94 New Species Described By CA Academy of Sciences 52
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the California Academy of Sciences traversed four continents and two oceans to uncover 94 new species in 2009, proving that while sometimes in this digital age the world can feel like a small place, much of it has yet to be explored. Among the 94 discoveries were 65 arthropods, 14 plants, 8 fishes, 5 sea slugs, one coral, and one fossil mammal. Why does it matter? As Dr. David Mindell, Dean of Science and Research Collections at the Academy, explained, 'Humans rely on healthy ecosystems, made up of organisms and their environments. Creating a comprehensive inventory of life on our planet is critical for understanding and managing resources. Yet a great many life-forms remain to be discovered and described.'"
Re:What makes them new species? (Score:5, Informative)
The definition you refer to is the biological species definition. Normally when that definition is used the offspring need to not just produce viable offspring, but the offspring need to be fertile (thus donkeys and horses are different species since mules are viable but not fertile). However, this definition doesn't work perfectly. For example, a small fraction of mules (I think around 1%) can actually reproduce. So are donkeys and horses different species? The real issue is that biology is messy and nature is inherently fuzzy. Thus, one gets for examples what are called ring species. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species [wikipedia.org]. In a ring species, one has three populations, A, B and C. Members of A can interbreed to produce fertile offspring with members of B. Members of B can reproduce with members of C. But, members of A cannot produce fertile offspring with members of C. Essentially, under the biological species definition "is the same species" is not a transitive relation. That's bad.
The definition runs into other problems as well. For example, the definition forces every asexual organism to be its own species by a strict reading. Thus, there have been other proposed definitions of a species.
Every definition has its own advantages and disadvantages. However none of them is perfect. This is precisely what we would expect: if species lines were easily definable and clear cut, that would be really hard to reconcile with any form of evolutionary theory other than some sort of "hopeful monster" argument, which have been widely discredited. The blurry nature of species boundaries is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for evolution.
There's been a lot of thought on the general definition of species and whether these definitions are simply labeling conveniences or reflect genuine biological principles. I've been told that John Wilkins' book "Species: A History of the Idea" is a very good primer for these issues. I haven't read it, but I did read Wilkins' PhD thesis and so can say that he's an engaging and thoughtful and fun writer. So this is probably what to read if you want more info.
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biology is messy and nature is inherently fuzzy
That's what happens when you have sex with a caterpillar.
Pfff. We live off an ECONOMY, not some ecosystem (Score:5, Funny)
'Humans rely on healthy ecosystems, made up of organisms and their environments."
And that, my friends, is a prime example of what soft liberal earth-worship thinking will get you. We don't get our fuels or building materials or other raw materials from the "ecosystem" -- we smite the earth and take them out by force of will and machines built by the human mind. We don't hunt and gather like savages, and we don't even use primitive low yield agriculture -- we use industry powered by investment to get our food and textiles. And you think nature just made your Droid? That's intelligent design in action, not evolution.
We live off an ECONOMY. Ecosystems are made-up concepts by hippy-dippy types who'd rather save the life of some spotted owl than let a hard-working man earn an honest dollar. If ecosystems were valuable, you'd pay for them.
Re:Pfff. We live off an ECONOMY, not some ecosyste (Score:5, Insightful)
"If ecosystems were valuable, you'd pay for them."
Now, or later?
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But this can't go on forever. Eventually it will reach the breaking point, and Earth will say "PAY UP OR GTFO!"
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Dude are you serious? On the off chance that you are, perhaps you should do a little research. You'll find out that supermarket shelves are in fact not plants, and that canned foods are not fruits that grow there without human intervention.
That's the problem with cities: People living in them become totally ignorant of the fact that despite not having to see it even once in a typical city-dweller's lifetime, the ecosystem is absolutely crucial to the survival of every man, woman and child, even if they neve
Re:Pfff. We live off an ECONOMY, not some ecosyste (Score:4, Funny)
Dude are you serious?
No.
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Yet you get modded insightful +2 and are 1st visible comment. .... well done :)
I don't know what to say except
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Yet you get modded insightful +2 and are 1st visible comment.
Good satire will always be insightful.
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...the ecosystem is absolutely crucial to the survival of every man, woman and child, even if they never leave the concrete of the city.
And this is why it's so crucial that we take the right steps in protecting it, rather than the politically expedient ones.
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I am a programmer, and I am a big fan of the "need to know" basis. If I am curious I like to learn how things work, but when I am working efficiently I just assume functions and libraries will do exactly what they claim to, and write my code based off of that.
Living in cities has enabled us to abstract the bare necessities. Since we do not need to worry about where our food comes from, or how it is made; just that it will be there when we need it, we can focus ourselves more intensely on other subjects, inc
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Living in cities has enabled us to abstract the bare necessities. Since we do not need to worry about where our food comes from, or how it is made; just that it will be there when we need it, we can focus ourselves more intensely on updating our twitter status and choosing which brand of coffee to drink.
ftfy
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As long as the hippie scientists are not eating into your pie, why do you care? Someone has a perception or standard of "value" different from yours. News at 11.
Or if they *are*, fight them. Even better, fight them "honestly". Stop whining.
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Re:Pfff. We live off an ECONOMY, not some ecosyste (Score:1)
And jeese....whats up with all the liberal/hippy bashing or did I miss some sarcasm in there or something?
Just realized HTML tags work here hehe.
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I'd like your grandchildren to pay for my despoliation of their ecosystem before they were conceived, please. Isn't that a nice, symmetrical distribution of costs and benefits ; I take the benefits and they pay the costs.
But if you wanted to make things less uneven, you can't ask my grandchildren to pay for your despoliation of their ecosystem unless you manage to reverse my sterilisation without me noticing it (as a side topic, you'd have to persuade my wife
"Managing resources" (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, see, there's the problem right there: we shouldn't be trying to do that. We're lousy at it. We should be focusing all of our limited PHB managerial skills on managing ourselves and our own six-fold overpopulation, not trying to manage everything else.
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Kill a hippy today!
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Probably a good idea. They caused that whole Summer of Love orgy business.
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On a related note the best thing to do to fix this problem is to educate the women in africa, when educated birth rates plummet (which is a good thing).
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I know about about birth rates being an inverse proportion to standard of living; that applies to EVERY creature, not just H. sapiens. I was trying to be sarcastic and funny in response to the GGP, however.
Re:"Managing resources"/food/money/politics (Score:1)
It isn't that simplistic. A lot of the developing world agriculture goes to make foreign exchange hard currency to support the local warlord/junta and wall street fatcats and the IMF, the food production there goes to the developed world instead of feeding the local population *first*. There's much less need for "food aid" when the local agriculture has as a priority a diverse system dedicated at the first level to feeding their own people, rather than vast monoculture farms dedicated to overseas exports.
Patent them please! (Score:1)
On the sixth day of Earth Day... (Score:3, Funny)
14 plants oxygenating
5 sea slugs
65 creeping arthropods
8 swimming fishes
One coral reef
And a fossilized raccoon dog from an ancient lake bed.
I predict 30 of these species will outlast humans (Score:1)
Re:I predict 30 of these species will outlast huma (Score:1)
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Don't forget thermodynamics. Being able to alter our own biology does not change the fact that we will continue to need energy.
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In the big picture, DNA and life are just giant software programs.
In the big picture, all software analogies breakdown.
There will be no need for economies if we have the power of life at our fingertips.
Case and point. Unless you actually believe that humans will no longer struggle-for/barter/buy power over the Earth's/Solar System's/Galaxy's/Universe's inherently limited resources just because we figured out how to live forever (violent deaths aside). The Great Basin Bristlecone Pine [wikipedia.org] still struggles to gather resources for itself with all it's energy despite it's effective immortality when compared to the mayfly.
Out of 94 New Species... (Score:2)
Out of 94 new species,less the fossil and coral, how many actually taste good?
Hey, if they're gonna hang out here, they might as well be worth the space they take up.
65 new kinds of spiders (Score:2)
Wherever they went, I want to stay far away from it.
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ADAM (Score:1)
94 new species, versus 10-30 million unknown (Score:2)
While it's nice to hear of new species being discovered, 94 is not a large number in this context, and you certainly don't need to travel all round the globe to find new species. They're everywhere around us, in every nook and cranny of the biosphere, in the air and inside rocks (even a few miles down), living on the surface of larger organisms and also inside. Even our bodies are hosts to unknown species --- like all higher animals, we're really just mobile habitats for smaller forms of life, and whereve
I could be wrong, but I believe it's: (Score:1)
Excellent (Score:2)
Great that we are finding new species! If we keep this up maybe we can replace the ones that are going extinct with these new ones. Besides, the other ones were getting old anyway.