Screw the Pandas! It's Insects, Fungi, & Phytoplankton we Should Care About

Last week an important article relating to the profound decline in phytoplankton levels across the planet's oceans was released in Nature and briefly discussed on this blog.

The implication that marine ecosystems across the globe may be on the verge of collapse has elicited little public antipathy or official governmental concern.  Instead, the world continues to lumber onwards toward environmental armageddon, with the same willful ignorance that has dominated our species for millennia.  Few people wish to see the great pandas of China to go extinct, yet the Panda's overall necessity to the survival of humanity on the planet is zero.  That however, cannot be said of scores of plants, animals, and microscopic microorganisms that are essential to the maintenance and survivability of ecosystems everywhere. 

For the past two decades, biologists have been sending warnings to the rest of humanity that anthropogenic activities are precipitating a sixth massive extinction of life across the planet.  E.O. Wilson, for example, estimated in 1993 that the Earth is losing approximately thirty thousand species per year.   Human population expansion through the growth of civilization and industrialization, have reduced global biodiversity and species fitness to levels where our own existence has become imperilled.

In addition to marine phytoplankton, there are numerous species that are in decline, which are necessary for our civilization.  Pollinators, such as honeybees, have been in rapid decline over the past decade.  A third of everything humans consume and 90% of commercial crops are dependant upon honeybee pollination.  No single causative agent has been found to explain the dramatic and unsustainable decreases of these essential insects.  Although, pollution, pesticides, invasive foreign parasites and pathogens, and natural habitat decline, have all been cited as potential sources.

In the oceans, coral reefs are also being destroyed by pollution, ocean acidification, and habitat destruction.  Large ocean fish -like tuna, salmon, and swordfish- populations have either collapsed are on the verge of doing so.  Whales, dolphins, ocean faring birds like albatrosses, and other predatory fish are found to be emaciated and dying from starvation across the globe.  Entire swaths of the ocean are no longer capable of sustaining any life and have become dead zones, which are spreading rapidly.

Joining the endangered list are saprophytic organisms, such as beetles, fungi, and bacteria that decompose dead organic matter and facilitate in the cycling of nutrients.  In Europe, for example, research has estimated that 24% saprophilx beetles are under threat.

Thousands of other species, some of which we are not even aware of, are being decimated.  The survival of these species is inexorably linked to our own species.  If we as a collective cannot understand this or demand to advocate selfishness in the face of catastrophe, then there is no need to for further examination or discussion, because we will have succumb to the logic of mass suicide.