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F RANKLINIA ALATAMAHA, A SHRUB OF THE TEA FAMILY, WAS DISCOVERED IN GEORGIA IN 1765 BY JOHN BARTRAM AND HIS SON WILLIAM, WHO MADE THIS WATERCOLOR PAINTING. IN SPITE OF MANY ATTEMPTS TO FIND IT AGAIN, THE FRANKLINIA HAS NOT BEEN SEEN IN THE WILD SINCE 1803, ALTHOUGH IT CONTINUES TO THRIVE HORTICULTURALLY IN MANY PLACES OTHER THAN ITS ORIGINAL HABITAT, INCLUDING NEW YORK. WHY IT DID NOT OCCUR NATURALLY ELSEWHERE REMAINS AN ENIGMA. B i o l o g i c a l 22 D i v e r s i t y
average as well as greater ecological flexibility. In rainforests and other tropical environments with their legions of finely adapted species, degradation of this kind has deepened into catastrophe. Rainforests occupy about 9 million square kilometers currently, down some 45% from the original cover before the coming of man. The current area, then, is roughly equal to that of the United <strong>State</strong>s. The forest is being cut and burned at the rate of 100,000 square kilometers a year, roughly the area of South Carolina—or, to use a more vivid measure, an area equal to a football field every second. Employing simple models based on the known relation of the area of islands and habitat patches to the number of species that can coexist, I have conservatively estimated that on a worldwide basis the ultimate loss attributable to rainforest clearing alone is from 0.2% to 0.3% of all species in the forests per year. Taking a very conservative figure of 2 million species confined to the forests, the global loss that results from deforestation is thus at least 4,000 to 6,000 species a year. That, in turn, is on the order of 10,000 times greater than the naturally occurring background extinction rate that prevailed before the appearance of human beings. Although 4,000 species a year extinguished or doomed is a shocking figure, it is still almost certainly a gross underestimate. When we consider that the true number of plant and animal species limited to the rainforests may well be in the tens of millions, and that many, or even most, species in these areas are very limited in distribution, even small reductions in forest coverage can make them MICRANTHEMUM (MICRANTHEMUM MICRANTHEMOIDES ), A TINY RELATIVE OF THE GARDEN SNAPDRAGON, ONCE FLOURISHED ON THE MUDDY SHORES OF ESTUARIES ALONG THE EAST COAST, INCLUDING NEW YORK’S HUDSON RIVER. IT HAS NOT BEEN SEEN IN SEVERAL DECADES, AND IS PRESUMED TO BE EXTINCT. ANOTHER RELATIVE OF THE SNAPDRAGON, CHAFFSEED (SCHWALBEA AMERICANA ), HAS A LIMITED RANGE IN THE NORTHEAST AND HAS NOT BEEN SEEN IN NEW YORK SINCE THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY, WHEN IT WAS FOUND IN THE ALBANY PINE BUSH. vulnerable to extinction. Add to this the species extinctions occurring in other habitats worldwide, and the animal extinction rate could easily be 10 times higher—that is, 2% or more of all rainforest species, 50,000 or more species worldwide. A common estimate among biodiversity specialists, one to which I subscribe, is that one-fourth of the species of organisms on earth are likely to be eliminated outright or doomed to B i o l o g i c a l 23 D i v e r s i t y
Page 1: Biological Diversity: T H E O L D E
Page 4 and 5: THE UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW
Page 6 and 7: Copyright © 1999 by The New York S
Page 9 and 10: Preface This book is based on a man
Page 11 and 12: Additional information on the activ
Page 13 and 14: Biological Diversity: T H E O L D E
Page 15 and 16: some degree of potency. A much high
Page 17 and 18: Some groups of organisms, such as f
Page 19 and 20: to their environment and to one ano
Page 21 and 22: N EW YORK’S BIODIVERSITY IS THREA
Page 23 and 24: 12 10 Number of Butterflies Observe
Page 25 and 26: It is possible that the next hundre
Page 27 and 28: environment. For almost 3 billion y
Page 29 and 30: W ITH ITS WISPINESS AND LIGHT-AND-D
Page 31 and 32: sophisticated microscopic and bioch
Page 33: The tropical zones generally have a
Page 37 and 38: early extinction within the next 30
Page 39 and 40: perished. As the paleontologist Dav
Page 41 and 42: collected in the stream in 1936 and
Page 43 and 44: Systematics, or taxonomy, is at the
Page 45 and 46: Community ecology addresses the man
Page 47 and 48: Biological field stations from four
Page 49 and 50: Biogeography 1 The scientific study
Page 51 and 52: Dispersal In biology, the way a spe
Page 53 and 54: Global warming An increase in the c
Page 55 and 56: Ozone A form of oxygen (O 3 ) that
Page 57 and 58: Termites A group of insects that is
Page 59 and 60: Grifo, Francesca, and J. Rosenthal
Page 61 and 62: diverse and why the threat to that
Page 63 and 64: Mitchell, Richard S., L. Danaher, a
Page 65 and 66: 9. Is an ecologist the same as a ta
Page 67 and 68: 31. Do you know of a biological res
Page 69 and 70: B i o l o g i c a l 57 D i v e r s
Page 72: THE NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM IS A PROG

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