be the creature that could be there, will find many other creatures that must understand or deal: this may result in cooperation, symbiosis, hunting, die, and other relationships. Each living being that we find in a field, forest, lagoon, river, has signed many deals with other "folks" or "enemies" and has a place, a nest, its own little kingdom, and defends its life, family and food, in the conditions he is able to live (the ecological niche). The more is the number of beings are there, the more complex is the ensemble, more resistant will be the place for strangers. Instead, in front of impoverished or simplified places, will be easier colonize one being or the whole place. My friend, my reader, good colleague, this is what happens with pests or infections: sites, ecosystems, fields, forests, or impoverished living beings, are more easily attacked by a stranger, actually a regular being who come to grow when the opportunities allow it.
Because of this, biodiversity is like a diamond, and a word that hides much wealth. When the soils of the chapter one are filled with a troop of foreign compounds and these ones are not degraded, roots store these ones more than other tissues in the plant, and for longer. When you are seeing signals in the leaves, are a mix of these compounds, and other environmental conditions as temperature, presence of gases, balance of nutrients, humidity or stress. The same happens in animals as us, who accumulate compounds in all kind of tissues and organs (and some of them are modified into, and become more dangerous).
The global ensemble of species that we can find in every place, before being a weed is a teacher which shows us how, where and when to be adapted to what exactly, and what offering around (all photographs by the author).
Plants are able to defend themselves: thus, has been discovered the phytoalexins molecules, or the pathogenesis-related proteins (PR) that directly attack the cell walls of pathogens, or the production of substances such as the salicylic acid which derivative is the aspirin of Bayer (from the willow), which can result in systemic acquired resistance to fungal activity. Otherwise, a plant can defend of specific strains of a pathogen (one might call this pathogen race) using a gene-for-gene resistance: in genes has one allele of a gene (R gene) that corresponds with one gene of the pathogen (Avr genes, avirulent), favoring the first’s resistance, and the second decrease the effectiveness of the pathogen. This has been a way of intervention in plants through bioengineering, but unfortunately not for learning and adaptation to it. This can be mediated on the middle by a protein, what is called “the guard hypothesis”.
Anyway, is clear a fact today: the greater is the genetic variability and the genetic and specific diversity, the more correlated is with a higher genetic resistance, while the homogenization and impoverishment of the gene pool of a species and the low diversity favor the weakness to pathogens.
The unseen biodiversity.
We follow on the floor... The soil community performs continuously the processing of organic matter, adding it into the soil, retaining water, and arranging it as nutrient for plants. Thus the plants find a place to live. And also come other different beings, and the complexity, number of species, trophic levels, until herbivores and carnivores: but no one here is dominant, in any case some may be predominant. You could find there in the soil roughly 8 tons of bacteria each hectare, fungi and algae (10,000/g), protozoa, and then will be the invertebrates, a big step of specialization in many tasks. Sure you already know the nematodes, this group of worms with 2,000 kg/hectare (great mixers and oxygenators, enhancers of land productivity, though rare in the tropics); or the mites and springtails, whose troops vary between 20,000 y 400,000 individuals/m2, also very sensitive to chemical aggressions. And arthropods: an ancient family of winners worldwide: spiders, mites, scorpions, harvestmen, centipedes, millipedes, water fleas, copepods, mealybugs, Protura or Diplura. And insects, those weird bugs: ephemeral, naiads (who live only in clean water), dragonflies, damselflies, cockroaches (which were always controlled as delicacies that are by birds, lizards, centipedes or wasps), termites, mantids, earwigs, flies stone crickets and grasshoppers, stick insects, leaf insects, gladiators, lice, mites, thrips, aphids, raphides, lacewings, beetles (more than 400.000 species), fireflies, weevils, flying deer, scorpion flies, fleas, flies, mosquitoes, caddis-flies, butterflies, moths, peacocks, sphinxes, bumblebees, wasps, bees, ants, snails, spiders, harvestmen, freshwater prawns, and many more. Over all this can grow plants, plants, mosses, ferns, shrubs, trees, and other higher animals.
The main “jobs” that have those little bugs are eating, process the earth, control the population of bacteria or plants, recycle waste of all kinds, and in turn being eaten by other. This is how we end up finding the tree species that have interested us, herbivores that have become cattle, the plants that we have used, or products we collect today: and also the compounds containing these beings, which have allowed us to know some products used as drugs. Forests are not meaningless site.
The estimating of total amount of matter flowing among compartments (sediments, water, soil, atmosphere, biomass) is an approach that allows to estimating what is the dynamic balance for one system. Thereby, we can understand that there are a flow of energy, partially studied in the case of the nitrogen, carbon, sulfur, water, phosphorus, potassium, but implying other cycles, like the cycle for the organic matter, flowing between living beings, cadavers, litter, humus, and nutrients are again living organisms. For us, theses machines of life that are ecosystems, are like sprockets functioning as crimped together, depending from other factors: the sun energy, the temperature, the water. The initial basis formed by bacteria and fungi, is transformed in a bigger machine by plants, resulting in complex systems that support to animals, a carbon warehouse, and the specialization derived from many species live together.
If the soils are the basis, the water allows and carries many events along the forest chain. Despite you cannot see the chemical processes, into soils and streams, the waters that are continuously crossing minerals, deposits, surfaces, forests, crops, towns, all in its route, those waters are reacting chemically, sometimes transporting substances, sometimes depositing compounds, sometimes allowing its degradation, but distributing wherever they go and where they arrive thousands of substances that never existed there before. Chemical analyzes have continued finding them today: do not be fooled. The sea, the final sink, already is saying us something about. Still, both the forest and riparian vegetation are able to eliminate much of the contaminants if present.
We have not even been able to maintain in the crops at least some of the most beneficial elements: earthworms. Being the up-graders, aerating the soil and regenerating the subsoil, the worms are a clear example of bioaccumulation of toxic pesticides, herbicides, and soluble molecules: dissolved accumulate in fatty tissue being difficult to degrade, are accumulated on tissues increasing their concentration; the same way follow the heavy metals from drugs or fungicides (copper), which increase the urea concentration in the livestock or slurry, and provoke the disappearing of microorganisms, and earthworms.
Well, since a lot of years ago, a lot of people farming, a millionaire numbers of inhabitants, all have been persuaded that is better to have a layer of absolutely nothing, pour a lot of brown-red liquids, killing every possible survivor insect, and after it go eat happily. Once again, we are stupid.
We can call this set either “forest” or prairie, or wetland. In the balance of energy flow, forests or vegetable coverage fulfill a big role, and its state influences greatly one of links into the chain of energy flow: the atmosphere. Where are forests? Europe holds 1,000 million hectares, whose 80% is in the Russian territory; Central America and Caribe both keep the half of total surface of forests with rampant logging whilst grow severe erosive problems; Asia lost a great amount of forests in two decades, and now are being planted big masses of trees in Vietnam, India and mainly China; Java, Borneo and Indonesia have suffered an intensive logging, emerging instead biofuel crops; meanwhile in Africa continues increasing the logging despite the fake statistics; Canada and the US, have the
25% of primary forests, linked to bigger water reservoirs in Canada.
Watching closely the mix of logging, biofuel cropping and mining into the Central Africa, every map that can be issued will show the same scenery: a puzzle of little granted licenses and concessions, the most for almost 20 occidental companies, and a micro-world of illegal logging operations which trade however completely at low prices. Forests are receding mainly in Africa, with 3.4 million hectares from the 5.2 in the world, for the period 2000-2010. Is this sustainability? Not, this is more of the same that was made in other places, changing uses with no control. The fresh trending now is hire a company which establishes the while and place to go and pay with locals the start of business, al this with a green face. There is always one alibi that can be chosen to have a green face: carbon storage, local development, cooperation, does not mean, no matter that be, actually never works.
Our century, the century of the information management, is the time when we are saying things fully dumb and outright, as could be that: "the local tribes are owners of
An Invisible Chain of our Time Page 8
