To continue that analogy, if you only have one person to rely on, that relationship will be strained, and is more vulnerable than it would otherwise be. If you only have one way of communicating, say by speech, you will have to use some kind of written communication until you learn sign language. But what if you lose your sight too? Redundancy is everywhere, from the largest ecosystems to the smallest organisms. The latter of those who only have one way of surviving ate the most vulnerable.
I feel concerned about the diminishing diversity in how we do our shopping. Big multi national companies are squeezing out the little guy. On line shopping as apposed to supporting the small business in your local area will eventually give everyone less choice on what we buy and how we buy it. As you so aptly mentioned in your article Jono, prioritising diversity is so important in all aspects of life but especially so in our fragile natural world.
Absolutely, Kim. Similar stories everywhere when you begin to think of it. Diversity is a buffering mechanism. Monopolisation is rarely the right answer. The distribution of wealth globally is only getting worse.
Why is the biodiversity-ecosystem function relationship such a hotly debated topic in ecology?
We’re definitely seeing that in society also monopolies tend to be bad and diversity is better…
This isn’t entirely related but wonder if you could speak on it a bit - I read somewhere that because we keep growing food in monocultures and depleting the earth of certain minerals, we now literally have less nutrients in our food? Because fertilizers return the main nutrients to the soil but lots of lesser, less crucial ones aren’t included in fertilizer formulas and we just don’t get to ingest them anymore…. That’s bound to have some sort of impact.
For a number of reasons really. First, like anything in ecology, it's highly context dependent. The particulars of the system can change the shape of the relationship. Think about differences among a tropical forest, a savannah grassland and a marine intertidal system, for instance. That sort of variability leads to challenges finding universal relationships. But there are many more things that can skew the shape, including 1. how variable functions are: e.g. from nutrient processing to scavenging. 2. The underlying theory is unsettled over the underlying mechanisms. There are two main mechanisms that have been proposed: Selection effect -- dominance by species with particular traits affects ecosystem processes; Complementarity effect -- resource partitioning or positive interactions lead to increased total resource use. 3. Scale of observation can alter the shape of the relationship. Sorry that's enough for now -- got carried away!
Yes, absolutely re: monopolies being a bad thing.
Yes, this is absolutely true. That's why if we eat a typical diet these days that's not from organic farms, we're very likely lacking in key micronutrients, let alone ingesting a whole bunch of chemicals.
So organic farms DO provide those? I always worry ‘organic’ is just a sticker they put on it to make it cost more. What about hydroponics and greenhouses, they would also only provide the shorter list of ‘main’ nutrients, right?
Please do get carried away this stuff is fascinating 🤩
Good point. Simple answer is no, organic farms aren't guaranteed to replace lost micronutrients. A well run organic farm might. But a large industrial scale farm might not if they're still single cropping. Combined with other practices would be more of a guarantee like rotational cropping and planting diverse species.
I worry about things like hydroponics to be honest. It provides the ability to tailor exactly what the plants feed on including the macro and micronutrients to grow healthily, but there may be trace nutrients from the soil that are missing that we benefit from.
A good popular science book on this is Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen.
Thanks I’ll check that out! I really feel like we’d do best to promote small-space urban gardening with healthy practices and make more of our own food…. Everything corporate just gets bastardized for profit
Explaining functional redundancy in terms of everyday human experience comes to mind. We all have more than one way of doing daily tasks and important things. We all have more than one way of thinking and feeling and we all have more than one person we love and activity we enjoy (I hope). When one of those ways fail, we use another, and subsequently rely more on the other. If you drive a car to work and your car breaks down one day, you might call an uber. If uber is out, you'll take a bus. If the everyone's car is out and so is uber, everyone will take the bus. Only some will get to work.
It would be even more fun to ask substackers (hope thats a word) to give examples from their own disciplines with these kinds of explanations, then do it in reverse. Actually that sounds really fun. Everyone, please do it!
This would go great with your piece about interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work. People expend a lot of time and energy trying to create common taxonomies just to talk to other scientists. But what about everybody else? and what if we don’t have that much energy? Why don’t we just explain things to each other and to everyone else by picking fundamental concepts from our disciplines/area and creating easily comprehensible analogies, like you did here, as a starting point. That's also basically a big part of learning.
It would also be interesting and fun to use the diversity of human relationships and ways of interacting, and the institutions based on them, to explain particular ecosystem services.
Diversity is essential for the innovative collaborations we need to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss. Transdisciplinary yes, but also cross/trans sector. That’s why I like Doughnut Economics combined with Strategic Doing.
To continue that analogy, if you only have one person to rely on, that relationship will be strained, and is more vulnerable than it would otherwise be. If you only have one way of communicating, say by speech, you will have to use some kind of written communication until you learn sign language. But what if you lose your sight too? Redundancy is everywhere, from the largest ecosystems to the smallest organisms. The latter of those who only have one way of surviving ate the most vulnerable.
Ate was a typo but it seems apt.
🤣
I feel concerned about the diminishing diversity in how we do our shopping. Big multi national companies are squeezing out the little guy. On line shopping as apposed to supporting the small business in your local area will eventually give everyone less choice on what we buy and how we buy it. As you so aptly mentioned in your article Jono, prioritising diversity is so important in all aspects of life but especially so in our fragile natural world.
Absolutely, Kim. Similar stories everywhere when you begin to think of it. Diversity is a buffering mechanism. Monopolisation is rarely the right answer. The distribution of wealth globally is only getting worse.
Why is the biodiversity-ecosystem function relationship such a hotly debated topic in ecology?
We’re definitely seeing that in society also monopolies tend to be bad and diversity is better…
This isn’t entirely related but wonder if you could speak on it a bit - I read somewhere that because we keep growing food in monocultures and depleting the earth of certain minerals, we now literally have less nutrients in our food? Because fertilizers return the main nutrients to the soil but lots of lesser, less crucial ones aren’t included in fertilizer formulas and we just don’t get to ingest them anymore…. That’s bound to have some sort of impact.
For a number of reasons really. First, like anything in ecology, it's highly context dependent. The particulars of the system can change the shape of the relationship. Think about differences among a tropical forest, a savannah grassland and a marine intertidal system, for instance. That sort of variability leads to challenges finding universal relationships. But there are many more things that can skew the shape, including 1. how variable functions are: e.g. from nutrient processing to scavenging. 2. The underlying theory is unsettled over the underlying mechanisms. There are two main mechanisms that have been proposed: Selection effect -- dominance by species with particular traits affects ecosystem processes; Complementarity effect -- resource partitioning or positive interactions lead to increased total resource use. 3. Scale of observation can alter the shape of the relationship. Sorry that's enough for now -- got carried away!
Yes, absolutely re: monopolies being a bad thing.
Yes, this is absolutely true. That's why if we eat a typical diet these days that's not from organic farms, we're very likely lacking in key micronutrients, let alone ingesting a whole bunch of chemicals.
So organic farms DO provide those? I always worry ‘organic’ is just a sticker they put on it to make it cost more. What about hydroponics and greenhouses, they would also only provide the shorter list of ‘main’ nutrients, right?
Please do get carried away this stuff is fascinating 🤩
Good point. Simple answer is no, organic farms aren't guaranteed to replace lost micronutrients. A well run organic farm might. But a large industrial scale farm might not if they're still single cropping. Combined with other practices would be more of a guarantee like rotational cropping and planting diverse species.
I worry about things like hydroponics to be honest. It provides the ability to tailor exactly what the plants feed on including the macro and micronutrients to grow healthily, but there may be trace nutrients from the soil that are missing that we benefit from.
A good popular science book on this is Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen.
Thanks I’ll check that out! I really feel like we’d do best to promote small-space urban gardening with healthy practices and make more of our own food…. Everything corporate just gets bastardized for profit
100%!
Explaining functional redundancy in terms of everyday human experience comes to mind. We all have more than one way of doing daily tasks and important things. We all have more than one way of thinking and feeling and we all have more than one person we love and activity we enjoy (I hope). When one of those ways fail, we use another, and subsequently rely more on the other. If you drive a car to work and your car breaks down one day, you might call an uber. If uber is out, you'll take a bus. If the everyone's car is out and so is uber, everyone will take the bus. Only some will get to work.
Thanks Andreea. Good points. Funnily enough, I had an example of functional redundancy in society in an earlier draft and took it out to cut words.
I would love to read that! Maybe you can make a separate post on that or post it as a note?
To be honest, you nailed it. Mine was no better. ;)
It would be even more fun to ask substackers (hope thats a word) to give examples from their own disciplines with these kinds of explanations, then do it in reverse. Actually that sounds really fun. Everyone, please do it!
Haha -- good idea.
This would go great with your piece about interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work. People expend a lot of time and energy trying to create common taxonomies just to talk to other scientists. But what about everybody else? and what if we don’t have that much energy? Why don’t we just explain things to each other and to everyone else by picking fundamental concepts from our disciplines/area and creating easily comprehensible analogies, like you did here, as a starting point. That's also basically a big part of learning.
It would also be interesting and fun to use the diversity of human relationships and ways of interacting, and the institutions based on them, to explain particular ecosystem services.
Diversity is essential for the innovative collaborations we need to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss. Transdisciplinary yes, but also cross/trans sector. That’s why I like Doughnut Economics combined with Strategic Doing.
https://regenbrisbane.substack.com/p/where-are-we-going-and-how-do-we
Thanks Gayle. I hadn't heard of Strategic Doing before. Will check it out.