Ethics and Ecosystem Interactions: Why Reconciliation Ecology Matters
The problem with ecosystem interactions
Here’s a phrase that’s lately been haunting me: “the extinction of ecosystem interactions.” I first encountered it in science writer Connie Barlow’s fascinating book, The Ghosts of Evolution, which is about the plants, mainly trees, that have lingered into modern times even though the megafauna with which they were co-evolved, that ate their fruits and dispersed their seeds, have gone extinct. Of the several reasons the animals disappeared, a major one has everything to do with our species’ penchant for using a resource until there is nothing left. Thus, when you look at, say, an Osage orange tree, with its large, inedible, multi-seeded fruits, or savor the delicious flesh of an avocado (while not eating the insanely large, poisonous seed contained within), you are summoning the ghosts of the elephant-like gomphotheres and others that once roamed the Americas.
This is an excellent example of the extinction of ecosystem interactions. Once the animals disappeared, so too did the relationships and their attending interactions, leaving the plants hard put to survive into the present day. How and why they did so is a long, convoluted story best told by Barlow. The phrase itself comes from a short article, published in 1977 by pioneering ecologist Dan Janzen, called “The Deflowering of Central America,” in which he traces the relationship of a particular bee species with a certain species of flowering plant, and describes what happens when that relationship is interrupted by over-disturbance of the human kind.
When we think about species extinction, we often think about individual, usually charismatic species such as honeybees, monarch butterflies, eagles, wolves or polar bears, or plants such as giant sequoias. However, individual species of plants and animals do not exist in a vacuum.
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