Extinction has always been a major concern by conservation biologists and other environmentalists. They blame and hold people responsible for its occurrence. With this, I have thought about the possibility that extinction might be a significant component of ecological balance. Thus, I would like to know if there are positive effects of extinction and how this might be compared to its negative effects, aside from decreased biodiversity.
Bea - of course yes, extinction is part of evolution. And, as humans are a naturally occurring species on the planet, human-caused extinction is also "natural". Most conservation biologists are motivated by ethical concerns that the human-caused loss of species is on some level "wrong". War and famine could also be considered "natural" as they are products of humanity, but are nearly universally considered wrong.
In terms of the concept of ecological balance, that is a quagmire. Many ecologists feel there is no such thing as a balance of nature, which presumes some kind of desired endpoint. But could extinction have some positive effects? Positive for what? The extinction of a disease would be great. Would the extinction of snow leopards be good?
The ecological function of species and of diversity is a topic that has received much attention in the literature. Aside from benefits to humans, some species may influence certain ecosystem level processes, or they may not. Presence of a top mammalian predator can have ecosystem wide effects. But in other cases there has been shown to be some functional redundancy, so the loss of a species or population in a locality may not have ecosystem wide effects at least under current, measured conditions.
As human beings are most likely the single most influential species on the planet, and our effects can be detected in every biome and throughout most ecological processes, it is wise to consider what living in a human dominated world will be like. We will lose a lot of species, a lot more than we have so far. Will nature keep changing and will there always be ecosystems and species, even if they are "novel"? Yes I believe so. But will we also lose those organisms least able to co-exist with people? We can see these changes happening all around us. That is why conservation biology and restoration ecology are so important.
Good questions you ask. And not uncommonly encountered.
Extinction is the total disappearance of a species or group of taxa, when they are no longer able to survive in changing conditions or face competition they may face, giving way to the emergence and evolution of other species, which possess different characteristics of those missing, or more developed, which can better adapt to new conditions.
Bea - of course yes, extinction is part of evolution. And, as humans are a naturally occurring species on the planet, human-caused extinction is also "natural". Most conservation biologists are motivated by ethical concerns that the human-caused loss of species is on some level "wrong". War and famine could also be considered "natural" as they are products of humanity, but are nearly universally considered wrong.
In terms of the concept of ecological balance, that is a quagmire. Many ecologists feel there is no such thing as a balance of nature, which presumes some kind of desired endpoint. But could extinction have some positive effects? Positive for what? The extinction of a disease would be great. Would the extinction of snow leopards be good?
The ecological function of species and of diversity is a topic that has received much attention in the literature. Aside from benefits to humans, some species may influence certain ecosystem level processes, or they may not. Presence of a top mammalian predator can have ecosystem wide effects. But in other cases there has been shown to be some functional redundancy, so the loss of a species or population in a locality may not have ecosystem wide effects at least under current, measured conditions.
As human beings are most likely the single most influential species on the planet, and our effects can be detected in every biome and throughout most ecological processes, it is wise to consider what living in a human dominated world will be like. We will lose a lot of species, a lot more than we have so far. Will nature keep changing and will there always be ecosystems and species, even if they are "novel"? Yes I believe so. But will we also lose those organisms least able to co-exist with people? We can see these changes happening all around us. That is why conservation biology and restoration ecology are so important.
Good questions you ask. And not uncommonly encountered.
Great question, Bea, and one that leads to the question why the biodiversity in some regions on Earth is so much greater than in others. We now have the tools to address this question, showing that sometimes the biodiversity is greater because of lower extinction rates. However, that is not invariably the case. Obviously, that then leads to a whole range of other fascinating questions.
It's not centuries we should focus on when it comes to biodiversity hotspots, but millions of years. See:
Hopper SD. 2009. OCBIL theory: towards an integrated understanding of the evolution, ecology and conservation of biodiversity on old, climatically buffered, infertile landscapes. Plant and Soil 322: 49-86.
and:
Lambers H, Brundrett MC, Raven JA, Hopper SD. 2010. Plant mineral nutrition in ancient landscapes: high plant species diversity on infertile soils is linked to functional diversity for nutritional strategies. Plant and Soil 334: 11-31.
Extinction is a part of evolution, but of course, not of the same species. malthusian theory does say that through the dynamics of growth and amount of resources arises competition, one of the driving forces of natural selection. extinction or exclusion of weaker species must happen to pave way for the more fit species, thus letting them proliferate, both species cannot co-exist given, infinitely producing and state for a fact that they are competing each other, the carrying capacity of the environment for both will sooner or later be filed thus, one needs to removed for the other to propagate in the space that has been displaced.
The question has more implications than merely evolution of life. Death is essential to life. It is very interesting how at the different levels of biological complexity the death is essential for maintaining the life, from cellular apoptosis in the development of tissues an organisms, to death of individuals in populations, partial destruction of ecosystems in ecological succession and finally extinction in evolution of life.
Yes extinction is a natural process and also a part of evolution. The extinction of a species will make the resources previously utilized by the species became extinct, available for other species in the ecosystem. Thus other species can utilize the resources that became available and expand and evolve in to something novel.
The problem here is the use of the terms. The extinction can occur both naturally and due to anthropogenic activities and an effect that has a positive impact to one organism could have a negative impact on another.
However, conservation biologists and the environmentalists are mainly concerned about the extinctions caused by humans which occurs in a rapid rate now a days. Thus they try to prevent or at least to slow down these extinctions. One can argue that they are also a part of the natural process as humans are also a part of the nature. But these man made extinctions are caused due to the unsustainable resource utilization patterns humans have developed and thus we hold the responsibility for a majority of present extinctions. Though nature will keep changing and maintain the ecosystems in the biosphere, the time required for the recovery process that needs to restore a degraded landscape to its previous conditions will be longer than that can be practically taken in to consideration by a human generation. Thus hoping that nature will recover one day, will not support the survival of the current human populations or the other living organisms. Therefore in my opinion, for a majority of the present biota in the world including humans, these rapid human influenced extinctions will not provide any immediate positive effect as a whole.
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