God’s reason for producing ANY organism, but that does not negate the possibility that he wanted ALL organisms to arrive. You do not “just accept his works”. You have built a whole theory concerning his “goal” and his methods, and you want us to swallow it whole by avoiding the question why your all-powerful God, whose one and only purpose was to directly design H. sapiens, would have spent 3.X billion years designing millions of other non-human, now extinct life forms and natural wonders which you admit had no direct connection to humans.

DAVID: Again, you ignore God's right to first create life and evolve it following His purposes. […].

dhw: I do no such thing! Of course if he exists he had the right to create life and follow his purposes. That does not provide the slightest justification for the totally illogical theory bolded above.

Illogical only in your mind, as your statement contradicts your acceptance of God creating evolution. Your Darwinist approach never can explain why we are here..

Balance of nature: ecosystems are losing diversity

by dhw, Saturday, October 31, 2020, 11:32 (1245 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: God purposely designed all stages of evolution to eventually produce our level of complexity.

You claim that he directly designed every life form and natural wonder in life’s history “as part of the goal of evolving [directly designing] humans.” If “extinct life has no role in present time”, once more: what role did the brontosaurus play in your God’s directly designing humans? Please answer.

DAVID: My version of God always knows exactly what His purposes are and how to reach them.

So does mine. How does that explain why he designed the brontosaurus in order to design H. sapiens?

DAVID: But then there is your wild supposition He has to experiment and look for spectacular spectacles.

I offer various alternative explanations of evolution. If God’s purpose really was to design H. sapiens, then experimentation would explain all the preceding life forms. You have no explanation for all the preceding life forms. Alternatively, he might have designed ALL the life forms because he enjoyed designing and watching the results of his creativity. And alternatively, he might have given free rein to evolution through endowing cells with autonomous intelligence so that he could enjoy the unpredictability of speciation. You have agreed that all of these are logical.

DAVID: Your alternatives following human logic, but not what God wanted to do, are with that exception logical.

How do you know what God wanted to do? All we know is that a vast bush of life forms existed, and we are the latest to emerge. I don’t pretend to know your God’s motives or methods and so I offer logical alternatives. You stick to the only explanation which doesn’t make sense.

dhw: What personality difference? I have him knowing what he wants and getting it. (This even applies to the experiment theory, but that allows him to learn instead of being omniscient.)

DAVID: You are denying your usual image of God in the past. Why the change now? And you are, IMHO, still making him weaker than I ever imagined from his works.

dhw: What change? Another of your manufactured straw men. I have opposed your presentation of a God who designed a system that caused errors he couldn’t prevent or correct. My proposal is that the system he built (if he exists) is precisely the system he wanted to build. Which of those images is “weaker”?

DAVID: Nice twist on my proposal that He built the only system He knew He had to design in order to have life emerge.

It’s not a “twist”. You have said categorically that he could not prevent or correct the disease-causing errors – and even produced back-ups, some of which didn’t work, so he left it to us to try and figure out a correction. I’d say that makes him “weaker” than a God who designed a system which gave him precisely the results he wanted.

DAVID: […] Assuming evolution changes organisms to improve survival, there is no reason for our appearance of survival. The apes, our direct ancestors, did just fine until we overpopulated their areas.

dhw: Dealt with over and over again. According to your reasoning, there is no reason for ANY multicellular organism to have appeared, since bacteria have always done just fine. As regards survival, I have repeatedly proposed that changing local conditions may have necessitated new forms of behaviour by a local group of apes – just as pre-whales may have left the land because the water offered them a better chance of survival.

DAVID: Again, pure Darwin, with survival demands forcing complex new designs. Passive Natural Selection does not drive evolution.

I have said repeatedly that natural selection does not create anything. I have proposed that the creative activity is performed by intelligent cells! And I wish you would stop moaning about Darwin, as if the very word automatically invalidated an argument. It’s perfectly logical that changing conditions should require changing behaviours and these may require changing structures.

DAVID: Again, you ignore God's right to first create life and evolve it following His purposes. […].

dhw: I do no such thing! Of course if he exists he had the right to create life and follow his purposes. That does not provide the slightest justification for [your] totally illogical theory...

DAVID: Illogical only in your mind, as your statement contradicts your acceptance of God creating evolution. Your Darwinist approach never can explain why we are here.

If God exists, he had the right to create life and follow his purposes. What does that contradict? No approach can explain why we or any other life form are here – and so we all offer theories. You simply refuse to face up to the illogicality of your own, which is that your God’s purpose was to directly design humans and their food supply, and his method was to directly design millions of life forms and food supplies that had no direct connection with humans.

Balance of nature: ecosystems are losing diversity

by David Turell @, Saturday, October 31, 2020, 18:26 (1245 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: God purposely designed all stages of evolution to eventually produce our level of complexity.

dhw: You claim that he directly designed every life form and natural wonder in life’s history “as part of the goal of evolving [directly designing] humans.” If “extinct life has no role in present time”, once more: what role did the brontosaurus play in your God’s directly designing humans? Please answer.

As in 'error corrections' thread: "Yes, 99% of previously living forms are gone today .The various extinct branches like dinos were not a dead end; they ended up as birds in our time. The mammals who survived Chixculub become primates and then us. You are still denying the continuous relationships from past forms. The various branches that did survive to today are the food supply for the huge populations on Earth, especially humans. God runs evolution by design and by logic. I don't see any logic in your presentations about evolution."


dhw: What personality difference? I have him knowing what he wants and getting it. (This even applies to the experiment theory, but that allows him to learn instead of being omniscient.)

DAVID: You are denying your usual image of God in the past. Why the change now? And you are, IMHO, still making him weaker than I ever imagined from his works.

dhw: What change? Another of your manufactured straw men. I have opposed your presentation of a God who designed a system that caused errors he couldn’t prevent or correct. My proposal is that the system he built (if he exists) is precisely the system he wanted to build. Which of those images is “weaker”?

DAVID: Nice twist on my proposal that He built the only system He knew He had to design in order to have life emerge.

dhw: It’s not a “twist”. You have said categorically that he could not prevent or correct the disease-causing errors – and even produced back-ups, some of which didn’t work, so he left it to us to try and figure out a correction. I’d say that makes him “weaker” than a God who designed a system which gave him precisely the results he wanted.

You continue to ignore my point that the current biological system is the only system that will work, and for success the only one He could choose to design. The molecules must be free to react with others or change shape at fantastic speeds in micro-seconds.


DAVID: Again, pure Darwin, with survival demands forcing complex new designs. Passive Natural Selection does not drive evolution.

dhw: I have said repeatedly that natural selection does not create anything. I have proposed that the creative activity is performed by intelligent cells! And I wish you would stop moaning about Darwin, as if the very word automatically invalidated an argument. It’s perfectly logical that changing conditions should require changing behaviours and these may require changing structures.

Great logic, but no sense of how it can happen naturally!!!


DAVID: Again, you ignore God's right to first create life and evolve it following His purposes. […].

dhw: I do no such thing! Of course if he exists he had the right to create life and follow his purposes. That does not provide the slightest justification for [your] totally illogical theory...

DAVID: Illogical only in your mind, as your statement contradicts your acceptance of God creating evolution. Your Darwinist approach never can explain why we are here.

dhw: If God exists, he had the right to create life and follow his purposes. What does that contradict? No approach can explain why we or any other life form are here – and so we all offer theories. You simply refuse to face up to the illogicality of your own, which is that your God’s purpose was to directly design humans and their food supply, and his method was to directly design millions of life forms and food supplies that had no direct connection with humans.

A totally confused illogical answer. I accept that God created life, and that He then designed all eventual stages of evolution to reach creation of us. With that belief history gives us the story of what He did. And again you have totally ignored the need for as a giant food supply in the bush of life.

Balance of nature: human damage of an ecosystem

by David Turell @, Saturday, April 10, 2021, 15:15 (1084 days ago) @ David Turell

Putting beavers into an Argentinian forest becomes a disaster in 70 years:

https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2019/07/argentina-bro...

"Beavers were supposed to “enrich” Patagonia, economically and ecologically. At least that was the ambition of Argentina’s military when it flew 10 pairs of Canadian beavers from Manitoba to Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina’s southernmost province, in 1946. The soldiers set the beavers loose on the shores of Lake Fagnano in hopes of spurring a fur trade and attracting more residents to the sparsely populated area.

***

"...a television series that aired from 1938 to 1972, expressed concern about the fragility of the experiment. Beavers are monogamous; if one of the animals were to die, the program’s announcer fretted, its mate would be unlikely to reproduce.

"But such worry was misplaced. While the fur trade never materialised, what did explode were beaver numbers.

"In contrast to North America, which is home to bears and wolves, the island of Tierra del Fuego has very few natural predators that hanker after beaver meat. With access to extensive forests and steppes they could colonise without fear, the beavers rapidly dispersed and multiplied.

"In the 1960s, beavers crossed to the Chilean side of Tierra del Fuego. “They don’t recognise borders. In fact, they eat the border fence,” quips Felipe Guerra Díaz, the Chilean national coordinator for the beaver project of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), an international partnership that funds environmental efforts. By the early 1990s, residents began spotting beavers in the Brunswick Peninsula on the Chilean mainland, meaning the creatures had braved the unpredictable currents of the Strait of Magellan.

"In their wake they left phantom forests. North American trees have evolved over millions of years to survive beavers’ industrious chewing, explains Ben Goldfarb, an environmental journalist and author of Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter. “Trees like willow, cottonwood, American beech, and alder have all evolved responses to beaver chewing and flooding. They re-sprout when you cut them down, produce defensive chemicals, and tolerate wet soils.” But because beavers are not native to South America, the continent’s trees have not developed the same defences.

***

"Left largely unchecked since then, GEF estimates the beaver population has grown to between 70,000 and 110,000 in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. The beavers have colonised at least 27,027 square miles of territory and decimated nearly 120 square miles (31,000 hectares) of peat bogs, forests and grasslands—an area almost twice the size of Washington, D.C. A 2009 scientific paper calls beavers’ impact in Patagonia “the largest landscape-level alteration in subantarctic forests since the last ice age.”

***

"Beavers have damaged infrastructure, too, flooding highways and culverts, and damaging farmland. They often chew through fences meant to contain sheep; in 2017, beavers gnawed through fibre-optic cables in Tierra del Fuego, knocking out internet and cell service in its biggest city. Guerra Díaz says a recent study shared with GEF suggests damage caused by beavers costs Argentina alone £53 million a year.

***

"Earlier this year, researchers released the preliminary results from their pilot project in Argentina’s Esmeralda-Lasifashaj region, which ran from October 2016 to January 2017. During that period, 10 trappers, which the report calls “restorers,” lay body-gripping traps and snares around the designated area, which is popular among cross-country skiers. Overall, they caught 197 beavers in traps and shot an additional seven beavers. The trappers believed they had completely rid the area of the animals, only to later spot several on motion-triggered cameras. It was unclear whether the errant beavers were “re-invaders” that had trudged in from outside the pilot area or if they had survived the trappers’ initial attempts at capture.

***

"Tierra del Fuego is made up of hundreds of small, rugged islands that are difficult to reach. If beavers survive on even one, Curto warns, they could repopulate the entire archipelago and even spread back to the mainland. After the pilot studies are completed in the next few years, the governments of Chile and Argentina will need to agree on how to proceed; pursuing different strategies in each country would result in certain failure. Curto explains: “Achieving eradication will depend exclusively on sustained political will.'”

Comment: The obvious response is never disturb functional ecosystems. Yellowstone is better because the wolves are back. And introducing beaver predators will only make the mess worse. It is all part of the necessary bush of life.

Balance of nature: ecosystem needs top predator

by David Turell @, Saturday, November 13, 2021, 23:28 (867 days ago) @ David Turell

Wolves in Yellowstone studied again:

https://phys.org/news/2021-11-capturing-true-picture-wolves-yellowstone.html

"The Yellowstone story is a textbook example of a trophic cascade, in which predators help plants grow by eating or scaring away herbivores that eat the plants. When wolves were reintroduced into the Yellowstone food chain, they helped to reduce numbers of elk, which had been consuming young aspen trees. Previous research showed strong positive growth in young aspen as the elk populations decreased—a welcome result, as aspen forests have been vanishing from the northern Yellowstone landscape for the last century.

***

"Previous studies evaluated aspen recovery in Yellowstone by measuring the five tallest young aspen within a stand. The reasoning was that the tallest young aspen trees represent a 'leading edge' indicator of the future recovery of the entire aspen population. But this is not the case—sampling only the tallest young aspen estimated a rate of recovery that was significantly faster than was estimated by random sampling of all young aspen within the stand, according to the research.

"'These are extremely complex systems, and understanding them is a major challenge because they are difficult to properly sample," said Brice. "The traditional method of sampling by only using the tallest young aspen plants to measure growth—which most research currently relies on—doesn't capture the entire picture."

"For one, elk are picky about the aspen they consume. They tend to eat plants at shoulder height for which they don't have to crane their necks. As the leader stem (main trunk) of a young aspen grows past the shoulder height of adult elk, it is decreasingly likely to be eaten as it grows taller, said MacNulty. "This means that the tallest young aspen grow faster because they are taller, not because wolves reduce elk browsing," said MacNulty. This finding highlights the complicating fact that height of young aspen is both a cause and an effect of reduced elk browsing.

***

"Understanding how ecosystems respond to changes in large predator populations is vital to resolving broader debates about the structure of food webs, determining species abundance and delivering ecosystem services, said the authors. This study demonstrates how deviations from basic sampling principles can distort this understanding. Non-random sampling overestimated the strength of a trophic cascade in this case, but it may underestimate cascading effects in other situations. Randomization is one of the few protections against unreliable inferences and the misguided management decisions they may inspire, they said." (my bold)

Comment: Note the bold. Food webs are vital to all living organisms. It is a fact dhw admits
and then poopoos. The current huge human population was anticipated for by God and prepared for by the giant food bush appearing from all the branches of evolution designed by God.

Balance nature: important role of parasites in ecosystems

by David Turell @, Sunday, May 08, 2022, 15:20 (691 days ago) @ David Turell

Involved in many ways:

https://knowablemagazine.org/article/living-world/2018/praise-parasites?utm_campaign=K_...

"Lafferty is not a medical doctor — he’s a PhD ecologist who studies parasites, mostly in fish and other marine creatures, a fact he’s always careful to explain to his correspondents. He’s sympathetic to these desperate people, even if what ails them is more imagined than real. Parasites, after all, have wormed into every corner of the tapestry of life, including hooking up with human beings in the most unpleasant of ways.

***

"Parasites have an underappreciated importance, he adds — as indicators and shapers of healthy ecosystems. They thrive where nature remains robust, their richness and abundance keeping pace with biodiversity. They can serve important roles in maintaining ecosystem equilibrium. For all these reasons and others, he urges fellow scientists to take a more neutral view of them and adopt well-established theoretical approaches for studying diseases on land to better understand how marine parasites operate. If scientists want to better predict when infections and infestations will recede, remain innocuous or spiral out of control, he says, they need to start thinking like parasites.

***

"The flatworms in these snails may not be destined for a lowly existence in the mud, though: Their future holds an opportunity to swim, and even fly. Larvae of the most common species go on to penetrate the gills of a California killifish, then attach themselves by the hundreds to the fish’s brain, manipulating the new host to dart to the surface or roll on its side and flash its silvery belly.

"That conspicuous behavior makes the infected fish 10 to 30 times more likely to be eaten by a predatory heron or egret. And it’s in that bird’s intestine that the trematode finally matures, excreting eggs that are dispersed with guano all over the salt marsh or in other estuaries — before being picked up, again, by horn snails.

***

"By some estimates, nearly half of the species in the animal kingdom are parasites. Most of them remain largely out of sight because they are small, even microscopic. Their ancestors didn’t always start with a parasitic lifestyle: Researchers have so far found 223 incidents where parasitic insects, worms, mollusks or protozoans evolved from non-parasitic predecessors. Some ate dead things. Others killed their prey and consumed it. Then their life strategy evolved because they proved more successful if they kept their prey alive, kept their victims close — so they could feed on them longer. It’s a strategy distinct from those of parasitoids, which outright kill their hosts, Lafferty explains, a glint of mischief in his eye. “Think about the movie Alien. Remember when the alien sock puppet bursts its head out of John Hurt’s chest? That’s a classic parasitoid.”

***

"As illustrated by the trematode in the killifish, Lafferty says, “parasites are determining who lives and who dies in a way that benefits them.”

"Moreover, parasites are a useful way to explore broader ecological questions: How does energy flow through those food webs? What forces maintain ecological stability and keep one species from overrunning all others? What are the implications of robust and healthy biodiversity on human health? Ecologists debate all sorts of competing theories, Lafferty says. What’s clear to him and other like-minded parasitologists: “We cannot answer these questions if we are going to ignore the parasite part of the equation.”

***

"He and colleagues worked out how to halt an epidemic of schistosomiasis in Senegal by reintroducing freshwater river prawns that eat the intermediate host of the blood fluke that causes the disease. He discovered how the eradication of rats on Palmyra Atoll in the Central Pacific had a second benefit: the local extinction of the Asian tiger mosquito, a vector for the dengue and Zika viruses."

Comment: again, we see clear evidence of the importance of ecosystems maintaining the necessary balance for all living intertwined organisms. What parasites do could be seen as evil if humans were severely involved and some humans are. dhw will react by wishing no evil were present, but the examples in this article (not all included here) show beneficial effects, not evil. No more evil than ants controlled by fungus, discussed before. Theodicy is really as seen in the eye of the beholder, not the realist believer in God. Giant article worth reading

Balance nature: important role of fungi in ecosystems

by David Turell @, Wednesday, May 11, 2022, 01:53 (689 days ago) @ David Turell

A review:

https://ecoevocommunity.nature.com/posts/fungal-communities-play-key-roles-in-securing-...

"We know that fungal communities are linked with plants through fundamental processes such as pathogenesis, competition and mutualism. We also know that fungal diversity is important for promoting plant productivity and multiple ecosystem functions from nutrient cycling to carbon sequestration. What we did not know is how fungal communities influence the stability of plant communities over long periods of time, along with their capacity to stand extreme climatic events such as those from drought. This knowledge gap undoubtedly limit our ability to predict how soil biodiversity loss might affect temporal dynamics in ecosystem functions under changing environments.

***

"Our global surveys provided consistent evidence that diversity of functional fungal communities is critical for supporting the stability of terrestrial ecosystems, and their capacity to resist extreme climatic events. Specifically, we found that richness of fungal decomposers was consistently and positively associated with ecosystem stability worldwide. In contrast, richness of fungal plant pathogens showed negative relationships with ecosystem stability, particularly in grasslands. Given there were increasingly frequency of climate events worldwide, it is essential to identify the biotic drivers of such impacts on terrestrial ecosystems. Following our expectation, higher diversity of fungal decomposers and root endophytes were consistently and positively associated with the resistance of ecosystem productivity during drought events. However, higher richness of plant pathogens will weaken the resistance or resilience of ecosystem productivity during, or after, drought events. Moreover, we found that the diversity of mycorrhizal fungi is positively associated with resilience of ecosystem productivity after drought events. In other word, those fungal functions groups that live intimate with plant community will help plant productivity recover faster from extreme drought events。

"Taken together, our study provides comprehensive evidence that soil fungal functional groups could stabilizes (e.g., soil decomposers and mycorrhizal fungi) or destabilize (e.g., fungal plant pathogens) global-scale ecosystem productivity. These results are in agreement with those studies suggesting that plant diversity is critical for supporting ecosystem stability. Our work have implications for understanding and predicting how soil biodiversity may buffer increasing global change to sustain ecosystem stability."

Comment: I think by now I 've established the overall importance of ecosystems created by the enormous diverse bush of life. Since living creatures must eat, and the human population has grown so big, the bush must be that enormous. That explains away dhw's compliant that God did not know what He was doing and creating all the bush instead of creating humans straightaway. Accepting humans as God's primary goal, it all makes perfect sense, with God preparing for the huge human population He knew would appear.

Balance nature: important role of personality in ecosystems

by David Turell @, Monday, June 06, 2022, 19:24 (662 days ago) @ David Turell

What different wolf personalities do:

https://phys.org/news/2022-06-wolf-personalities-wetlands.html

"To figure out how wolf personalities might be connected to wetland creation, the project team assessed the role of personality using data from eight pairs of wolves across six packs from 2019 to 2020. They compared the number of times wolves from the same pack, which lived in the same or similar habitats and conditions, attempted to ambush beavers and the number of times the wolves were successful at killing beavers.

***

"The researchers found:

"There was significant variation in the amount of time pack members spent ambushing beavers and in the number of beavers killed by pack members.

"Some wolves killed 229% more beavers than other pack members and spent 263% more time ambushing beavers than other pack members.

"This large variation in hunting behavior between wolves in the same pack is evidence for personality-driven differences in wolf predation.

"'Wolves with strong beaver-killing personalities appear to be disproportionately responsible, relative to the wolf population as whole, for altering wetland creation and the associated ecological effects," said Gable.

"Wolves are unlikely to be alone in this capacity. There is good reason to believe other wildlife have personality differences that have different ecosystem impacts.

"For example, some cougars appear to have beaver-killing personalities and some American badgers are especially good at preying upon prairie dogs, which are ecosystem engineers in grasslands.

"More generally, the authors expect that predator personalities will impact ecosystems more substantially whenever and wherever predators kill species that are ecosystem engineers.

"'But do wolves that hunt beavers beget wolf packs with more beaver-hunting wolves? That is where this research gets even more interesting," said Bump.

"The presence of wolf personalities suggests wolf cultures may exist because personalities are a necessary precursor for cultural formation in animals."

Comment: Darwin used variation in his theory. This aspect of it certinly works.

Balance nature: role of ocean RNA viruses in ecosystems

by David Turell @, Thursday, June 09, 2022, 21:28 (659 days ago) @ David Turell

The ocean is filled with RNA viruses killing plankton and influencing teh carbon cycle:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2323643-thousands-of-previously-undescribed-viruse...

The first global survey of marine RNA viruses has discovered thousands of new viruses, some of which play a central role in locking away carbon at the bottom of the sea.

***

The researchers identified more than 5000 types of RNA viruses in the sea, almost all of which were new to science. “It has expanded our view of how much diversity there is,” says Curtis Suttle at the University of British Columbia, who was not involved in the study.

The team focused particularly on the role viruses play in carbon sequestration. Every day massive numbers of dead plankton sink to the bottom of the ocean taking the carbon in their bodies with them, which is then entombed for potentially millions of years. This process, known as the biological carbon pump, puts away as much as 12 gigatons of carbon each year. That’s equivalent to around a third of the total annual human-caused CO2 emissions.

Researchers have long known viruses play a role in this process, but Huerta and the team have uncovered further details. The group believes that at least eleven of the newly discovered RNA viruses infect plankton important to the biological carbon pump, suggesting clear mechanisms for how viruses influence the pump. Unlike DNA viruses, which primarily infect bacteria and archaea, RNA viruses infect more complex plankton like algae and fungi. “When people think about viruses, they think about disease. They don’t think about CO2,” says Huerta.

An additional unexpected find from the survey was that RNA viruses in the ocean have extra genetic tools to manipulate their microbial hosts. Like DNA viruses, a number of RNA viruses in the survey appear to be able to alter the metabolism of their hosts using genes stolen from the hosts themselves. These extra genes, which RNA viruses might have evolved to contend with the extremely resource-depleted open ocean, could be another route for RNA viruses to affect the biological carbon pump.

Comment: Here again we see the vital importance of an ecosystem. All ecosystems are vital and contribute to the food supply and to other balances on Earth that protect life. These ere produced by a slow process of evolution preparing the way for the current huge human population, wshich couild easily be anticipated by a designer once our brain arrived with all its immense powers. dhw constantly complains God used a round-about way to produce humans. Really???

Balance of nature: mange alters an ecosystem

by David Turell @, Friday, July 15, 2022, 18:09 (623 days ago) @ David Turell

In Argentina mange on vicunas altered the ecosystem:

https://www.the-scientist.com/notebook/how-mange-remade-an-ecosystem-70146?utm_campaign...

"She had originally set out to study how the predator-prey relationship between pumas and vicuñas (Vicugna vicugna), a llama-like animal, affects nutrient deposition in the park. But she tacked on another research question after she and her colleagues noticed, beginning in 2015, that a sarcoptic mange epidemic was decimating vicuña populations.

"Sarcoptic mange is caused by a mite, Sarcoptes scabiei...Infected animals can lose clumps of fur and develop itchy skin and callouses, sometimes becoming weak and unable to eat enough to sustain themselves. After the mange took hold—likely spread from domestic llamas at a nearby farm, according to a recent study involving some of Monk’s collaborators—researchers in the park soon noticed mangy-looking vicuñas and a pronounced drop in the animals’ numbers...“By our final year of data collection, in 2020, there were just a few family groups that we would see.” Other changes were visible too—for example, grasslands that the vicuñas had previously grazed down to nubby patches were now covered in taller, denser bunches of grass.

***

"One of the team’s questions was whether the mange was killing vicuñas directly or merely slowing them down so that they became easier prey for pumas, Monk says. Puma-tracking collars revealed that the number of their kills held steady as the vicuñas’ numbers fell steeply, pointing to the former explanation. (The collars were preprogrammed to fall off in 2017, so the researchers don’t know what happened to kill rates after that.) In parallel, Andean condors that once scanned the landscape of San Guillermo for puma kills to scavenge spent more time away from the park after the vicuña population plummeted.

"Monk and her colleagues realized that the epidemic was an opportunity to study mange’s effects on not just the vicuñas themselves, but the entire ecosystem. For another project, Emiliano Donadío of Fundación Rewilding Argentina and other collaborators of Monk’s had collected data on vegetation coverage at various sites prior to the mange outbreak; they also had tracking information on GPS-tagged pumas (Puma concolor) and Andean condors (Vultur gryphus) that fed in the park. Monk’s role was to gather mange-era data for comparison and analyze any changes that had taken place. To that end, she spent time in San Guillermo driving to the same sites that Donadío’s team had studied and recording factors such as vegetation cover, grass height, and the presence of seed spikes, which indicated that the grasses hadn’t been heavily grazed.


"It also turned out that the increased greenness the researchers had observed wasn’t uniform across the park. “Vegetation exploded in the open plains that are where the vicuñas had foraged most heavily in the past,” Monk explains. Those open plains are relatively safe spaces for the animals, as they make it harder for pumas to approach unseen. But in canyons, which provide more cover for pumas, “we actually saw no change in the vegetation after the outbreak of mange,” she says. “It turns out the vicuñas were already so wary in those habitats that they spent less time foraging there and thus, there wasn’t a change when the population crashed.”

***

"Overall, Monk, who expects to graduate next month says, “it was interesting to see how . . . disease can really restructure an ecosystem.” That restructuring, known as a trophic cascade, is more commonly invoked to describe the effects of a predator—most famously, wolves in Yellowstone National Park, which trim elk populations and thus allow the aspen trees that the elk feed on to flourish. Although some previous studies in other systems point to similarly far-reaching effects of pathogens, the “evidence is still pretty thin,” says Julia Buck, a disease ecologist at the University of North Carolina Wilmington who coauthored a 2017 review on the topic but was not involved in Monk’s project. She calls the new paper “a really amazing piece of work” that adds to that evidence. “You wouldn’t think that a tiny little mite would be able to change the whole ecosystem like that,” she says. “But it can.'”

Comment: another study like the one in Yellowstone snowing how delicate an ecosystem is and how easily it can be damaged. It also shows the balanced state affects animal populations and the vegetation they feed upon. And the entire importance of ecosystems is based on food supply. This makes it obvious God's goal of humans had to include an enormous food supply to feed the huge population size humans would create.

Balance of nature: entire Earth ecosystems mapped

by David Turell @, Thursday, October 13, 2022, 05:28 (533 days ago) @ David Turell

An important study:

https://phys.org/news/2022-10-entire-planet-ecosystems.html

"A global cross-disciplinary team of scientists led by UNSW Sydney researchers has developed the first comprehensive classification of the world's ecosystems across land, rivers and wetlands, and seas. The ecosystem typology will enable more coordinated and effective biodiversity conservation, critical for human well-being. (my bold)

***

"The study, published today in Nature, explores the science that underpins the typology, as well as how it can help achieve objectives in global policy that flow to individual countries. With UNSW's support, IUCN launched the first public version of the typology in 2020 and, since then, the researchers have refined and updated it.

***

"The typology allows us to understand broad global patterns, including the transformation of ecosystems by people. Ten percent of ecosystems are artificially created and maintained by humans but occupy more than 30 percent of the Earth's land surface—what is left is home to 94 percent of threatened species on the IUCN Red List.

***

"Ecosystems provide homes and vital life support for all plants and animals, and supply essential ecosystem services that sustain business, culture and human well-being. Those services—such as provision of clean air and water, carbon sequestration, reduced risks of disasters and outdoor recreational opportunities that sustain mental health—are sometimes regarded as free, but ecosystem degradation incurs costs for tapping alternative resources, disaster relief and reconstruction, and to health budgets.

"All of the world's ecosystems show hallmarks of human influence, and many are under acute risks of collapse, with consequences for habitats of species, genetic diversity, ecosystem services, sustainable development and human well-being.

"The global ecosystem typology describes the diversity of tropical forests, big rivers, coral reefs and other ecosystems that have typically been the focus of public attention. But it also includes little-known ecosystems of deep ocean trenches, seamounts, lakes beneath the ice sheets and microscopic ecosystems within rocks.

"'We don't think often about what's in the deep oceans, for example," said Professor Keith. "There's a tremendous variety of life down there and it's organized into a number of different ecosystems. And those ecosystems are beginning to feel the impact of human expansion.

"'The deep trenches in the ocean are filling up with microplastics, and we're starting to look at mining volcanic vents for minerals. We need to make decisions about those kinds of environments, just as we do about coral reefs and rainforests.'"

Comment: The importance of ecosystems is not debated. What they mean is a living space for all and food for all. If the bush of life had not been developed, a linear development would not have survived. Broad ecosystems were an absolute requirement to prepare for the human arrival and dominance.

Balance of nature: entire Earth ecosystems mapped

by David Turell @, Thursday, October 13, 2022, 17:01 (533 days ago) @ David Turell

Another view of the study:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2342176-wildlife-populations-are-declining-on-a-de...

Wildlife populations around the world are facing dramatic declines, according to new figures that have prompted environmental campaigners to call for urgent action to rescue the natural world.

The 2022 Living Planet Index (LPI), produced by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), reveals that studied populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish have seen an average decline of 69 per cent since 1970, faster than previous predictions.

The LPI tracked global biodiversity between 1970 and 2018, based on the monitoring of 31,821 populations of 5230 vertebrate species.


Mark Wright of WWF says the scale of decline is “devastating” and continues to worsen. “We are not seeing any really positive signs that we are beginning to bend the curve of nature,” he says.

Freshwater vertebrates have been among the hardest hit populations, with monitored populations showing an average decline of 83 per cent since 1970.

Meanwhile, some of the most biodiverse regions of the world are seeing the steepest falls in wildlife, with the Caribbean and central and south America seeing average wildlife population sizes plummet by 94 per cent since 1970.

"Habitat loss and degradation is the largest driver of wildlife loss in all regions around the world, followed by species overexploitation by hunting, fishing or poaching.

***

"some researchers are critical of the LPI’s use of a headline figure of decline, warning it is vulnerable to misinterpretation.

"The findings don’t mean all species or populations worldwide are in decline. In fact, approximately half the populations show a stable or increasing trend, and half show a declining trend.

“'Distilling the state of the world’s biodiversity to a single figure – or even a few figures – is incredibly difficult,” says Hannah Ritchie at Our World in Data. “It definitely fails to give us an accurate understanding of what the problem is and how we move forward.”

“'I think a more appropriate and useful way to look at it is to focus on specific species or populations,” says Ritchie.

"But Wright says the LPI is a useful tool that reflects the findings of other biodiversity metrics, such as the IUCN Red List and the Biodiversity Intactness Index. “All of those indices, they all scream that there is something going really very badly wrong,” says Wright."

Comment: Our food supply depends in part on wild animals, especially fish. As the human population grows, loss of any animals accentuates the problem of food supply. dhw throws all of this problem into his derisive 'human plus food' discussion of God's real approach to create us by an evolutionary process. The intricate balance from the bush of life is not simply 'food'. It forms it own intricate balances.

Balance of nature: entire Earth ecosystems mapped

by David Turell @, Thursday, October 20, 2022, 20:58 (526 days ago) @ David Turell

Life and death within systems adds another layer of complexity:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25634090-500-the-surprising-role-death-plays-in-...

"TO THE east of Amsterdam lies a tract of reclaimed marshland, the site of an epic rewilding project called the Oostvaardersplassen. It is sometimes nicknamed the Dutch Serengeti because of the profusion of large herbivores that graze there. But during the bitterly cold winter of 2017-18, deeply shocking images began to emerge. Thousands of deer, cattle and horses lay dead or dying of starvation. Desperate onlookers threw bales of hay over fences in an effort to help – clearly something had gone badly wrong.

"Theoretical ecologist André de Roos was neither shocked nor surprised. His research had predicted this disaster years earlier. Without the herbivores’ natural predators, he reported, overpopulation was unavoidable – leading to mass death when food ran out. The cold weather may have accelerated the die-off, but it would have happened anyway. “There were only ever two options: to allow mass starvation or to introduce culling,” says de Roos. One way or another, nature has what he calls a “requirement for mortality”.

"This requirement takes centre stage in de Roos’s work. But it is often unrecognised by other ecologists, whose models fail to account for the complexity within any population – in particular, the fact that individuals may vary hugely depending on their stage in life, which can result in intergenerational conflict. As well as highlighting the benefits of death, de Roos’s thinking can explain some of the toughest brain-teasers in ecology. It also suggests novel ways of tackling economically important problems, such as the collapse of fisheries and the impact of noise pollution on marine mammals. Perhaps it is time we took it seriously.

***

“'The biggest source of variation is that individuals go through a life cycle,” he says. Between a fertilised egg and an adult, an individual’s weight might increase as much as a billion times, depending on the organism. That requires resources. In most species, maturation isn’t dependent on age but on resources. Reproduction is also resource-dependent, and only a lucky few pull it off. Just 1 per cent of butterflies’ eggs become butterflies, for example. Juveniles and adults have different predation risks too. Essentially, they occupy different ecologies, but the field’s classical models take no account of that. The question de Roos asked himself nearly 30 years ago was: would it change our understanding of ecosystem dynamics if they did?

"The answer from his first forays into research was yes. Ever since, he has pursued a “life history” approach, building developmental stage into his ecological models. This means that he accounts for how the available resources affect a population’s structure – the ratio of developing juveniles to reproductive adults, say – as well as how the population’s changing structure affects those resources. “He closes the loop,” says Sebastian Diehl at Umeå University, Sweden, one of de Roos’s former collaborators.

***

"Not everyone is entirely convinced by the emphasis on life history, though. Theoretical ecologist Peter Abrams at the University of Toronto, Canada, says that is just one of many factors that classical ecology overlooks. In 2005, he and Hiroyuki Matsuda at Yokohama National University in Japan coined the term “hydra effect”, after the many-headed serpent of Greek myth that sprouted two heads for each one Hercules sliced off, to describe any situation in which a higher death rate causes a species’ population to rise. Their description of the phenomenon doesn’t take life stage into account, and although Abrams agrees that life history might shape some systems, he suspects it is irrelevant in others. The toxic algal blooms that clog certain lakes each summer, for example, are best understood not in terms of life history, but in terms of the interactions of the microbial culprits with other microbes.

"But de Roos does have a handful of loyal supporters, including Diehl. “The problems that we deal with in ecology are typically hard, and that means the predictive power of models is often limited,” he says. Ecology is complex, making it hard to untangle the various processes and come to simple conclusions. It can be frustrating, Diehl adds. “But if we don’t develop [life history] theory further, we may be looking for the wrong things in our data.'”

Comment: the article is filled with many examples of the issues. They are complex and at times the conclusions are counterintuitive. Adequately feeding our huge and expanding population is risky if not handled by first understanding the rules of ecosystems. dhw's complaint about 'humans and food' underscores his lack of appreciation of the attendant problem with meddling before learning of the issues.

Balance of nature: ecosystem survival rules

by David Turell @, Wednesday, June 28, 2023, 19:31 (275 days ago) @ David Turell

It may be do to similarities that fit:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-key-to-species-diversity-may-be-in-their-similaritie...

"More than four decades ago, field ecologists set out to quantify the diversity of trees on a forested plot on Barro Colorado Island in Panama, one of the most intensively studied tracts of forest on the planet. They began counting every tree with a trunk wider than a centimeter. They identified the species, measured the trunks and calculated the biomass of each individual. They put ladders up the trees, examined saplings and recorded it all in sprawling spreadsheets.

"As they looked at the data accumulating year after year, they began to notice something odd in it. With more than 300 species, the tree diversity on the tiny 15-square-kilometer island was staggering. But the distribution of trees among those species was also heavily lopsided, with most of the trees belonging to only a few species.

"Since those early studies, that overstuffed, highly uneven pattern has been seen repeatedly in ecosystems around the world, particularly in rainforests. The ecologist Stephen Hubbell of the University of California, Los Angeles, who was part of the team behind the Barro Colorado surveys, estimates that less than 2% of the tree species in the Amazon account for half of all the individual trees, meaning that 98% of the species are rare. (my bold)

***

"A new ecological modeling paper in Nature by James O’Dwyer and Kenneth Jops of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign explains at least part of this discrepancy. They found that species that should seemingly be head-to-head competitors can share an ecosystem if details of their life histories — such as how long they live and how many offspring they have — line up in the right way. Their work also helps to explain why one of the most successful ways to model ecologies often arrives at accurate results, even though it glosses over almost all we know about how organisms function.

***

"Back in 2001, the paradoxically high biodiversity on Barro Colorado Island inspired Hubbell to propose the groundbreaking neutral theory of ecology. Traditional ecology theory stressed the competition for niches between species. But Hubbell pointed out that species might not really matter in that equation because, in effect, individuals compete for resources with members of their own species too. He suggested that patterns of diversity in ecosystems might largely be the products of random processes.

***

"When the researchers allowed their model to progress through time, putting each simulated individual through its paces, they found that certain species could persist alongside each other for long periods even though they were competing for the same resources. Looking deeper into the numbers for an explanation, Jops and O’Dwyer found that a complex term called effective population size seemed useful for describing a kind of complementarity that could exist among species. It encapsulated the fact that a species could have high mortality at one point in its life cycle, then low mortality at another, while a complementary species might have low mortality at the first point and high mortality at the second. The more similar this term was for two species, the more likely it was that a pair could live alongside each other despite competing for space and nutrition.

***

"The researchers wondered if similar patterns prevailed in the real world. They drew on the COMPADRE database, which houses details about thousands of plant, fungal and bacterial species collected from a variety of studies and sources, and they zeroed in on perennial plants that all lived together in the same research plots. They discovered that, as their model had predicted, the plant species that lived together had closely matching life histories: Pairs of species living in the same ecosystem tend to be more complementary than randomly drawn pairs.

"The findings suggest ways in which species that are not necessarily in direct competition could work well alongside each other without invoking distinct niches, said Annette Ostling, a professor of biology at the University of Texas, Austin. “The coolest part is that they are highlighting that these ideas … can extend to species that are pretty different but complementary,” she said.

"To William Kunin, a professor of ecology at the University of Leeds in England, the paper suggests one reason why the natural world, for all its complexity, can resemble a neutral model: Ecological processes may have a way of canceling each other out, so that what seems like endless variety can have a simple outcome he described as “emergent neutrality.” Hubbell, for his part, appreciates the expansion of his initial work. “It offers some thoughts on how to generalize neutral models, to tweak them to put in a bit of species differences, expanding and contracting to see what happens to diversity in a local community,” he said."

Comment: please take note of my bold. If 98% are small populations, thinking of a safety-in- numbers for species survival, a large species has more genetic variety to help secure adaptability and therefore more chance for survival. Also, the 98% small population brings to mind Raup's 99.9% loss figure. They fit. There is a similarity here to animal ecosystems with top predators surviving as species for long periods.

Balance of nature: role of phytoplankton

by David Turell @, Friday, October 13, 2023, 20:44 (168 days ago) @ David Turell

A study of the nitrogen/phosphorus ratio:

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-phytoplankton-physiology-global-climate.html

"Phytoplankton, tiny photosynthetic organisms in the ocean, play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle and influence Earth's climate. A new study reveals how variations in the physiology of phytoplankton, particularly regarding nutrient uptake, can impact the chemical composition of the ocean and even the atmosphere. This suggests that changes in marine phytoplankton physiology can affect global climate.

"Phytoplankton in the ocean are central to the global carbon cycle as they perform photosynthesis, capturing and transporting carbon (C) to the deep ocean. The growth of phytoplankton relies not only on carbon but also on nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), which are crucial for their cellular functioning. (my bold)

"Phytoplankton stoichiometry defines the relative proportions of different elements such as C, N, and P in these organisms. Key connections exist between phytoplankton stoichiometry and climate through interdependencies between the oceanic carbon pump, nutrient cycling, food web dynamics, and responses to climate-related factors like atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration and temperature.

"In the 1930s, the American oceanographer Alfred C. Redfield made an important discovery: he found that the concentrations of the elements C, N, and P in the marine phytoplankton roughly follow a fixed ratio of approximately 106:16:1—the ratio now named after him, the Redfield ratio.

"Surprisingly, Redfield's research also revealed that in the seawater samples he collected, the concentration of nitrate, a primary nitrogen nutrient source, was, on average, 16 times higher than the concentration of phosphate, a primary phosphorus nutrient source. The nitrogen-to-phosphorus (N:P) ratios in both phytoplankton and seawater are remarkably similar, indicating a strong connection between the particulate (phytoplankton) and dissolved (seawater) nutrient pools.

***

"The study, now published in the journal Science Advances, emphasizes the importance of variable C:N:P ratios of phytoplankton for regulating dissolved oceanic nutrient ratios on a global scale and highlights marine oxygen levels as a critical regulator in the Earth system.

***

"These model results challenge the commonly hypothesized strong link between phytoplankton and seawater nutrient ratios. Rather than attempting to uncover the reasons behind the resemblance in the currently observed ratios between phytoplankton and seawater, the results highlight that these ratios are not inherently similar. In other words, the similarity, as it is observed these days, is a specific state, and this state may be subject to change, at least on a time scale that is not covered by the many decades of ocean in situ observations.

"Additionally, the analysis highlights the potentially substantial influence of phytoplankton subsistence nitrogen and phosphorus quotas on atmospheric CO2 levels on geological time scales. Traditionally, stoichiometric variations of the phytoplankton and within the marine ecosystem were considered to have a relatively minor impact on marine biogeochemistry and, consequently, atmospheric CO2 levels. This view could now be questioned, because this study points to the potential importance of a physiological detail for climate conditions on our planet.

"The authors explain the significance of the findings, "Our results demonstrate that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 as well as the ocean and air temperature are remarkably sensitive to variations in elemental stoichiometry induced by changes in phytoplankton physiology.'" (my bold)

Comment: those tiny organisms not only make our oxygen, but how they affect how our Earth's temperatures are controlled.

Balance of nature illustrated

by romansh ⌂ @, Monday, February 09, 2015, 19:23 (3336 days ago) @ David Turell

I find the title misleading ...-Whatever nature is it is not in balance. -This I see as a "new age" sort of nonsense. The universe is clearly not in balance so it is difficult to claim some biological system on some blue green planet are.-The second law of thermodynamics applies to closed systems and Earth is not a closed system. -I think you mean interconnectedness not balance.

Balance of nature illustrated

by David Turell @, Monday, February 09, 2015, 20:21 (3336 days ago) @ romansh

Rom: I find the title misleading ...
> 
> Whatever nature is it is not in balance. 
> 
> This I see as a "new age" sort of nonsense. The universe is clearly not in balance so it is difficult to claim some biological system on some blue green planet are.
> 
> The second law of thermodynamics applies to closed systems and Earth is not a closed system. 
> 
> I think you mean interconnectedness not balance.-I can accept that. Note that I using the concept as maintaining a supply of food for living organisms. Life is certainly not a closed system, requiring a constant source of energy.

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