***********************************************

FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

Preserving Biodiversity Required to Maintain Global Ecosystems

***********************************************

Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Portal

http://forests.org/links/ -- Forest Conservation Links

07/06/01

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

There are many reasons to strictly protect the World's remaining

forest wildernesses. One important focus is upon wilderness as

biodiversity reserves, a place where the survival of unique and

endangered species can be assured. It is becoming apparent that in

addition to aesthetic and ethical rationale, biodiversity plays a

critical and irreplaceable role in determining the way the

environment works. A new study in _Nature_ confirms what many have

known through ecological intuition: preserving the Earth's

biodiversity is necessary to ensure ideal functioning of the Planet's

ecosystems. It appears that specialization of different plant

species to different roles fundamentally affects the way that

ecosystems work. This is likely to be true for animals as well.

High levels of biodiversity within a given ecosystem lead to the most

efficient use of resources and high productivity. Places like

northeastern Peru, which the second article below indicates appears

to harbor more species of mammals than anywhere else on Earth, must

be maintained in their entirety both to conserve patterns of species

diversity, and to sustain regional and global ecosystem processes.

Continued loss of the World's biological species diversity and their

habitats will eventually result in the demise of the global

ecological system.

g.b.

*******************************

RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

ITEM #1

Title: Not Just a Nice Idea, Preserving Biodiversity Is a Necessity

Source: Scientific American

Date: July 5, 2001

Byline: Sarah Graham

According to a study published in today's issue of Nature, preserving

the earth's biodiversity is not just a nice idea-it is necessary to

ensure ideal functioning of the planet's ecosystems. Michel Loreau of

the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris and Andy Hector of Imperial

College in London analyzed data collected from BIODEPTH, an

international experiment run on more than 500 grassland sites located

in seven European countries, to calculate the relative importance of

complementary interactions between plant species.

In the mid-1990s, researchers planted BIODEPTH sites with varying

numbers and types of plant species and functional groups-

classifications used by ecologists to describe the role species play

in an ecosystem-to mimic the effects of species extinction. Loreau

and Hector, borrowing techniques from evolutionary genetics, devised

a new equation to isolate the effects of two competing mechanisms to

explain the effects of species diversity on ecosystem productivity.

The first, the "sampling," or "selection," effect, states that as the

number of species increases, the probability that a random sample

will include a more productive species also increases. In other

words, certain individually productive species are what's important.

The second effect is based on species complementarity-it says that

the more species present, the more likely it is that cooperation

between species will lead to the most efficient use of resources.

The new approach, christened the Loreau-Hector equation, showed that

complementarity effects are more important. In the analysis of

BIODEPTH data from 205 sites, the average value for the selection

effect was zero. The average complementarity effect, however, was

significantly positive, suggesting that the specialization of

different plant species to different roles fundamentally affects the

way that ecosystems work.

"Previous justifications for conserving biodiversity have taken in

aesthetic and ethical reasoning: that we like some of it and that it

is wrong to let it go extinct," Hector says. "Here we suggest, along

with the findings of other ecologists, that there is another,

complementary reason to preserve diversity-it plays a role in

determining the way the environment works."

In an accompanying commentary, Osvaldo E. Sala of the University of

Buenos Aires cautions that because the grasslands sampled in BIODEPTH

were necessarily disturbed on a regular basis, they may be less

affected by the loss of species than other environments. "Species

complementarity may act even more strongly," he writes, "in

ecosystems that have been disturbed less often and have a longer

evolutionary history."

ITEM #2

Title: Most mammal species found in Peruvian Amazon

Source: Copyright 2001, Environmental News Network

Date: July 3, 2001

A remote area of rainforest in northeastern Peru defined by three

large rivers appears to harbor more species of mammals than anywhere

else on Earth. The mammal counts were published in two separate

studies from different universities released at nearly the same time

this week.

Michael Valqui, a doctoral student in the University of Florida

Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences' wildlife ecology and

conservation department, began studying the region defined by the

Ucayali, Amazon and Yavari rivers in 1994. Since then, he has

confirmed the presence of 86 mammal species, excluding bats.

Valqui's findings come on the heels of publication of a mammals

list for the same region by researchers John Harder, associate

professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio

State University, and zoologist David Fleck.

Their list contains 84 mammal species in the same roughly 400 by

100 mile region just 62 miles south of Valqui's site. The

University of Florida and Ohio State research sites are both

composed entirely of lowland tropical rainforest.

"For now, my list is longer, but that may change soon," Valqui

said of his findings, which appear in his doctoral dissertation.

"It is remarkable that two totally unrelated studies come to very

similar results almost simultaneously."

Although some African regions have slightly longer lists, these

findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that the

Peruvian three-river region has a higher total number of mammal

species, because bat diversity is much higher in neotropical

rainforests than in African rainforests.

"It's my judgment that this area quite possibly has the highest

mammal diversity in the world. Certainly it does for regions of

homogeneous habitat," said Robert Voss, curator of mammalogy at

the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Over the past 10 years, Voss has been taking inventory of the

mammals at the eastern and western ends of Amazonia, the world's

largest rainforest. The western end is this mammal rich area in

Peru.

Mats‚s Indians, who live in the rainforest west of the Ucayali

River, have been helping to gather information for Voss' survey.

The survey included the work of Fleck, now at Rice University.

As an Ohio State University undergraduate, Fleck had met a group

of Mats‚s while collecting marsupials at a botanical field station

in the area. Eventually he learned to speak Mats‚s and did his

master's thesis on the region's animals while staying in touch

with Voss.

Fleck recorded interviews with a number of Mats‚s hunters. He

hopes the recordings will not only add to knowledge about the

region's fauna but will help in the preservation of the Mats‚s

language. The methods by which Mats‚s learn about natural history

are now the subject of Fleck's doctoral work at Rice.

Valqui's 15 by three mile study area is located near the tiny

village of San Pedro about 40 miles south of Iquitos, a large

jungle city, and about 270 miles south of the equator in the

western Amazon.

Valqui's research initially focused on rodents. After counting 28

rodent species in 1995, he started maintaining a list of all land

mammals on the study site. He included mammals he trapped or

observed, those identifiable from skulls collected by local

hunters and those previously noted by biologists in the same area.

The list has some spectacular entries, such as the endangered

giant otter, which can reach six feet in length and weigh 60

pounds. Valqui also includes several opossums smaller than a human

hand, two extremely rare species of wild dogs and two species of

slow-moving sloths.

Valqui and Voss both say this Amazon region's high diversity is

biologically rich because it is a vast, uninterrupted rainforest.

Also, the rapid rise of mountains in the Andes between three

million and eight million years ago created ridges that isolated

animals, allowing them to evolve into distinct species.

In addition, Valqui said, water running off the mountains produces

richer soils in the western Amazon, allowing higher populations of

all species and fewer extinctions.

With no major timber, oil or hydroelectric projects, the three

river region is not considered highly threatened, Valqui and Voss

said. Outsiders are forbidden to hunt in the reserve, where

Valqui's study site was located, and native subsistence hunting

does not pose a major threat to most species, Valqui said.

But all researchers agree the major trends of increasing

population density and deforestation pose the same long term

threat to the three river region as they do to other areas of

Amazonia.

###RELAYED TEXT ENDS###

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is

distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior

interest in receiving forest conservation informational materials for

educational, personal and non-commercial use only. Recipients should

seek permission from the source to reprint this PHOTOCOPY. All

efforts are made to provide accurate, timely pieces, though ultimate

responsibility for verifying all information rests with the reader.

For additional forest conservation news & information please see the

Forest Conservation Portal at URL= http://forests.org/

Networked by Forests.org, Inc., gbarry@forests.org