Dr. Assaf Rosenthal
Darwin's birthday is being celebrated these days, and maybe it's time to check who is likely to continue to exist and who is in danger of extinction/extinction.
According to the theory that explains evolution, "the fit survive", that is, those whose traits match the environmental conditions have the highest chance of producing offspring and continuing the existence of the species. In a framed article: For all the unintelligent catechists it is said that evolution is a fact! It is the name given to a process that works in nature and causes the development of species! Darwin developed the theory that explains the existence of this process and tried to explain how evolution works, until another explanation is accepted - another theory - the scientific world accepts Darwin's arguments as a suitable theory for explaining the factual process called evolution.
So who is fit to continue to exist? It is much easier to check who is not suitable or, in the language of nature conservationists these days, which species are in danger of extinction? What do they have in common? What makes them "qualified"?
Nature conservationists wherever they are are trying to understand the extinction processes and the reasons why species disappear from our natural environment. This is when it is clear that since the existence of modern humanity it has been a significant factor...for positive or negative.
So significant is the influence of man that there are those who attribute the extinction of Neanderthal man to the new subspecies (modern man) who "conquered" the world and in the process of "conquering" destroyed the species (perhaps a subspecies) closest to him today because of irresponsible behavior resulting from In many cases of ignorance, a behavior whose leading line is "conquering the environment," many species are in danger of extinction.
The woolly mammoth, the dodo bird, and many others are no longer here, on their way to extinction are: the gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos (which are the closest to us of all animals), on top of these there are hundreds and thousands of beetles, amphibians, raptors, plants and others. The ice eagle has already disappeared from the skies of America and only recovery and preservation activities have returned it to the natural landscape, so have elephants and rhinoceroses in Africa, species of buffalo in Europe and Asia, whales in the oceans and in our country: wildebeests, rams and elk.
Species have been on the brink of extinction mainly because of human activity, and human activity has brought them back from the brink of extinction. Human activity (since the dawn of human history) is one of the main reasons for the disappearance of species, but species were exterminated and disappeared even before human activity.
At first thought it seems that the first natural factor for existence or extinction is the size of the population of a species
The smaller the number of individuals, the lower the chances of the species continuing to exist. Since naturally, the larger the individuals of a species, the longer the gestation period, the need for a larger living area to provide food and therefore the number of individuals in the species will be low, and hence large species have low chances of survival, right?
The best examples of this are the elephants and the whales, indeed these and those in the sea and on land need expanded living areas, large amounts of food, long gestation periods and the raising of offspring, and indeed the condition of the elephants and whales is not good, but in both cases the person who is directly to blame for their bad condition is man!
The question arises, is it possible today to separate human activity from the laws of nature that determine who lives and who dies?
In order to exist, couples of the same species need the possibility to meet, mate, raise a new generation. When population thinning reaches a certain level, there is no possibility of a meeting between the couples and the continued existence of the species is in danger. Naturalists have the concept of minimal viable population (MVP), where the accepted measure is - a 90% chance of the existence of a population for 100 years. Of course, for each species the index is different as it depends on the factors mentioned such as: speed of sexual maturation, frequency of pregnancy, and so on. Two researchers from Darwin University, in Darwin, Australia Barry Brock and Cory Bradshaw will publish their research in the scientific journal Ecology Letters.
The study tested about 1,200 species with the help of computer simulation in an attempt to determine the ACM... of insects, mammals, plants and others with the intention of trying and predicting the chances of survival of the tested species. Examined: size of living area, number of individuals in the area, fertility level, global distribution and of course "human influences" on the species being examined.
According to the researchers, "at the end of the day, they are unable to predict whether the fate of a tested species will be extinction - like the mammoth - or a return to existence - like the rhinos." A disappointing finding from the point of view of nature conservationists since there is no basis for calculating the chances and the common thought that the chances of survival depends on the size of the population is not supported! J
On the other side of Australia, another researcher Maurizio Rossetto is trying to predict survival probabilities by testing a single number of species in a small area in a rainforest. According to him, species that have survived for millions of years can give direction to understanding their fitness, even if they survived in tiny pockets like the tree that was discovered about five years ago on one slope, Eidothea hardeniana grew during the time of the dinosaurs, meaning it survived for about a hundred million years. What gave him the ability to survive? Fast growth, flowering/sexual maturity at a young age, blocking the possibility of fertilization/self-pollination, a lifespan of thousands of years and therefore above all high genetic diversity in a small population.
uses the same survival methods, in addition the tree sends out root shoots that develop into trees, and here lies perhaps its failure, since the result is that over the years each grove/forest constitutes a single tree and because of the inhibition to self-fertilization there is no continuation of a new generation, there is no genetic diversity, and therefore the species is in danger, i.e. Two trees with similar survival methods, but the chances of survival are actually in favor of the tree from which there is only one limited population in one place, meaning that the findings are a contradiction/contradiction to the accepted opinion.
The practical conclusions that may be reached are that, contrary to the existing policy according to which in cases of need to choose/choose between a number of areas for conservation, the larger area will be chosen with the intention of preserving more populations or species. The index, but rather the genetic diversity in each population/species and the diversity of species for large species (physically) requires more time to adapt to new conditions since the number of generations in a period of time is relatively small compared to small-bodied species.
Humanity causes extreme and rapid environmental changes and thereby intensifies the extinction of the large species on the one hand and on the other hand stimulates the culture of the small species, which have a fast life span, short generations, and therefore a fast adaptability. The more well-known and understandable examples are: the development of resistance in insects to insecticides, the development of resistance in disease-causing agents to antibiotics, the culture from rodents and more.
Since a species was not created to become extinct, there is no sense in the sudden extinction of a species in a short period of time. Neither evolutionary logic nor Darwinist logic means that species that disappear in our time as a direct result of humanity's negative attitude towards its natural environment do not "finish" their evolutionary course and accordingly are missing from the entire environment.
The human race that developed at great speed left behind the natural inhibitions, our technological development dictates the cultural development, the instinctive inhibitions of the human race lag behind the technological development by about 50 thousand years. Those inhibitions and those instincts that were left behind could have prevented the destruction, since we lost them somewhere at the dawn of history, we must rely on the technology that will be dictated by a moral culture to prevent the extinction of our natural environment.
Even the big categgers against the "green bodies" cannot ignore the vital need for a healthy and intact environment, for nature and according to man, in order to maintain a healthy environment, man must understand the form in which he causes environmental damage and from such an understanding to stop the damage on the one hand and on the other hand, to correct the injustices that have already been caused.
Dr. Assaf Rosenthal
Tour guide/leader in Africa and the Dram
For details, phone 08 6372298 / 0505640309
Email
assaf@eilatcity.co.il
A compilation of Dr. Assaf Rosenthal's articles on the Hidan site
https://www.hayadan.org.il/BuildaGate4/general2/data_card.php?Cat=~~~402943010~~~218&SiteName=hayadan
