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The Diversity of Life
"Not since Darwin has an author so lifted the science of ecology with insight and delightful imagery" - Richard Dawkins. In this book a master scientist tells the great story of how life on earth evolved. E.O. Wilson eloquently describes how the species of the world became diverse, and why the threat to this diversity today is beyond the scope of anything we have known before. In an extensive new foreword for this edition, Professor Wilson addresses the explosion of the field of conservation biology and takes a clear-eyed look at the work still to be done.
406 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1992
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18091 people want to read
About the author
Edward O. Wilson
117 books2,495 followersEdward Osborne Wilson, sometimes credited as E.O. Wilson, was an American biologist, researcher, theorist, and author. His biological specialty is myrmecology, a branch of entomology. A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, Wilson is known for his career as a scientist, his advocacy for environmentalism, and his secular-humanist ideas pertaining to religious and ethical matters. He was the Pellegrino University Research Professor in Entomology for the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism.
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June 20, 2015
This represents an outstanding overview of the worldwide threat to biodiversity, an accessible presentation of relevant principles of ecology, and an outline of promising lines of action to save ourselves from our suicidal path. For a scientist, Wilson is surprisingly eloquent and skillful in conveying a lot of information and issues without coming off like a textbook. By coincidence, the Pope just this week presented an Encyclical which exhorted politicians and individuals everywhere to do everything possible to preserve biodiversity.
If you are like me, it’s easy to get struck dumb with hopeless, depressing feelings over facts continually dumped on our heads about species loss linked to the progressive destruction of natural habitats. But, as with a health threat, a clear diagnosis, prognosis, and comprehensive preventative and treatment plans do wonders in helping one face dark truths. For me, Wilson’s book makes a great complement to a recent read of Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction, which balances a journalistic and history of science approach to the same issues relating to the recent age as one comparable to five other mass extinctions in geological time (now termed the Antropocene). They cover some of the same ground in highlighting how the current ecological catastrophe in modern times is just an extension of human impact on species loss by hunting and habitat destruction everywhere he expanded out from Africa and Eurasia. For example, the Paleo-Indian invasion of America across the Bering Strait land bridge about 12,000 years ago is linked to the loss of many prominent large mammals (“If this were a trial, the Paleo-Indians could be convicted on circumstantial evidence alone, since the coincidence in time is so exact”). I like his portrayal of a virtual American Serengeti awaiting humans:
From one spot, say on the edge of a riverine forest looking across open terrain, you could have seen herds of horses (the extinct, pre-Spanish kind), long-horned bison, camels, antelopes of several species, and mammoths. There would be glimpses of sabertooth cats, possibly working together in lionfish prides, giant dire wolves, and tapirs. Around a dead horse might be gathered the representatives of a full adaptive radiation of scavenging birds: condors, huge condor-like teratorns, carrion storks, eagles, haks, and vultures, dodging and threatening one another …
Although Wilson’s book was published in 1992, it is great for expanding my knowledge of the basic science through clear examples. What is a species, what contributes to their formation and extinctions, what is an ecosystem, and what is known about dependencies between species? I especially appreciated his emphasis of how little we know. We may know about a good fraction of vertebrates on our planet, but the vast majority of invertebrates and plants are as yet unidentified. We may know something of less than 2 million species, but we can only guess if there are 10 million or 100 million more out there (not counting even vaster numbers of unknown microorganisms). The riot of life in the tropical rain forests has long been largely inaccessible because of their remoteness and concentration of species high off the ground. When scientists fogged single trees with insecticides, they found each one had hundreds of unknown species of bugs. Thousands of orchids and other parasitic plants called epiphytes reside out of sight in the canopy, each one of which can provide niches for unique fungi, mosses, insects, and snails.
One thing I never thought much about before is how the loss of an individual species usually involves extinction of others which depend on them, including an array of specialized microparasites. Beyond the squeamish recognition of critters in my eyelashes and skin and of gut bacteria, think of comparable niches on the bodies of every mammal and bird. Even insects have their fellow travelers. Wilson describes a special mite (a blood sucking arthropod) that forms a boot on the foot of a particular ant. Such interdependency between species and complexities in food webs are areas we only begin to scratch the surface. For example, the discovery that all vascular plants depend on a symbiosis with fungi in their root systems is relatively recent. We don’t know how many species can be lost from an ecosystem before the whole thing collapses. When one species gets attention as endangered (e.g. panda, tiger, songbird), Wilson educates us to think of them as a sentinel or stand-in for the larger set associated with their particular habitat and ecosystem.
If a species is lost in the forest and no one is aware of it, did it happen? An insidious aspect of our ignorance is the silent disappearance of species we know nothing about. Some volunteer biologists mapped an incredible array of new species on a ridge containing a dry tropical forest on a ridge in the foothills of the Ecuadoran Andes, a habitat isolated by valleys and elevation. Returning later, the ridge had been clear-cut. What would have been an invisible loss of species was accidentally documented:
Around the world such anonymous extinctions—call them “centinalan extinctions”—are occurring, not open wounds for all to see and rush to staunch but unfelt internal events, leakages from vital tissue out of sight. Any number of rare local species are disappearing just beyond the edge of our attention. They enter oblivion like the dead of Gray’s Elegy, leaving at most a name, a fading echo in a far corner of the world, their genius unused.
In other cases, the smoking gun of human blunder is obvious to discern. In the Great Lakes of East Africa resides an amazing adaptive radiation of hundreds of cichlid fish species reminiscent of the Galapagos finch diversity that inspired Darwin. The introduction of an aggressive Nile perch species into Lake Victoria as a game fish in the 1920s led so far to disappearance of half the cichlid species. The contribution of alien species to accelerated extinction rates is an old story for human impact. In addition to predation by pets like dogs and cats, the human spread of critters like rats and inadvertent spread of disease organisms has contributed to doom of many a species.
Wilson is quite engaging in introducing the reader to the new specialized fields within ecology of biodiversity science and conservation biology. The relationship of species survival and sustained diversity to population size and geographical space is a basic challenge. Biogeographical studies of islands reveal some principles, such as how a tenfold increase in area is typically linked to sustaining about twice as many species. Studies by Jared Diamond and associates of islands formed by rising seas after the last ice age confirmed the inverse relationship for species loss after restriction in habitat area. From such a mathematical relationship, Wilson presented an estimate for species loss of 10-20% over 30 years associated with rates of worldwide rain forest destruction. At the end of the 80’s, the rate of rainforest loss approached 2% of the total per year, which he translated to an area the size of the 48 continental states of the U.S. sustaining annual losses of an area the size of Florida. Fortunately, the rate of tropical deforestation has dropped since then (a recent estimate I saw was about .5% per year for the two decades up to 2010).
The last quarter of the book deals with arguing for the value of biodiversity and a range of promising practices and strategies to preserve it. If the reader doesn’t need or want all the biological foundations for the problem of biodiversity, they could profit in understanding and hope by reading this section by itself. An obvious problem to addressing the threat to biodiversity is that the richest ecosystems and most species are in tropical areas and in the hands of the poorest nations. Much deforestation is due not to corporate level forestry and cattle ranching, but to individual poor families clearing land to survive:
The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct. To say, as many do, that the difficulties of nations are not due to people but to poor ideology or land-use management is sophistic.
Big solutions are needed to preserve ecosystems, starting with priority hot spots. The wealthy nations and international corporations may have been villains of exploitation in the past, but now they must work together and invest in solutions. Major goals for concerted teamwork between science, business, and government include: 1) survey the world’s fauna and flora; 2) create biological wealth; 3) promote sustainable development, 4) save what remains, 5) restore the wildlands. Some of his ideas for exploiting new food sources or alternative sources for fibers are of interest to individuals wanting to make a difference. His support of aquaculture as a major solution has come under serious criticism for inefficiency and practices that cause much pollution. Since the book was written, the effect of ocean acidification on coral reefs has turned out to be a huge problem seeming beyond the scope of the solutions he proposes for land ecosystems.
The concept that zoos, botanical gardens, seed banks, and tissue banks will have a major impact for conservation he sees as a pipe dream. He is quite eloquent in quashing certain forms of complacency:
It is also possible for some to dream that people can go on living comfortably in a biologically impoverished world. They suppose that a prosthetic environment is within the power of technology, that human life can still flourish in a completely humanized world, where medicines would all be synthesized from chemicals off the shelf, food grown from a few dozen domestic crop species, the atmosphere and climate regulated by computer-driven fusion technology, and the earth made over until it becomes a literal spaceship rather than a metaphorical one, with people reading displays and touching buttons on the bridge. Such is the terminus of the philosophy of exemptionalism: do not weep for the past, humanity is the new order of life, let species die if they block progress, scientific and technological genius will find another way. Look up and see the stars awaiting us.
His final argument for action speaks to the spiritual value humanity gives to wildness in nature and the importance of not short changing all future generations by our inaction:
We do not know what we are and cannot agree on where we want to be …
Humanity is part of nature, a species that evolved among other species. The more closely we identify ourselves with the rest of life, the more quickly we will be able to discover the sources of human sensibility and acquire the knowledge on which an enduring ethic, a sense of preferred direction, can be built.
I doubt this review will sway many of you to read this book. That’s okay. I often like to read book reviews as a substitute for reading book, which is why I waxed long on details. Even a schematic level of knowledge is enough sometimes to inspire an individual to take constructive actions at different levels. There are plenty of organizations that can keep non-biologist people tuned into work on solutions. If you want to explore graphical portrayals of the interacting factors at play and state of progress, I recommend a recent Internet initiative called the Biodiversity Indicators Dashboard: http://dashboard.natureserve.org/dash...
If you are like me, it’s easy to get struck dumb with hopeless, depressing feelings over facts continually dumped on our heads about species loss linked to the progressive destruction of natural habitats. But, as with a health threat, a clear diagnosis, prognosis, and comprehensive preventative and treatment plans do wonders in helping one face dark truths. For me, Wilson’s book makes a great complement to a recent read of Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction, which balances a journalistic and history of science approach to the same issues relating to the recent age as one comparable to five other mass extinctions in geological time (now termed the Antropocene). They cover some of the same ground in highlighting how the current ecological catastrophe in modern times is just an extension of human impact on species loss by hunting and habitat destruction everywhere he expanded out from Africa and Eurasia. For example, the Paleo-Indian invasion of America across the Bering Strait land bridge about 12,000 years ago is linked to the loss of many prominent large mammals (“If this were a trial, the Paleo-Indians could be convicted on circumstantial evidence alone, since the coincidence in time is so exact”). I like his portrayal of a virtual American Serengeti awaiting humans:
From one spot, say on the edge of a riverine forest looking across open terrain, you could have seen herds of horses (the extinct, pre-Spanish kind), long-horned bison, camels, antelopes of several species, and mammoths. There would be glimpses of sabertooth cats, possibly working together in lionfish prides, giant dire wolves, and tapirs. Around a dead horse might be gathered the representatives of a full adaptive radiation of scavenging birds: condors, huge condor-like teratorns, carrion storks, eagles, haks, and vultures, dodging and threatening one another …
Although Wilson’s book was published in 1992, it is great for expanding my knowledge of the basic science through clear examples. What is a species, what contributes to their formation and extinctions, what is an ecosystem, and what is known about dependencies between species? I especially appreciated his emphasis of how little we know. We may know about a good fraction of vertebrates on our planet, but the vast majority of invertebrates and plants are as yet unidentified. We may know something of less than 2 million species, but we can only guess if there are 10 million or 100 million more out there (not counting even vaster numbers of unknown microorganisms). The riot of life in the tropical rain forests has long been largely inaccessible because of their remoteness and concentration of species high off the ground. When scientists fogged single trees with insecticides, they found each one had hundreds of unknown species of bugs. Thousands of orchids and other parasitic plants called epiphytes reside out of sight in the canopy, each one of which can provide niches for unique fungi, mosses, insects, and snails.
One thing I never thought much about before is how the loss of an individual species usually involves extinction of others which depend on them, including an array of specialized microparasites. Beyond the squeamish recognition of critters in my eyelashes and skin and of gut bacteria, think of comparable niches on the bodies of every mammal and bird. Even insects have their fellow travelers. Wilson describes a special mite (a blood sucking arthropod) that forms a boot on the foot of a particular ant. Such interdependency between species and complexities in food webs are areas we only begin to scratch the surface. For example, the discovery that all vascular plants depend on a symbiosis with fungi in their root systems is relatively recent. We don’t know how many species can be lost from an ecosystem before the whole thing collapses. When one species gets attention as endangered (e.g. panda, tiger, songbird), Wilson educates us to think of them as a sentinel or stand-in for the larger set associated with their particular habitat and ecosystem.
If a species is lost in the forest and no one is aware of it, did it happen? An insidious aspect of our ignorance is the silent disappearance of species we know nothing about. Some volunteer biologists mapped an incredible array of new species on a ridge containing a dry tropical forest on a ridge in the foothills of the Ecuadoran Andes, a habitat isolated by valleys and elevation. Returning later, the ridge had been clear-cut. What would have been an invisible loss of species was accidentally documented:
Around the world such anonymous extinctions—call them “centinalan extinctions”—are occurring, not open wounds for all to see and rush to staunch but unfelt internal events, leakages from vital tissue out of sight. Any number of rare local species are disappearing just beyond the edge of our attention. They enter oblivion like the dead of Gray’s Elegy, leaving at most a name, a fading echo in a far corner of the world, their genius unused.
In other cases, the smoking gun of human blunder is obvious to discern. In the Great Lakes of East Africa resides an amazing adaptive radiation of hundreds of cichlid fish species reminiscent of the Galapagos finch diversity that inspired Darwin. The introduction of an aggressive Nile perch species into Lake Victoria as a game fish in the 1920s led so far to disappearance of half the cichlid species. The contribution of alien species to accelerated extinction rates is an old story for human impact. In addition to predation by pets like dogs and cats, the human spread of critters like rats and inadvertent spread of disease organisms has contributed to doom of many a species.
Wilson is quite engaging in introducing the reader to the new specialized fields within ecology of biodiversity science and conservation biology. The relationship of species survival and sustained diversity to population size and geographical space is a basic challenge. Biogeographical studies of islands reveal some principles, such as how a tenfold increase in area is typically linked to sustaining about twice as many species. Studies by Jared Diamond and associates of islands formed by rising seas after the last ice age confirmed the inverse relationship for species loss after restriction in habitat area. From such a mathematical relationship, Wilson presented an estimate for species loss of 10-20% over 30 years associated with rates of worldwide rain forest destruction. At the end of the 80’s, the rate of rainforest loss approached 2% of the total per year, which he translated to an area the size of the 48 continental states of the U.S. sustaining annual losses of an area the size of Florida. Fortunately, the rate of tropical deforestation has dropped since then (a recent estimate I saw was about .5% per year for the two decades up to 2010).
The last quarter of the book deals with arguing for the value of biodiversity and a range of promising practices and strategies to preserve it. If the reader doesn’t need or want all the biological foundations for the problem of biodiversity, they could profit in understanding and hope by reading this section by itself. An obvious problem to addressing the threat to biodiversity is that the richest ecosystems and most species are in tropical areas and in the hands of the poorest nations. Much deforestation is due not to corporate level forestry and cattle ranching, but to individual poor families clearing land to survive:
The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct. To say, as many do, that the difficulties of nations are not due to people but to poor ideology or land-use management is sophistic.
Big solutions are needed to preserve ecosystems, starting with priority hot spots. The wealthy nations and international corporations may have been villains of exploitation in the past, but now they must work together and invest in solutions. Major goals for concerted teamwork between science, business, and government include: 1) survey the world’s fauna and flora; 2) create biological wealth; 3) promote sustainable development, 4) save what remains, 5) restore the wildlands. Some of his ideas for exploiting new food sources or alternative sources for fibers are of interest to individuals wanting to make a difference. His support of aquaculture as a major solution has come under serious criticism for inefficiency and practices that cause much pollution. Since the book was written, the effect of ocean acidification on coral reefs has turned out to be a huge problem seeming beyond the scope of the solutions he proposes for land ecosystems.
The concept that zoos, botanical gardens, seed banks, and tissue banks will have a major impact for conservation he sees as a pipe dream. He is quite eloquent in quashing certain forms of complacency:
It is also possible for some to dream that people can go on living comfortably in a biologically impoverished world. They suppose that a prosthetic environment is within the power of technology, that human life can still flourish in a completely humanized world, where medicines would all be synthesized from chemicals off the shelf, food grown from a few dozen domestic crop species, the atmosphere and climate regulated by computer-driven fusion technology, and the earth made over until it becomes a literal spaceship rather than a metaphorical one, with people reading displays and touching buttons on the bridge. Such is the terminus of the philosophy of exemptionalism: do not weep for the past, humanity is the new order of life, let species die if they block progress, scientific and technological genius will find another way. Look up and see the stars awaiting us.
His final argument for action speaks to the spiritual value humanity gives to wildness in nature and the importance of not short changing all future generations by our inaction:
We do not know what we are and cannot agree on where we want to be …
Humanity is part of nature, a species that evolved among other species. The more closely we identify ourselves with the rest of life, the more quickly we will be able to discover the sources of human sensibility and acquire the knowledge on which an enduring ethic, a sense of preferred direction, can be built.
I doubt this review will sway many of you to read this book. That’s okay. I often like to read book reviews as a substitute for reading book, which is why I waxed long on details. Even a schematic level of knowledge is enough sometimes to inspire an individual to take constructive actions at different levels. There are plenty of organizations that can keep non-biologist people tuned into work on solutions. If you want to explore graphical portrayals of the interacting factors at play and state of progress, I recommend a recent Internet initiative called the Biodiversity Indicators Dashboard: http://dashboard.natureserve.org/dash...
April 20, 2008
All my linguistics friends made fun of me when I took environmental biology at BYU, but it was honestly of the most spiritual classes I took there. I read this for a report in that class, and I absolutely loved it. If you want to learn more about how ecosystems work in the world in a way that will really make you appreciate the blessings of the Lord, this is a great book.
August 18, 2018
This book written by double Pulitzer prize winning zoologist Edward Wilson is a little dated and at 30 years old the illustrations are a little amateurish ........
But Edward Wilson, as close to a modern day Charles Darwin as there is, provides a comprehensive understanding of life on earth ranging from blue whales to bacteria.
Highly recommended for science buffs and enjoyable for us curious lay persons.
It makes me smile to know that amazing people like Wilson populate our world.
But Edward Wilson, as close to a modern day Charles Darwin as there is, provides a comprehensive understanding of life on earth ranging from blue whales to bacteria.
Highly recommended for science buffs and enjoyable for us curious lay persons.
It makes me smile to know that amazing people like Wilson populate our world.
October 12, 2021
This may be the most important book i've read. It is like a bible of life: documenting how diversity exists; its importance and how we are losing it (and thus losing ourselves); and how we might regain it.
Written in 2005, warning about the sixth mass extinction, we (in 2021) sadly do not seem poised to reverse the decimating trends we have embarked on.
Written in 2005, warning about the sixth mass extinction, we (in 2021) sadly do not seem poised to reverse the decimating trends we have embarked on.
December 14, 2022
This is an informative and well written book that will leave you depressed as hell. Published in 1992, it sounded a clarion call, warning humankind that it was edging toward environmental catastrophe and collapse, that unless concerted action was undertaken, disaster was inevitable. And what has been the result? Things have gotten worse, much worse, in every category: rain forest destruction, species extinction, pollution of watersheds, over fishing, overuse of fertilizers, greenhouse gases, and a whole Pandora’s box of environmental threats to civilization itself. And indeed, we may already be past the point of no return.
Humanity stands at the apex of delicate pyramid, supported by a myriad of other essential lifeforms, largely unnoticed and disregarded.
E.O. Wilson was one of the most influential science writers of the last half century. An ant specialist, he was nevertheless capable of discussing biology on any level. His books have been popular because he has an easy-going, conversational writing style. It never sounds like you are reading a textbook, and you can get so carried along with his stories that you don’t even realize that he is teaching you important things. He also knows how to hide the illuminating fact among his descriptions, the kind that makes the reader pause and think, such as, “Take a gram of ordinary soil, a pinch held between two fingers, and place it in the palm of your hand. You are holding a clump of quartz grains laced with decaying organic matter and free nutrients, and about 10 billion bacteria.” (p. 142)
This book is divided into three parts. The first speaks of the resiliency of life, such as in the way a tree falling in the Amazon forests makes a hole in the canopy that allows sunlight to reach the ground, starting a race among the seeds there to grow and flourish. There is also a discussion of how life recovers from environmental catastrophes, using as an example the Krakatoa volcanic explosion in 1883. As soon as the rock had cooled plant spores started drifting in on the winds, and animals soon followed, so that within a few years the island was restored to an ecological state similar to, but not an exact duplicate of, what had existed before. Finally, this section includes a history of Earth’s five great mass extinctions, when large portions of life on earth died off. This leads to a discussion of the Sixth Extinction, the one going on now and caused by humans. Although Wilson did not coin the phrase Sixth Extinction, this was the book that brought the term into the general conversation.
The second section of the book is a primer on evolution, and specifically how biodiversity arises by changing one species into many, species into genera, and so on, to the point where all life on earth is descended from one or more self-replicating cells 3.8 billion years ago. It also includes an interesting description of what biologists see when they look at humans:
There is a good discussion on how species evolve away from their parents. Isolation is presumed to be the most common cause, where part of a formerly uniform population finds itself separated for some reason, and starts evolving independently either through genetic drift or by enhancement of whatever random mutations might have been present in the isolated group. Think of Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos: the first arrivals were blown from the mainland or arrived on rafts, and started evolving away from their parent species. The new species then radiated outward to colonize the different islands in the Galapagos formation, and once there started evolving traits that allowed them to maximally exploit the food resources that particular island offered. In time the original species evolved in eighteen new ones. Life finds a way, and evolution drives its changes.
All of this is interesting and informative, but it is the last section that readers will remember. It is titled “The Human Impact,” and spends 150 pages explaining in great detail how we are killing the planet, and, of course, ourselves. All species evolve, flourish, and eventually die, but we have vastly accelerated this process. It is worth keeping in mind again that the book was published in 1992, so the numbers Wilson presents are worse now than they were then: “Even with...cautious parameters, selected in a biased manner to draw a maximally optimistic conclusion, the number of species doomed each year is 27,000. Each day it is 74, and each hour 3...[T]he normal “background” extinction rate is about one species per million species a year. Human activity has increased extinction between 1,000 and 10,000 times over this level in the rain forest by reduction in area alone.” (p. 280)
Catastrophe is not inevitable, just increasingly likely, and Wilson provided a way out, by doing things such as cultivating edible plants with a lower environmental impact. There are a lot to choose from, but the iron laws of economics of scale narrow our actual choices to only a few. “Perhaps 30,000 species of plants have edible parts, and throughout history a total of 7,000 kinds have been grown or collected as food but, of the latter, 20 species provide 90 percent of the world’s food and just three -- wheat, maize, and rice -- supply more than half.” (p. 287-288)
The problem, ultimately, is that a solution would take time, money, and coordinated action across the globe, and politically the world is more and more run by populist politicians, whose outlook never extends beyond the next election cycle. The United States withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord in 2020 because lowering greenhouse gases would have a cost, one which some businesses and some voters did not want to pay, so the entire agreement, critical for the well being of the planet in the next generations, was abrogated.
And we don’t even know what we don’t know. No one can estimate to the nearest order of magnitude how many species are out there. We can’t even be sure we have found all the mammals, much less the reptiles, birds, and fish, and have no idea how many types of bacteria and fungi might be out there. Each of them is a chemical factory honed over billions of years of evolution to fit into its ecological niche; who knows which ones might have cures for cancer or an entirely new class of antibiotics? We don’t know now and never will if we keep bulldozing their habitats.
The environmental news gets worse each year: higher temperatures, rising sea levels, depletion of ground water, desertification of previously arable land, and many others, any one of which could be disastrous, and collectively they might be civilization-enders, snuffing humanity out as surely as that meteorite did to the dinosaurs. The Diversity of Life is a fine book, worth reading despite its age, but you will finish it hearing a clock ticking in your head, knowing that time is running out.
Humanity stands at the apex of delicate pyramid, supported by a myriad of other essential lifeforms, largely unnoticed and disregarded.
So important are insects and other land-dwelling arthropods that if all were to disappear, humanity probably could not last more than a couple months. Most of the amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals would crash to extinction about the same time. Next would go the bulk of the flowering plants and with them the physical structure of most forests and other terrestrial habitats of the world. The land surface would literally rot. (p. 133)
E.O. Wilson was one of the most influential science writers of the last half century. An ant specialist, he was nevertheless capable of discussing biology on any level. His books have been popular because he has an easy-going, conversational writing style. It never sounds like you are reading a textbook, and you can get so carried along with his stories that you don’t even realize that he is teaching you important things. He also knows how to hide the illuminating fact among his descriptions, the kind that makes the reader pause and think, such as, “Take a gram of ordinary soil, a pinch held between two fingers, and place it in the palm of your hand. You are holding a clump of quartz grains laced with decaying organic matter and free nutrients, and about 10 billion bacteria.” (p. 142)
This book is divided into three parts. The first speaks of the resiliency of life, such as in the way a tree falling in the Amazon forests makes a hole in the canopy that allows sunlight to reach the ground, starting a race among the seeds there to grow and flourish. There is also a discussion of how life recovers from environmental catastrophes, using as an example the Krakatoa volcanic explosion in 1883. As soon as the rock had cooled plant spores started drifting in on the winds, and animals soon followed, so that within a few years the island was restored to an ecological state similar to, but not an exact duplicate of, what had existed before. Finally, this section includes a history of Earth’s five great mass extinctions, when large portions of life on earth died off. This leads to a discussion of the Sixth Extinction, the one going on now and caused by humans. Although Wilson did not coin the phrase Sixth Extinction, this was the book that brought the term into the general conversation.
The second section of the book is a primer on evolution, and specifically how biodiversity arises by changing one species into many, species into genera, and so on, to the point where all life on earth is descended from one or more self-replicating cells 3.8 billion years ago. It also includes an interesting description of what biologists see when they look at humans:
[H. sapiens’s] taxonomic diagnosis is extraordinary: brain 3.2 times larger than in an ape of human size; housed in a wobbly spherical skull; jaw and teeth feeble; body borne erect on elongated hindlegs; skin mostly hairless except for patches that warm the head and display the genitalia; internal organs supported by a basin-shaped pelvis; thumb abnormally long for a primate, turning the hand into a specialized device for handling tools; mind fashioned from symbolic language and semantic memory with the aid of elaborate speech-control centers located in the parietal cortex. (p. 53)
There is a good discussion on how species evolve away from their parents. Isolation is presumed to be the most common cause, where part of a formerly uniform population finds itself separated for some reason, and starts evolving independently either through genetic drift or by enhancement of whatever random mutations might have been present in the isolated group. Think of Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos: the first arrivals were blown from the mainland or arrived on rafts, and started evolving away from their parent species. The new species then radiated outward to colonize the different islands in the Galapagos formation, and once there started evolving traits that allowed them to maximally exploit the food resources that particular island offered. In time the original species evolved in eighteen new ones. Life finds a way, and evolution drives its changes.
All of this is interesting and informative, but it is the last section that readers will remember. It is titled “The Human Impact,” and spends 150 pages explaining in great detail how we are killing the planet, and, of course, ourselves. All species evolve, flourish, and eventually die, but we have vastly accelerated this process. It is worth keeping in mind again that the book was published in 1992, so the numbers Wilson presents are worse now than they were then: “Even with...cautious parameters, selected in a biased manner to draw a maximally optimistic conclusion, the number of species doomed each year is 27,000. Each day it is 74, and each hour 3...[T]he normal “background” extinction rate is about one species per million species a year. Human activity has increased extinction between 1,000 and 10,000 times over this level in the rain forest by reduction in area alone.” (p. 280)
Catastrophe is not inevitable, just increasingly likely, and Wilson provided a way out, by doing things such as cultivating edible plants with a lower environmental impact. There are a lot to choose from, but the iron laws of economics of scale narrow our actual choices to only a few. “Perhaps 30,000 species of plants have edible parts, and throughout history a total of 7,000 kinds have been grown or collected as food but, of the latter, 20 species provide 90 percent of the world’s food and just three -- wheat, maize, and rice -- supply more than half.” (p. 287-288)
The problem, ultimately, is that a solution would take time, money, and coordinated action across the globe, and politically the world is more and more run by populist politicians, whose outlook never extends beyond the next election cycle. The United States withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord in 2020 because lowering greenhouse gases would have a cost, one which some businesses and some voters did not want to pay, so the entire agreement, critical for the well being of the planet in the next generations, was abrogated.
And we don’t even know what we don’t know. No one can estimate to the nearest order of magnitude how many species are out there. We can’t even be sure we have found all the mammals, much less the reptiles, birds, and fish, and have no idea how many types of bacteria and fungi might be out there. Each of them is a chemical factory honed over billions of years of evolution to fit into its ecological niche; who knows which ones might have cures for cancer or an entirely new class of antibiotics? We don’t know now and never will if we keep bulldozing their habitats.
The environmental news gets worse each year: higher temperatures, rising sea levels, depletion of ground water, desertification of previously arable land, and many others, any one of which could be disastrous, and collectively they might be civilization-enders, snuffing humanity out as surely as that meteorite did to the dinosaurs. The Diversity of Life is a fine book, worth reading despite its age, but you will finish it hearing a clock ticking in your head, knowing that time is running out.
July 12, 2019
Admittedly I didn't read this from cover to cover, but rather dipped in and out for certain bits of information as I was prepping for Journey to the Ants by the same author.
The book is rich in knowledge and illustration, is engaging and captivating, and provides all the information you could ever require on the biodiversity of planet Earth.
The chapters are well laid out, allowing you to dip in if you wish or read straight through.
I don't know if its my slightly nihilistic attitude coming through but sentences that jumped out at me whilst reading were
".....humanity is ecologically abnormal............." (indeed we are)
"There is no way we can draw upon the resources of the planet to such a degree without drastically reducing the state of most other species............"
In other words, humanity sucks the life of other species from the Earth.
The book is rich in knowledge and illustration, is engaging and captivating, and provides all the information you could ever require on the biodiversity of planet Earth.
The chapters are well laid out, allowing you to dip in if you wish or read straight through.
I don't know if its my slightly nihilistic attitude coming through but sentences that jumped out at me whilst reading were
".....humanity is ecologically abnormal............." (indeed we are)
"There is no way we can draw upon the resources of the planet to such a degree without drastically reducing the state of most other species............"
In other words, humanity sucks the life of other species from the Earth.
September 20, 2020
It has been a good while since I read this book, a must read in any naturalist's study, and there are many reviews that give the potential reader an idea of its content. Thus here, I'm only opining about its significance.
Reading offers two paths in our journey through life. One is in strictly entertaining, even in escaping the troubling reality of our being, and the other is in broadening our horizons of reality in caring about the future — not only our future, but that of our progeny and our extended family of all physical life.
Such needn't be an either-or choice, as in combining there is to be found the mental balancing that enriches our individual umwelt. This book is an important read in paving our life path.
Reading offers two paths in our journey through life. One is in strictly entertaining, even in escaping the troubling reality of our being, and the other is in broadening our horizons of reality in caring about the future — not only our future, but that of our progeny and our extended family of all physical life.
Such needn't be an either-or choice, as in combining there is to be found the mental balancing that enriches our individual umwelt. This book is an important read in paving our life path.
January 10, 2009
The Diversity of Life is a practical book (a book that shows you how to do something). The first part of the book (well over 3/4) is devoted to a general overview of evolution - its history, the mechanisms through which it works, and particularly the process of extinction. The last part is a plea, an argument to save our planet's biodiversity. He shows a few of the already-known benefits we have received from it, hoping to prove it is too valuable to be summarily destroyed. Finally, he gives his plan for saving it (which is why this is a practical book; the rest is entirely theoretical):
1. Survey the World's Biodiversity - Learn about species, familiarize the public with them to motivate public support for preservation, and find benefits that will . . .
2. Create Biological Wealth - Make biodiversity economically valuable, if through tourism, long-term harvesting of rain forest plots, pharmaceuticals, or new and improved agricultural products.
3. Promote Sustainable Development - The rural poor in the Third World are destroying the world's biodiversity to put off for a short time their hunger and poverty. We must teach them ways to use biodiversity in a long-term way, and ease their poverty by removing the competition of heavily subsidized farms in the developed world and lifting debt, which can also be done so as to:
4. Save What Remains - No scientific process like cloning, freezing, seed banks, arboretums, zoos, or botanical gardens can ever hope to truly restore an ecosystem to its original state - the climate and conditions are very difficult to reproduce, and populations will have been reduced so low that their genetic diversity will be mostly lost anyway. There is no feasible alternative to saving natural ecosystems. One of the best ways to do this in the Third World (near the equator and therefore home to a large part of the world's biodiversity) is through debt-for-nature programs, in which foundations like The Nature Conservancy or WWF, etc, buy debt in exchange for the creation of more reserves.
5. Restore the Wildlands - Finally, we need to retake the land lost to logging, and allow the forests to grow back. This is accomplished in essentially the same way as 4. Wilson is very hopeful about this and says the next century will be "the age of restoration."
So, I agree with Wilson. I agree that his ends are of utmost importance, and that his ends would reach them. But, though I am perhaps an idealist, I am skeptical those ideas will come about. I feel like there are reasons to be skeptical, but I don't understand them yet, and want to read more before I try to explain them.
Mortimer Adler says that when you read a practical book, and you agree that its ends are good and that its means will achieve them, you ought to go do what the book says. So, I suppose I do feel a lot more inclined to spend my life cataloging and researching organisms right now. But I am not sure I am in a position to realize the changes he suggests. Is that an excuse?
Incidentally, I want to start an arboretum, or maybe something less ambitious to start with. I want to grow those rare plants he talks about, like amaranth and winged bean and the delicious fruits, durian and mangosteen and such.
1. Survey the World's Biodiversity - Learn about species, familiarize the public with them to motivate public support for preservation, and find benefits that will . . .
2. Create Biological Wealth - Make biodiversity economically valuable, if through tourism, long-term harvesting of rain forest plots, pharmaceuticals, or new and improved agricultural products.
3. Promote Sustainable Development - The rural poor in the Third World are destroying the world's biodiversity to put off for a short time their hunger and poverty. We must teach them ways to use biodiversity in a long-term way, and ease their poverty by removing the competition of heavily subsidized farms in the developed world and lifting debt, which can also be done so as to:
4. Save What Remains - No scientific process like cloning, freezing, seed banks, arboretums, zoos, or botanical gardens can ever hope to truly restore an ecosystem to its original state - the climate and conditions are very difficult to reproduce, and populations will have been reduced so low that their genetic diversity will be mostly lost anyway. There is no feasible alternative to saving natural ecosystems. One of the best ways to do this in the Third World (near the equator and therefore home to a large part of the world's biodiversity) is through debt-for-nature programs, in which foundations like The Nature Conservancy or WWF, etc, buy debt in exchange for the creation of more reserves.
5. Restore the Wildlands - Finally, we need to retake the land lost to logging, and allow the forests to grow back. This is accomplished in essentially the same way as 4. Wilson is very hopeful about this and says the next century will be "the age of restoration."
So, I agree with Wilson. I agree that his ends are of utmost importance, and that his ends would reach them. But, though I am perhaps an idealist, I am skeptical those ideas will come about. I feel like there are reasons to be skeptical, but I don't understand them yet, and want to read more before I try to explain them.
Mortimer Adler says that when you read a practical book, and you agree that its ends are good and that its means will achieve them, you ought to go do what the book says. So, I suppose I do feel a lot more inclined to spend my life cataloging and researching organisms right now. But I am not sure I am in a position to realize the changes he suggests. Is that an excuse?
Incidentally, I want to start an arboretum, or maybe something less ambitious to start with. I want to grow those rare plants he talks about, like amaranth and winged bean and the delicious fruits, durian and mangosteen and such.
January 7, 2015
This book was not on my To-Read List but should have been. Instead, I picked it up for a buck at our library's used book sale.
For an amateur naturalist and docent for 4th graders at a nature preserve this book perfectly addressed the main topics we try to get across to the kids: how important and delicate ecosystems are and how if you remove certain keystone species the whole habitat may collapse like the London Bridge.
Given that the book is now more than 20 years old, I am keen to read a more recent book on the same topic to see if Wilson's predictions have come true with respect to estimates of species yet undiscovered and unnamed and more importantly, of those that have gone extinct.
I wonder if kids of the future will see tigers, lions, wolves, elephants, gorrillas, etc. the same way we have seen dinosaurs, mammoths and saber-toothed tigers--only in cartoons and movies.
For an amateur naturalist and docent for 4th graders at a nature preserve this book perfectly addressed the main topics we try to get across to the kids: how important and delicate ecosystems are and how if you remove certain keystone species the whole habitat may collapse like the London Bridge.
Given that the book is now more than 20 years old, I am keen to read a more recent book on the same topic to see if Wilson's predictions have come true with respect to estimates of species yet undiscovered and unnamed and more importantly, of those that have gone extinct.
I wonder if kids of the future will see tigers, lions, wolves, elephants, gorrillas, etc. the same way we have seen dinosaurs, mammoths and saber-toothed tigers--only in cartoons and movies.
September 29, 2012
EO Wilson is just excellent. Writer. Ant Entomologist. Ecologist. This 400 page paperback is an introduction to biogeography, paleontology (including paleobotany), how humans are impacting various ecosystems from the rainforests, to the oceans, to the temperate regions like the US, to the Arctic. Extremely clearly written. Lets you in on the secrets of what's being destroyed as we humans expand our activities. And tells you the rate of death. Those species with only 500 individuals will not survive. No black rhinos. This book lays out the reasons why (breeding populations are usually 10% of the whole population and 50 males with 50 females will not preserve enough of the species diversity to reproduce with out destructive genes being expressed).
March 4, 2008
As a biologist, I think is perhaps one of the most engaging and readable introductions to evolution and ecology. Anyone can read this book and not even realize they are learning the fundamentals of these fields. Wilson presents biology as a travelogue around the world and through time.
January 29, 2008
I heard about this book and this author/scientist at roughly the same time (probably scientist first, then book, then author), but it was not my first E. O. Wilson book to read. Sometimes, when I hear too much about a book, it makes me want to read it less.
So, when I found myself amongst the impossibly tall stacks in the evolutionary biology section of Powells Books for the first time, E. O. Wilson's name immediately jumped out at me as familiar, as did the title The Diversity of Life, but I was not yet ready to read it. I chose instead Consilience, and found myself immediately enamored with Wilson's eloquence, and his ability to make science accessible without for a moment dumbing it down.
The Diversity of Life follows this pattern of eloquence, and I steamrolled my way through it far faster than I had expected. Toward the end, I felt a little as I did about Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, in the sense that Wilson wasn't telling me anything he hadn't already beaten to death over the first three quarters of the book. Despite the repetitive subject matter, Wilson's writing is still fascinating to read, and I look forward to my next Wilson book.
So, when I found myself amongst the impossibly tall stacks in the evolutionary biology section of Powells Books for the first time, E. O. Wilson's name immediately jumped out at me as familiar, as did the title The Diversity of Life, but I was not yet ready to read it. I chose instead Consilience, and found myself immediately enamored with Wilson's eloquence, and his ability to make science accessible without for a moment dumbing it down.
The Diversity of Life follows this pattern of eloquence, and I steamrolled my way through it far faster than I had expected. Toward the end, I felt a little as I did about Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, in the sense that Wilson wasn't telling me anything he hadn't already beaten to death over the first three quarters of the book. Despite the repetitive subject matter, Wilson's writing is still fascinating to read, and I look forward to my next Wilson book.
October 1, 2015
This is an important book that everyone should read but I couldn't help but feel Wilson missed a great opportunity here. Those of us who are familiar with the importance of bio diversity will find much to appreciate in this book. His analysis is cogent and it would take someone who is willfully ignorant to take issue.
Nevertheless, for the amateur naturalist, I think that the failure to include even a short section on what one can do in their own community was a terrible missed opportunity. I understand the rain forests contain the greatest number of plants and animals, but I'll never see these places, let alone be able to make much of a difference by helping to preserve that diversity. I couldn't help but think it would have been really great for him to mention something as simple as planting milkweed for our fast disappearing Monarch butterflies.
Oh well, still a very good book.
Nevertheless, for the amateur naturalist, I think that the failure to include even a short section on what one can do in their own community was a terrible missed opportunity. I understand the rain forests contain the greatest number of plants and animals, but I'll never see these places, let alone be able to make much of a difference by helping to preserve that diversity. I couldn't help but think it would have been really great for him to mention something as simple as planting milkweed for our fast disappearing Monarch butterflies.
Oh well, still a very good book.
April 20, 2020
Q: What broods, can be green at the gills and is occasionally found in abysmal depths, with its mouth transfixed in the perennial O of astonishment?
A: A biologist.
What else could they feel, those that truly delight in their work, when in the midst of their beloved specimens they continuously discover omens of imminent destruction? When they emerge from the fey halls of majestic metamorphosis, only to behold vast fields of felled trees and scorched earth, ominously still in deathly silence? When their symposia turn funereal vigils in the wake of reports of extinction and rapacious advancement of human devastation?
Perhaps some are able to keep going due to optimism or a deluge of work to keep their minds busy. But if they share the devotion that Wilson's The Diversity of Life imparts, one simply shudders to think of their drooping circles and their ashen skins.
Here the reader is given a comprehensive overview of biodiversity from bottom to top. The book covers history of life, some basic principles and shortcomings of science, the nitty-gritty of diversity and intimates the vast web of causality that Nature has spun for Herself throughout eons. All these are mottled with astute examples, even to a point of saturation. Best of all, it is all told in a voice that's not only very proper, knowledgeable and wise - it is also beautifully poetic. Wilson writes superbly.
Everybody loves an eye-opener, and this one added yet another pair of toothpicks to keep my lids open in the wee small hours. It would be pointless to describe any of the content more specifically, since it's all so well explained within the book itself. This is a read for those, who love knowledge and want to act responsibly, but also for those who admire an author who can write beautifully, argue with gusto... but isn't afraid to show their own underbelly. This book is for such people, but rest assured it won't be a light summer read - the language is technical and the content pregnant with justifiable concern for the future of species.
An out-and-out classic, both in its Ciceronian delivery and Darwinian message.
PS. Here's a nifty little checklist for you, if you'd like to save our lovely little globe!
1. Survey the world's fauna and flora.
2. Create biological wealth.
3. Promote sustainable development.
4. Save what remains.
5. Restore the wildlands.
That should do the trick!
A: A biologist.
What else could they feel, those that truly delight in their work, when in the midst of their beloved specimens they continuously discover omens of imminent destruction? When they emerge from the fey halls of majestic metamorphosis, only to behold vast fields of felled trees and scorched earth, ominously still in deathly silence? When their symposia turn funereal vigils in the wake of reports of extinction and rapacious advancement of human devastation?
Perhaps some are able to keep going due to optimism or a deluge of work to keep their minds busy. But if they share the devotion that Wilson's The Diversity of Life imparts, one simply shudders to think of their drooping circles and their ashen skins.
Here the reader is given a comprehensive overview of biodiversity from bottom to top. The book covers history of life, some basic principles and shortcomings of science, the nitty-gritty of diversity and intimates the vast web of causality that Nature has spun for Herself throughout eons. All these are mottled with astute examples, even to a point of saturation. Best of all, it is all told in a voice that's not only very proper, knowledgeable and wise - it is also beautifully poetic. Wilson writes superbly.
Everybody loves an eye-opener, and this one added yet another pair of toothpicks to keep my lids open in the wee small hours. It would be pointless to describe any of the content more specifically, since it's all so well explained within the book itself. This is a read for those, who love knowledge and want to act responsibly, but also for those who admire an author who can write beautifully, argue with gusto... but isn't afraid to show their own underbelly. This book is for such people, but rest assured it won't be a light summer read - the language is technical and the content pregnant with justifiable concern for the future of species.
An out-and-out classic, both in its Ciceronian delivery and Darwinian message.
PS. Here's a nifty little checklist for you, if you'd like to save our lovely little globe!
1. Survey the world's fauna and flora.
2. Create biological wealth.
3. Promote sustainable development.
4. Save what remains.
5. Restore the wildlands.
That should do the trick!
February 24, 2024
Credo di non aver gradito questo saggio scientifico come invece meritava.
L'ho trovato davvero impegnativo, iperspecifico: le argomentazioni di Wilson si perdono tra nozioni, comportamenti, descrizioni, tra gli interminabili elenchi di animali, insetti e funghi. Eppure ho colto la passione, l'umanità della sua ricerca, del suo scrivere in modo così pragmatico.
Questo testo racchiude le cinque grandi riduzioni storiche della biodiversità, e l'inizio della sesta, causata interamente dall'uomo.
In modo del tutto sistematico l'autore mostra quale violenza, ma anche fragilità improvvisa ci possa essere nel mondo non umano, e quanto sarebbe presuntuoso e poco lungimirante pensare di esserci resi indipendenti dai suoi vincoli e dalle sue influenze.
"Abitiamo in un mondo ancora così tanto inesplorato che non conosciamo neppure l’ordine di grandezza del numero di specie che contiene."
Riconosco il valore del libro, anche se io purtroppo non sono riuscita ad apprezzarlo a fondo.
L'ho trovato davvero impegnativo, iperspecifico: le argomentazioni di Wilson si perdono tra nozioni, comportamenti, descrizioni, tra gli interminabili elenchi di animali, insetti e funghi. Eppure ho colto la passione, l'umanità della sua ricerca, del suo scrivere in modo così pragmatico.
Questo testo racchiude le cinque grandi riduzioni storiche della biodiversità, e l'inizio della sesta, causata interamente dall'uomo.
In modo del tutto sistematico l'autore mostra quale violenza, ma anche fragilità improvvisa ci possa essere nel mondo non umano, e quanto sarebbe presuntuoso e poco lungimirante pensare di esserci resi indipendenti dai suoi vincoli e dalle sue influenze.
"Abitiamo in un mondo ancora così tanto inesplorato che non conosciamo neppure l’ordine di grandezza del numero di specie che contiene."
Riconosco il valore del libro, anche se io purtroppo non sono riuscita ad apprezzarlo a fondo.
December 27, 2010
Life on Earth is fantastically, extravagantly diverse, something a nonbiologist rarely thinks about. Something few nonbiologists also realize is how poorly it is known to science. One would think that all the mammals have already been discovered, but no, in the 1980s and the 1990s, a new lemur species was discovered in Madagascar, a new deer species in Vietnam, a new monkey species in Gabon, a new whale species in the Pacific, and so on. One would also think that all the animal phyla (the phylum is the basic body plan of an animal, different between a human, a leech, a ladybug and a snail) have also been discovered, but no, in the 1980s a Danish biologist identified a quarter millimeter-long ocean floor-dwelling burrower with a previously unknown body plan. The tropics are much more diverse than the higher latitudes, since tropical species do not have to survive the winter each year and a glacial period every 10000 years. Insects are much more diverse than all the other animals, comprising three quarters of the million or so described species, and probably the vast majority of the undescribed ones. When asked, whether in the aftermath of a nuclear war insects could take over the Earth, Wilson, who is an entomologist, answered that there is no need for them to do it because they have already done so. A single tree species in Amazonia has hundreds of species of insects that live only on it, many undescribed; considering that there are many thousands of species of trees, there might be millions of undescribed species of tree-dwelling Amazonian insects. Many of these insects have bizarre lifestyles, anatomy and physiology; a certain mite attaches itself to the hind feet of a certain soldier ant, which uses the mites as stilts; a large New Guinean weevil carries lichens on its back, where smaller insects dwell. The familiar head louse, body louse and pubic louse feed exclusively on humans; the last one has a close relative that feeds exclusively on gorillas. Looking at the plumage of the stuffed specimens of an extinct parakeet under the microscope, an entomologist discovered several species of mites that lived on it and went extinct together with their host.
Many of these obscure species are beneficial to humanity (40% of our pharmaceuticals come from living plants, animals and microorganisms), and many more might be if explored properly: plants or insects might secrete chemicals that act as anticancer agents or contraceptives, or they could be domesticated (a New Guinean bean is a very versatile food source, and so is amaranth, a New World herb used by the Aztecs in ritual sacrifice and therefore forbidden by the Spanish for centuries - although a Web search shows that it has now become a popular snack in Mexico; raising turtles in Amazonian floodplains produces much more meat per hectare than raising warm-blooded cattle), or if closely related to a domesticated species, they could be a source of useful genes for it (such as perennial maize or a pig that digests cellulose-rich plant material), or they could help control agricultural pests. However, none of this will happen if these species go extinct.
Humans have been exterminating other animals and plants since prehistory. As any reader of Jared Diamond or Alfred Crosby knows, as soon as humans colonized the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and Madagascar, most indigenous large mammals and flightless birds went extinct from human hunting and self-defense (not so in Africa, where the native fauna evolved to fear humans). Archaeological digs find extinct subspecies and species of animals and plants (Egyptian mummies test positive for tobacco, most likely not because of Egyptian contact with the Americas but because the test recognizes the juice of some now-extinct plant of the nightshade family that was used in mummification). The process intensified in the twentieth century, and especially in the second half of the twentieth century. Study of islands in the Caribbean, which was initiated by Wilson and another biologist in the 1960s, shows that if the area occupied by an ecosystem is reduced by a factor of 10, the number of resident species falls by half, and the logarithmic proportion is approximately the same for other factors. Rainforests are now reduced to about half of their prehuman area; nobody knows, how many species have gone extinct because nobody knows, how many species were there originally, but for well-studied taxons such as birds the numbers are in the tens of percent. We are now in the middle of an extinction comparable to the K-T event that killed off the non-feathered dinosaurs. The reasons are well-known: human population growth and economic growth, which causes deforestation, water and air pollution, willful or accidental introduction of exotic species that compete with native species and infect them with diseases. And of course there is simple human stupidity and short-sightedness.
Many of these obscure species are beneficial to humanity (40% of our pharmaceuticals come from living plants, animals and microorganisms), and many more might be if explored properly: plants or insects might secrete chemicals that act as anticancer agents or contraceptives, or they could be domesticated (a New Guinean bean is a very versatile food source, and so is amaranth, a New World herb used by the Aztecs in ritual sacrifice and therefore forbidden by the Spanish for centuries - although a Web search shows that it has now become a popular snack in Mexico; raising turtles in Amazonian floodplains produces much more meat per hectare than raising warm-blooded cattle), or if closely related to a domesticated species, they could be a source of useful genes for it (such as perennial maize or a pig that digests cellulose-rich plant material), or they could help control agricultural pests. However, none of this will happen if these species go extinct.
Humans have been exterminating other animals and plants since prehistory. As any reader of Jared Diamond or Alfred Crosby knows, as soon as humans colonized the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and Madagascar, most indigenous large mammals and flightless birds went extinct from human hunting and self-defense (not so in Africa, where the native fauna evolved to fear humans). Archaeological digs find extinct subspecies and species of animals and plants (Egyptian mummies test positive for tobacco, most likely not because of Egyptian contact with the Americas but because the test recognizes the juice of some now-extinct plant of the nightshade family that was used in mummification). The process intensified in the twentieth century, and especially in the second half of the twentieth century. Study of islands in the Caribbean, which was initiated by Wilson and another biologist in the 1960s, shows that if the area occupied by an ecosystem is reduced by a factor of 10, the number of resident species falls by half, and the logarithmic proportion is approximately the same for other factors. Rainforests are now reduced to about half of their prehuman area; nobody knows, how many species have gone extinct because nobody knows, how many species were there originally, but for well-studied taxons such as birds the numbers are in the tens of percent. We are now in the middle of an extinction comparable to the K-T event that killed off the non-feathered dinosaurs. The reasons are well-known: human population growth and economic growth, which causes deforestation, water and air pollution, willful or accidental introduction of exotic species that compete with native species and infect them with diseases. And of course there is simple human stupidity and short-sightedness.
February 2, 2010
A breathtaking read. Comprehensively rich and detailed in its examination of ecosystems from microscopic to epic proportions. Wilson weaves the overarching thesis ("I will give evidence that humanity has initiated the sixth great extinction spasm, rushing to eternity a large fraction of our fellow species in a single generation. And finally I will argue that every scrap of biological diversity is priceless, to be learned and cherished, and never to be surrendered without a struggle" (32)) into a captivating series of vignettes--through geological history, evolutionary processes, trends and methods, and snapshots that, however comprehensive and detailed, only begin to skim the surface of the complexity of an ecosystem on any scale.
The reading itself is intense, the information pours thick from the pages, but Wilson's terrific writing style allows the story to unfold (wide-eyed, wonderful, awesome) rather than listing pages and pages of data as would be found in a textbook (the amount of info may actually rival some).
It's thick enough I question how many people would actually read it in its entirety upon my suggestion, but I feel as though I couldn't recommend it highly enough.
In combination with the contemporary trend of food industry literature (including Kingsolver, Pollan, Schlosser, etc.) that I have also been reading, the context Diversity of Life has added to my own background knowledge further intrigues, enriches my personal thoughts and beliefs.
The reading itself is intense, the information pours thick from the pages, but Wilson's terrific writing style allows the story to unfold (wide-eyed, wonderful, awesome) rather than listing pages and pages of data as would be found in a textbook (the amount of info may actually rival some).
It's thick enough I question how many people would actually read it in its entirety upon my suggestion, but I feel as though I couldn't recommend it highly enough.
In combination with the contemporary trend of food industry literature (including Kingsolver, Pollan, Schlosser, etc.) that I have also been reading, the context Diversity of Life has added to my own background knowledge further intrigues, enriches my personal thoughts and beliefs.
Read
December 30, 2013Not really sure how to rate this so I decided not to. I may rate it later, and if I do I'll probably go into some more detail in the review. Anyway, a few preliminary points:
i. The book/author politicizes and moralizes, and I hate that on principle.
ii. I was _very_ close to chucking the book after the first 10-15 pages because it reads like a very long NY Times article. Here are a few illustrative quotes from the beginning:
"Each evening after dinner I carried a chair to a nearby clearing to escape the noise and stink of the camp I shared with Brazilian forest workers, a place called Fazenda Dimona. [...] In the daytime cattle browsed the remorseless heat [...] Enclosed in darkness so complete I could not see beyond my outstretched hand, I was..."
('...asking myself: Who gives a crap what you was? Why am I reading this crap?')
It got better. But not that much better. Incidentally the foreword is much better than the first 'proper chapter', and it's safe to say that if I'd skipped the foreword I'd never have read past page 10.
iii. On the other hand there's some interesting stuff as well.
Overall, I don't really think this book is worth your time. I think you'll learn much more about evolution and the diversity of life by reading e.g. Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale instead.
i. The book/author politicizes and moralizes, and I hate that on principle.
ii. I was _very_ close to chucking the book after the first 10-15 pages because it reads like a very long NY Times article. Here are a few illustrative quotes from the beginning:
"Each evening after dinner I carried a chair to a nearby clearing to escape the noise and stink of the camp I shared with Brazilian forest workers, a place called Fazenda Dimona. [...] In the daytime cattle browsed the remorseless heat [...] Enclosed in darkness so complete I could not see beyond my outstretched hand, I was..."
('...asking myself: Who gives a crap what you was? Why am I reading this crap?')
It got better. But not that much better. Incidentally the foreword is much better than the first 'proper chapter', and it's safe to say that if I'd skipped the foreword I'd never have read past page 10.
iii. On the other hand there's some interesting stuff as well.
Overall, I don't really think this book is worth your time. I think you'll learn much more about evolution and the diversity of life by reading e.g. Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale instead.
August 19, 2010
My one-phrase rundown: Read it if you don't already know it.
This iconic book was about biodiversity, plain and simple. What it is, what it means, how it's created and how it's maintained. The prose is well-written and the ideas are typically Wilsonian in their insight.
So it's not as if I didn't think the book was good, or that Wilson isn't an impressive man in his accomplishments. I suppose the (minor) problem was that not much of it was news to me. Even back when I skimmed it - I believe they refer to that time period as The Day - I didn't consider it cutting edge.
But, to be fair, the market for the book was not eggheads and conservation types, it was the teeming masses of people who didn't (don't?) even realize that beetles or fungi could be considered important. Indeed, those who didn't (don't?) spend much time or energy thinking about the sixth extinction - and what it means to us - might find the sheer weight of his diversity estimates staggering. They certainly should.
If nothing else, it was a good reminder of how abundant and diverse the world around us really is. And it convinced me to read some more contemporary Wilson books.
This iconic book was about biodiversity, plain and simple. What it is, what it means, how it's created and how it's maintained. The prose is well-written and the ideas are typically Wilsonian in their insight.
So it's not as if I didn't think the book was good, or that Wilson isn't an impressive man in his accomplishments. I suppose the (minor) problem was that not much of it was news to me. Even back when I skimmed it - I believe they refer to that time period as The Day - I didn't consider it cutting edge.
But, to be fair, the market for the book was not eggheads and conservation types, it was the teeming masses of people who didn't (don't?) even realize that beetles or fungi could be considered important. Indeed, those who didn't (don't?) spend much time or energy thinking about the sixth extinction - and what it means to us - might find the sheer weight of his diversity estimates staggering. They certainly should.
If nothing else, it was a good reminder of how abundant and diverse the world around us really is. And it convinced me to read some more contemporary Wilson books.
January 21, 2009
A great book by one of the world's leading experts on the subject. People with a little more background in the biology field will appreciate this book more than I did -- it was just a little too much like a text book for me to give it 5 stars.
Some major points I learned from this book include 1) For the last several thousand years our planet has had more biodiversity than at any time in its 4 billion year history, 2) Five great extinctions have occurred in earth's past -- the most recent one was 50-60 million years ago, 3) Recovery from these great extinctions usually took at least 10 million years, 4) The sixth great extinction is currently underway and it is happening at a pace and scale that dwarfs the previous extinctions, 6) Man is directly causing this current great extinction, and 7) The work of documenting and classifying and understanding the biodiversity of our planet has barely begun.
What will the future hold for mankind with the loss of so much biological capital?
Some major points I learned from this book include 1) For the last several thousand years our planet has had more biodiversity than at any time in its 4 billion year history, 2) Five great extinctions have occurred in earth's past -- the most recent one was 50-60 million years ago, 3) Recovery from these great extinctions usually took at least 10 million years, 4) The sixth great extinction is currently underway and it is happening at a pace and scale that dwarfs the previous extinctions, 6) Man is directly causing this current great extinction, and 7) The work of documenting and classifying and understanding the biodiversity of our planet has barely begun.
What will the future hold for mankind with the loss of so much biological capital?
May 4, 2013
The Diversity of Life is more or less The Short History of Time of evolutionary ecology and biological diversity but with a disturbing twist. The cosmos and its workings are hardly threatened by man while we're destroying earth's ecosystems and its biodiversity at an alarming and depressing rate (and this book was published in 1992). The science is fascinating, and perhaps no one's better at communicating it to non-specialists than Wilson. But it's hard to imagine an ending to the story that's not very bad, possibly catastrophic (even for human life, eventually). Some of Wilson's ideas about how to address the problems seem pretty unlikely, but none of them are sci-fi or poorly thought through, much less fantasy as with too many others' ideas to save the planet (Lester Brown comes to mind). Surely better understanding of ecology and biodiversity by many more people is a place to start, probably a necessity, and this may well be the best general audience book for that purpose.
January 31, 2016
Un grande saggio divulgativo.
Tecnicamente sono sempre stato un poco critico verso la sociobiologia, ma si tratta appunto di questioni interne alla discussione sulla sovrainterpretazione dei dati che i biologi raccolgono in tutto il mondo. Nulla toglie a E.O.Wilson, uno dei maggiori biologi viventi nonché uno dei migliori divulgatori viventi.
Un libro consigliato a tutti i curiosi del mondo, a chi vuol togliersi il paraocchi delle proprie ideologie e a chi quel paraocchi non vuole proprio metterselo.
Tecnicamente sono sempre stato un poco critico verso la sociobiologia, ma si tratta appunto di questioni interne alla discussione sulla sovrainterpretazione dei dati che i biologi raccolgono in tutto il mondo. Nulla toglie a E.O.Wilson, uno dei maggiori biologi viventi nonché uno dei migliori divulgatori viventi.
Un libro consigliato a tutti i curiosi del mondo, a chi vuol togliersi il paraocchi delle proprie ideologie e a chi quel paraocchi non vuole proprio metterselo.
August 12, 2007
Apart from being incredibly knowledgeable about ecology and naturalism, Edward O. Wilson is also quite eloquent and articulate, a trait that is unfortunately lacking for many scientists and scientists who try to write books. He's really just one of the smartest guys to have ever trekked through the Amazon Rainforest and lived to write about it.
March 31, 2014
You can't help but get pulled into the ecosystems the author describes with such detail, and you also can't help but catch at least a little of his contagious love and fascination with all of the lifeforms around us. I loved reading it, and learned a lot. But mostly I just loved reading Wilson's writing and sharing in his infectious enthusiasm for organisms and evolution.
Want to read
January 28, 2008Read all E. O. Wilson Books.
February 18, 2008
I love this book. I love it for what I learned about biodiversity and biology, and also to be able to read about this man who spent his life in healthy work.
December 29, 2014
call it 2.5 stars. a bit dated (not anyone's fault though) and somewhat tedious at times. but overall, fairly educational, and a solid call to action for conservation.
October 5, 2017
I´m slowly making my way through some of the most influential and important biology related books. They are not required in my studies, but I think it´s good to know where the information we are taught comes from, to read about the research straight from the scientist. For conservation biology Edward O. Wilson´s The Diversity of Life is a classic, the first time someone really draws attention to the mass extinction caused by us, the humans. I found it very interesting to learn about how he made his calculations and overall, what kind of studies did he make and were made in general at the time. But most of the space is dedicated to basic ecology. Populations, evolution, adaptive radiation, ecosystems etc - things that I´ve read about over and over again. Though they are explained well, so I can´t use them as a criticism. I think that The Diversity of Life would work very well for anyone interested in biology as understanding it doesn´t require any former knowledge. Plus it has amazing pictures that make the learning process even easier. I just believed that Wilson would write more academically. I got quite a lot out of this nonetheless, and surprisingly few things are outdated.
November 28, 2021
Whilst this book appeared to be a a book to marvel at the immense variety of life in all its forms from prokaryotes to sherwood trees (and it is, a bit), this is a book that ultimatley left this reader almost in tears of despair as the author also catalogued how man is ruthlessly wiping out this immense variety with industrial efficiency. Then you notice that this book was written in 1992 and your mind is drawn to how much worse the anthropocene extinction event has become. All in all a difficult read and one that left this reader in a slough of despond. This is not the fault of the author, he is merely pointing out the truth. One criticism I did have was that for a lot of the book, it wasn't clear where this book was going. The author clearly has a mind the size of a planet and is simply overflowing with ideas, examples, illustrations and research so much so that they seem to tumble onto the page higgledy piggledy. My only other criticism is aimed at the publisher and that is, for a book that is so important and polemic, why is the font so fucking small?? I understand that this may not be a big seller but how does it benefit anyone to cram this writing onto so few pages? Are they in cahoots with specsavers? For someone like me who is now getting on a bit, I got so fed up of the strain on my eyes that reading this book engendered. Sort it out Penguin!
April 14, 2022
''Entemologists are often asked whether insects will take over if the human race extinguishes itself. This is an example of a wrong question inviting an irrelevant answer: insects have already taken over. They originated on the land nearly 400 million years ago. They have dominated terrestrial and freshwater habitats around the world ever since. They easily survived the great extinction spasm at the end of the Paleozoic era, when life survived more than the equivalent of a total nuclear war.
Today, about a billion billion insects are alive at any given time around the world. At nearest order of magnitude, this amounts to a trillion kilograms of living matter, somewhat more than the weight of humanity. Their species, most of which lack a scientific name, numbers into the millions. The human race is a newcomer dwelling among the six-legged masses, less than two million years old, with a tenuous grip on the planet. Insects can thrive without us, but we, and most other land organisms, would perish without them.''
This is an insect's world baby!! We are just living in it💅🥰🦗
Today, about a billion billion insects are alive at any given time around the world. At nearest order of magnitude, this amounts to a trillion kilograms of living matter, somewhat more than the weight of humanity. Their species, most of which lack a scientific name, numbers into the millions. The human race is a newcomer dwelling among the six-legged masses, less than two million years old, with a tenuous grip on the planet. Insects can thrive without us, but we, and most other land organisms, would perish without them.''
This is an insect's world baby!! We are just living in it💅🥰🦗
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