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Biodiversity, diversity, and success

Let’s talk about biology. And in particular -- the study of ecology.

We are organisms, we are animals (I forget people don’t like being reminded they’re animals, which I don’t understand. If you forget you’re tied to your environment and your fellow planet-mates, it can make for a terrible living situation -- like the significant other of a roommate who doesn’t pay the bills but eats all the food and trashes the house. Woof). Social animals, such as we, need a couple of things -- resources, habitat, and society -- to survive and thrive.  And diversity -- of resources, habitat, and arguably, societal structure, breeds success. Let’s break that down. How does diversity equate to success? It’s pretty simple. If you have many different types of resources, you have many different animals, plants, and other organisms that can take advantage of them without encroaching on the resources of others -- a sort of stability, you could say. If your resources are limited and sought by many different groups of organisms, the increased competition can drive extinction if organisms can’t adapt (INB4 survival of the fittest, because fitness isn’t what you think it is)) -- if your habitat is diverse, many different kinds of organisms can exist in a space, and contribute to that diversity of resources (sometimes, you’re a food resource. Sometimes you’re a habitat resource -- if you’re in the web of ecology, you impact the world in some way or another).  And, as animals, that diversity applies to our social structures. The more diversity we possess, the more niches, or roles, can be held in society and exist successfully without competition and stress. And what is social diversity? For humans, that’s the gamut of uniqueness of culture, biological diversity, ideas, and creations we have generated as a species. We are multi-ethnic (but the same species, like variations in the patterns of spots of leopards), we have generated an economy based on skills that do not contribute to survival and fitness, and we have harnessed the power of biology to conquer many illnesses, delay death, and augment our bodies. And all of that society, while being based in biological urges, is largely invented. Belief systems, gender roles, culture, political structures -- all of them are imagined and practiced in repetition over time. The meaning we ascribe to our actions is a mechanism for encouraging some sort of interaction, passing information to our peers and the subsequent generations -- good or bad (there’s a separate issue -- memetics -- that plays into this as well. But that’s a future discussion).  But a diversity and a tolerance for that diversity in society -- provides niches for the vast uniqueness of the human experience, which, using those modern, imaginary ideas of “freedom” and “human rights”, we understand every human deserves (as an organism that can contemplate its own suffering).  And personally, so long as no one’s being harmed and everyone can consent, it seems to be a pretty neat way to live as an organism. This is a very complicated way to say “Mind your own business, your imagined reality does not take precedent over mine.” but I’m still having to have this conversation, and may have to for the rest of my life. Wait till machines start wanting rights. Woof. We can’t even agree that humans deserve equality. 

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It’s the Bog Blog

As a big fan of bogs, swamps, and vernal pools -- I have spent the last 8 months or so thinking a lot about the Trump/Swamp analogy.  In its most literal form (and I’m being pretty glib), it underscores an important reality of the new administration. Draining the swamp, on its face, seems like it sounds productive. Stereotypically, swamps are murky, degenerative places filled with animals that bite, sting, and suck. So the call to drain the muck and transform the land into something functional seems like the most lucrative plan.  That’s exactly the way a developer would feel about swamps, anyway. 

As it turns out, swamps are highly functional parts of a watershed that provide buffers for pollution and flooding and recharge groundwater, are habitat for important animals that function as insect control, water quality indicators, and rodent control, and are some of the most important habitat on earth -- functionally and historically (think the fertile crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates -- the birthplace of civilization). I’m waxing a little poetic (I really love swamps), but you get the point. The reality of a Trump administration is a real call to drain the swamp -- weaken the mechanisms that would protect us from a flood of misinformation, reduce the habitat of individuals who would be able to tell us about declining environmental, financial, and constitutional protections, and reduce biodiversity (I mean, literally and sociologically - there have even been calls to curtail the endangered species act. You can’t make this up). 

And to be fair, this is coming from an environmental science person. So I get it, my bias toward science and transparency is apparent. But those seem to be qualities that nearly anyone in a technologically advanced democracy might also support -- science encourages bold ideas, testable hypotheses, and peer review (transparency) -- and transparency prevents abuse of power. 

Spoiler: transparency and science are not often the forefront of the public’s gut priority -- but that’s a topic for another day. And I get it -- the same dude who has no respect for environmental science made an easy joke about a swamp, don’t take that shit literally. I don’t, don’t worry.

The point is that this whole breakdown - the analogy and its reality - feel like a reflection of the current state of American politics. On its face, it may seem like the slogans and promises and ideas are competent and well thought out and make sense -- but if you examine the issues closely, even a little bit, it turns out that the extraordinary claims are full of holes  (Is it okay to insert a frog DNA/Jurassic Park reference here?) That the difference between 10 second sound bytes and recognizing that the world is complicated, interdisciplinary, and diverse is important in an ever changing and evolving society, which we are. And not knowing the ecological importance of a swamp is so 1984. 

______________________ The Bog Blog is going to be little pieces of thoughts that I have about American politics. I am, by no means, any sort of journalist or professional, and these posts are extremely loose in nature -- I suggest you go and fact check anything you might think I have gotten wrong or mischaracterized (see what I encourage there? Transparency). But I want this to be a place that challenges the black and white nature of the left and right arguments -- the memes, the tricks that get people to jump on the bandwagon, and encourage a little out of the box thinking.  And to also make stupid science jokes out of anything I can.

-SM