On Fri, April 10, 1998 at 03:09:02 (EDT) boddhisatva writes:
>...
> Lou P.s posts go too far, leaving science behind and drawing the
>issue of plant extinction into a dystopian vision of the world. The
>conditions that create new species are isolation, stress and novel
>combinations of closely related species. In that way we are actually
>creating an environment for *faster* species creation. Witness the rapid
>changes in bacteria as a result of antibiotics. However, the process for
>species formation among all but the simplest of creatures is very slow and
>our speeding up the process is a drop in the ocean compared to our direct
>species destruction.
And deforestation of the Amazon to make way for parking lots will step
up the formation of new bacteria? Species don't emerge only at the
bottom. If you wipe out entire forests, all of the genetic material
therein is lost for speciation purposes. What would happen to your
bacteria if we suddenly eliminated their human hosts?
Bill
