Question

write an article on this intersting mammal species for your school magazine

Answer 1

Today biology is in “a new age of discovery” . That age is characterized by the uncovering of vast new elements of biodiversity, which are the fundamental building blocks of ecosystems, and thus the provision of ecosystem goods and services. There are thousands of examples of unexpected discoveries of new taxa across broad taxonomic and geographic spectra, from extremophile bacteria in Yellowstone geysers to whole new ecosystems in the Pacific Ocean hydrothermal vents . For example, the Census of Marine Life program has uncovered hundreds of new species . Similarly, recent work has shown that a “species” of skipper butterfly, Astraptes fulgerator was actually a complex of 10 species with distinct life histories, and that 16 species of “generalist” tropical parasitoid tachinid flies were actually 73 evolutionary lineages (as indicated by mitochondrial DNA barcoding) including many lineages specialized to attack different hosts . The discoveries of new mammals are hardly unique . Our analysis supports the anecdotal conclusions from butterflies, flies, and other organisms mentioned above. It suggests that other prominent taxa (e.g., birds and reptiles), and more obscure groups, likely contain many more species than are currently described. This could amount to millions of species and other distinct entities, greatly expanding estimates of the diversity of the living elements of Earth's natural capital , to even perhaps hundreds of millions of species. In addition, because 12% of Earth's land surface is used for crop agriculture, 25% is grazed by livestock, 2% has been paved or built on, 30% is exploited in other ways , our results suggest that many more unheralded organisms in all groups have likely recently gone extinct without being noticed. That implies that the levels of species extinction overall have been grossly underestimated. Thus, the situation is likely even worse than indicated by the steady rise of endangerment in the IUCN mammal statistics . Although it is common for estimates of total current plant and animal biodiversity to be in the tens of millions , those estimates are largely based on rates of discovery of morphologically defined species found in traditional surveys. Considering the complexity and uncertainty of the relationships between biodiversity and the delivery of ecosystem services, conservation decisions should include a very large precautionary principle bias toward protection of as many of our living companions as possible.