A key goal of the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation is to teach the tangible economic value of preserving nature’s wealth. For example, in the United States a quarter of all prescriptions dispensed by pharmacies are substances extracted from plants. Yet at the same time, fewer than 3 percent of the flowering plants of the world, about 5,000 of the 220,000 species, have been examined for useful alkaloids. Because people act for short term gain, many of these longer term natural resources are disappearing forever from Earth.
Using computer animation and cutting edge film techniques the Foundation will deliver content over the web that shows the evolving scientific thinking of biodiversity.
“It is easy to overlook the services that ecosystems provide humanity. They enrich the soil and create the air we breathe. Without these amenities, the remaining tenure of the human race would be nasty and brief. The life-sustaining matrix is built of green plants with legions of microorganisms and mostly small, obscure animals. Such organisms support the world with efficiency because they are so diverse, allowing them to divide labor and swarm over every square meter of the earth’s surface. They run the world precisely as we would wish it to be run because our bodily functions are finely adjusted to the idiosyncratic environment already created.” E.O. Wilson
Many people simply don’t understand an important scientific fact: that all life is predicated upon a host of unseen and therefore under-appreciated natural processes – the vital interactions produced by millions of years of evolution. We will illustrate the beauty and complexity of biological forms as revealed by science.
DNA: The master molecule for every living creature.
Origins of Life: The first life form was likely an encapsulated RNA.
Bestiary in the Soil: The top six inches of soil is an alien worldfull of truly terrifying species.
Microbes: Symbiosis with micro-organisms allows plants to incorporate nitrogen from the air.
Plankton: Phytoplankton and zooplankton form the backbone of the ocean ecosystem.
Photosynthesis: The most important process on planet Earth - from cyano-bacteria to trees.
Energy flow through mitochondria: See how food is turned to energy via the ATP molecule within this cell organelle that was originally a separate organism.
Malarial protozoan: The life cycle of scourge and the medicines that may help.
Ecosystems by Powers of Ten: Up through the feeding levels from nano scale bacteria to top predators.
Value in Ecosystem services
A revolution in conservation thinking during the past twenty years, a New Environmentalism, has led to this perception of the practical value of wild species. Except in pockets of ignorance, there is no longer an ideological war between conservationists and developers. Both share the perception that health and prosperity decline in a deteriorating environment – witness the distinctly parallel differences in the ecosystems and the social systems of the neighboring countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Ecosystem services in Haiti were taken for granted, went un-priced and un-appreciated, and now they are nearly gone. A dry tropical forest in Guanacaste, Costa Rica that brought itself back from teh brink serves as a model for the world to consider.
Sea Otters: This animal is emblematic of problems that cascade when a keystone species is removed from an ecosystem.
Trees: Topsoil is held in place and oxygen is created by these vital organisms.
Microorganisms: Soil is created by a vast array of tiny animals and bacteria.
Value In Agriculture
Biodiversity is our most valuable but least appreciated resource. Its potential is brilliantly illustrated by the maize species Zea diploperennis, a wild relative of corn discovered in the 1970s by a Mexican college student in Jalisco, south of Guadalajara. The new species is resistant to diseases and unique among living forms of maize in possessing perennial growth. Zea diploperennis's genes, if transferred into domestic corn (Zea mays), could boost domestic production around the world by billions of dollars. The Jalisco (Zea diploperennis's) maize was found just in time, it occupies no more than 25 acres of mountain land, it was only a week away from extinction by machete and fire.
Psophocarpus tetragonolubus: The winged bean of New Guinea is a one species super-market.
Lepidium peruvianum: Known as Maca, this plant is a nutritious delicacy that survives on 25 acres in Peru.
Value in Medicine
The humble and ignored are in fact often the real star species. An example of a species lifted from obscurity to fame by its biochemistry is the rosy periwinkle of Madagascar. An inconspicuous plant with a pink five-petaled flower, it produces two alkaloids, vinblastine and vincristine, that cure most victims of two of the deadliest of cancers, Hodgkin's disease, mostly afflicting young adults, and acute lymphocytic leukemia, which used to be a virtual death sentence for children. The income from the manufacture and sale of these two substances exceeds $180 million a year.
It can be safely assumed that a vast array of other beneficent but still unknown species exist. A rare beetle sitting on an orchid in a remote valley of the Andes might secrete a substance that cures pancreatic cancer. A grass down to twenty plants in Somalia could provide green cover and forage for the saline deserts of the world. No way exists to assess this treasure trove of the wild; except it is immense and that it faces an uncertain future.
Catharanthus roseus: A rosy periwinkle bush that produces two alkaloids which cure Hodgkins and lymphocytic leukemia.
Filipendula ulmaria: The meadowsweet plant that gave the world aspirin.
Azadirachta indica: The neem tree of India is know as the village pharmacy.
Limulus polyphemus: The horseshoe crab plays a vital role for anyone who has received an injectable medication.
Through on-line essays, films, and our citizen science programs, the Foundation will bring examples of the critical value of the world’s natural capital to a broad audience.