[7:19 PM] PTM: Hello @Literally Nothing, I am an ecologist. What questions can I answer?
[7:20 PM] Literally Nothing: Oh you are?
[7:20 PM] Literally Nothing: I never new that
[7:20 PM] PTM: Yep. I work for - somewhat topically - a conservation charity focusing on bees.
[7:21 PM] Literally Nothing: So that article from a while back
[7:21 PM] PTM: The one about biodiversity loss?
[7:21 PM] Literally Nothing: When it says those animals being endangered is a threat to us yeah
[7:22 PM] Literally Nothing: What would be like, the cliffnotes set of really important notable ones that if they were gone we'd be worse off for?
[7:25 PM] PTM: I will respond momentarily - there's an HDMI cable jammed in my laptop and I can't fucking get it out
[7:25 PM] PTM: Okay, back. Had to shut my laptop for a moment.
[7:26 PM] PTM: So before I answer that - do you understand specifically why biodiversity loss is considered harmful in the abstract, in a non-species-focused sense?
[7:29 PM] Literally Nothing: I suppose not
[7:29 PM] PTM: Okay. Stepping back from that by a further step for the moment, then.
[7:30 PM] PTM: For the most part, biodiversity loss is considered bad from an anthropocentric sense because of ecosystem services: things that the ecosystem does that ultimately serve humanity. This ranges from cultural benefits like things being pretty or emotionally/spiritually satisfying, to more tangible benefits like providing food(s) or oxygen.
[7:30 PM] PTM: As loss occurs, these services can disappear. However, they're often not underpinned by a single species.
[7:31 PM] PTM: Each species will have a particular role in an ecosystem that is at least subtly different than each other species, even if they ultimately produce the same ecosystem service.
[7:31 PM] PTM: Now let's say you have ten species that are producing a similar benefit, but that occupy slightly different niches.
[7:31 PM] PTM: Something happens that wipes out a given species. We've got nine left, so the service doesn't vanish.
[7:32 PM] PTM: Half of the species are wiped out. The service doesn't vanish, but it's more vulnerable to upheaval (things like climate change or the extreme weather that climate change produces are examples of such upheaval).
[7:32 PM] PTM: Nine of ten species vanish.
[7:33 PM] PTM: We scramble to preserve them. They're hardy, but they occupy a specific niche. We struggle to produce more of this niche, or the environment that they need to survive because it's specific.
[7:33 PM] PTM: It costs untold fortunes to conserve them, and reintroduce them to ranges once lost.
[7:33 PM] PTM: A disease hits them.
[7:33 PM] PTM: They all die out.
[7:33 PM] PTM: There's nothing we can do, and nothing to pick up the slack.
[7:33 PM] PTM: Ecosystem services includes providing food for higher-level species.
[7:34 PM] PTM: The species that died out was a keystone primary producer like a plant.
[7:34 PM] PTM: Suddenly there's a huge trophic cascade and we lose every species that depended on it.
[7:34 PM] PTM: A whole ecosystem collapses.
[7:34 PM] PTM: And there's nothing else we can do about it.
[7:35 PM] PTM: Biodiversity is a mix of things, when it comes to valuation.
[7:36 PM] PTM: On the one hand, there's the right to exist. There are people who will say that we don't need every species. They're right - we don't. We don't. At the same time, should it be up to us to define what acceptable loss of entire species is?
[7:36 PM] PTM: On the other hand, there's the anthropocentric approach: ecosystem services.
[7:36 PM] PTM: The things that we need, or rely upon. They become more and more at risk the more uncertain we make the world.
[7:37 PM] PTM: The more vulnerable we make it.
[7:38 PM] Literally Nothing: Just because the question of whether or not we should pick and choose which species survive is an appaling one, does not mean the answer is no.
[7:38 PM] PTM: I know. That's why I mentioned that it's not the only argument for conserving biodiversity.
[7:38 PM] PTM: If you stop trying to nitpick for a moment, you might notice that.
[7:39 PM] Literally Nothing: I'm not nitpicking
[7:39 PM] PTM: Alright.
[7:40 PM] PTM: Now, further to what I've said - this all presupposes that we even understand the particulars of how these species play into ecosystem function. There are untold trophic interactions that we don't and may never fully understand. There are examples of species that have died out and we've only later begun to understand how they shaped the world around them.
[7:41 PM] PTM: You highlighted pollination services as an example - which is an ecosystem service, and is the one that most people are most familiar with (other than food/water/oxygen).
[7:42 PM] PTM: Pollinators are responsible for vast amounts of the food that we eat. Worse than that, the plants that they pollinate are disproportionately skewed toward producing some of our most nutritious foods. Vegetables, grains, fruits.
[7:43 PM] PTM: As we lose pollinators and pollination becomes more difficult, we have to do it more by hand. This is expensive. It increases the cost of the foodstuffs that are produced - disproportionately the most nutritious ones. Eating healthily becomes more expensive. Food poverty increases. Our poorest start to starve more and more, malnourishment, malnutrition, and death.
[7:43 PM] PTM: There are many, many species of bee in the world. They're specialised to visit different varieties of flower based on corolla length.
[7:44 PM] PTM: See: previous outline of what might happen.
[7:44 PM] PTM: Anyway!
[7:45 PM] PTM: That's why biodiversity is important. It keeps us alive.
[7:50 PM] PTM: Another fun explanation is the economic one.
[7:50 PM] PTM: Generally either measured through economic benefit or the cost to replace.
[7:50 PM] PTM: I'll continue using pollinators as an example.
[7:51 PM] PTM: Insect pollinators in the UK contribute £600M to the economy per annum. This is through pollination services and the accelerated production of pollinator-dependent foodstuffs.
[7:52 PM] PTM: That's how much they're worth currently. However, it's not the same thing as how much it'd cost to replace them - in the same way that a natural water-retaining landscape doesn't cost the same as constructing and maintaining a dam after that landscape is lost.
[7:53 PM] PTM: To hand-pollinate all of the crops in the UK that are currently pollinated by insects, it would cost £1.8 billion.
[7:53 PM] PTM: Per year.
[7:54 PM] PTM: This isn't accounting for the wild flowering species that depend on pollination that are eaten by other species that in turn are used as food, or livestock, or food for something else, or that control a species through predation or grazing that would otherwise overtake and destroy another ecosystem that we need.
[7:54 PM] PTM: Now imagine that this is true - or at least similar - for billions of species around the world, and you're beginning to grasp the scale of the threat.
[7:57 PM] Literally Nothing: I suppose
[7:57 PM] Literally Nothing: Thank you for the time of day