[Taxacom] Conservation

[Chris Thompson]

Ken, Stephen, et alia:

Yes, you are both right and right-on.

However, a few other things need to be mentioned.

We are supposedly scientists first and need to recognize that 
"conservation," is really a religious concept. That is, man has a 
responsible to "god," to maintain the world as "god" created the world.

So, "conservation" is focused on preserving, on extinction, how to stop that 
process, etc.

But as scientists we should be recognizing that extinction is a natural 
component of Evolution. So, there has been, is and will continue to be 
extinction.

But your points are right on. From our species perspective we need to 
"conserve" what are the best and most important elements of the 
biodiversity. And "best" is defined in respects to our species. So, polar 
bears are wonderful indicators of climate changes, but honey bees are far 
more important to our world, etc. So, losing polar bears will not affect us 
as much as losing honey bees. To the poster child/organism for conservation, 
climate change, environmental quality preservation, etc., should be the 
honey bee (or other little pollinators), not large showy, but irrelevant 
mammals.

BUT the aspect that is overlooked, forgotten about by the conservation 
community is NEW biodiversity. How many new species are evolving. That is, 
"birth rate" of new biodiversity is far more important than "death rate" 
[extinction]. Yes, there is a real problem also with new biodiversity as it 
is difficult to distinguish between what is newly discovered and what is 
newly evolved, etc.

So, the most pragmatic course is as Stephen writes, maintain the largest 
most diverse range of habitat types and hope we preserve enough source 
material to maintain the evolutionary process of creation and extinction!

Sincerely,

Chris

from home

-----Original Message----- 
From: Ken Kinman
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 12:38 AM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: [Taxacom] Conservation


Hi Stephen,     Agreed, a mixture of both strategies would be best. 
However, at present there is too much emphasis on particular taxa that are 
the favorites of researchers with the inside track on funding.  Those 
studying wolves or polar bears can still get excessive funding to keep 
renting helicopters to basically repeatedly harass, trap, collar, and 
"study" them over and over again for decades, while other taxa are ignored. 
Another field that is even more over-funded is dinosaur research, just 
because people find them fascinating.  Dinosaurs may draw some young people 
into the field of biology, but that does not justify the excessive spending 
of funds on dinosaur research rather than studying species which are still 
living.  I still believe that dinosaur specimens should be preserved in 
museums, but the extremely time-consuming process of preparing huge dinosaur 
carnivores and herbivores should be put off until the future, and that more 
of those biologists should be encouraged to study poorly-studied species of 
living species (and I am not talking about wolves and polar bears which have 
been studied excessively), but especially taxa that are neglected (even if 
the masses do not find them as interesting).  No wonder the phylogeny of 
invertebrate phyla is so poorly understood.            ------------------Ken

-------------------------------------------------------------Stephen 
wrote:an alternative strategy is to conserve habitats/ecosystems, based on 
their
overall biodiversity, rather than try to prioritise particular taxa. The 
only
losers in this case would be threatened phylogenetically isolated taxa in 
not
very diverse habitats ... I'm not sure off hand if there would be many of 
these?
Still, probably a mixture of both strategies would be better still ...

Stephen

________________________________
From: Ken Kinman <kin... at hotmail.com>
To: taxa... at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Friday, 27 April 2012 3:42 PM
Subject: [Taxacom] conservation

Hi Donat et al.,      Well, my opinion is still (although not popular with 
some
biologists) is that some taxa should be given higher priority for 
conservation
efforts than others.  The question is just what are most of these species 
which
are going extinct every day or every year.  If a few dozen species among
speciose (and perhaps oversplit) taxa of beetles or flies or nematodes or 
other
fast radiating taxa (some angiosperm genera) are lost, is that as important 
as
the loss of even a single species of species-poor taxa (especially those of
relevance to those humans who financially support conservation efforts). 
Not
that I would be as inclined as some humans to lean toward conservation of
certain butterflies or birds just because they are "attractive", but rather 
that
taxa with relative few species that are threatened should have higher 
priority
than taxa with many taxa.      For example, should we devote limited 
resources
protecting any
particular species of the genus Rattus?  Some may be endangered, but that 
genus
is so species-rich that loss of any particular species is hardly to be 
compared
with the loss of a species of any primate species (especially a species of 
great
ape) or a monotypic bat family such as Craseonyctidae (which could disappear 
due
to continued neglect).  With increasingly high extinction rates, we must 
make
conservation decisions based on overall diversity, NOT merely numbers of 
species
(some of which may have radiated rapidly recently but inevitably subject to
natural extinction anyway because that is how natural selection works over 
the
long term).  The potential extinction of a single species of great ape 
should be
treated with more alarm than that of a dozen species of Rattus or other 
speciose
genera of beetle, flies, or nematodes.  Making decisions on absolute numbers 
of
species is short-sighted in my opinion.  So, "ivory-tower" strategies may be
good if
they concentrate on species-poor taxa, but not so good just because a
particular researcher has a fascination with a species-rich group and simply 
has
better connections that give them more access to federal research funding. 
And
some mammal species (wolves and polar bears) get way too much funding 
compared
to other mammal species (especially compared to the southern hemisphere).
Funding priorites are still skewed in terms of both geography and diversity.
-------------------Ken Kinman
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