# Change in Biodiversity Not in Danger

Citation: SONI-NETO, J. Change in biodiversity not in danger. Biodiversity Blog, Dec. 2021. Available at: <https://biodiversidade.github.io/>.

Free and independent research. Brasil, 2021.
Open Access Scientific Research (CC BY 4.0).

jamilbio20 [at] gmail [dot] com

## ABSTRACT

Since European colonisation begun, exotic species have caused problems and concerns on biodiversity loss are currently on the table. We review scientific literature to better understand the role biodiversity plays on global, regional and local scales and whether changes in biodiversity composition affect ecosystem function. We also analyse various Red Lists and reports from world and Brazillian entities. Species of interest can recover if active predation is thwarted and conservation efforts undertaken. We conclude that reports based on Red Lists are exaggerated and there is no threat of biodiversity loss at sight.
Keywords: biodiversity change, anthropic pressure, community ecology

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## Introduction

Threats from environmentalist groups about the effects of climate change are not restricted to the supposed global warming but also include a pleiad of other misfortunes and extreme events that develop simultaneously such as sea level rise, ocean water acidification and, in the tropical and temperate forests, a large loss of biodiversity with drastic extinction of animal and plant species in an uncontrolled manner, even menacing survival of the human species. In this chapter we propose to debate this prediction under the light of science, detached from emotional tension and apocalyptic debate that is propelled by peers from scientific papers and books. Source and complete research of this present paper can be found at the website <https://biodiversidade.github.io/>.

Lamarck, Darwin and Wallace are gradualists in their evolution theories. The geologist Niels Eldredge with his observations of fossils in 1972, noticed long and monotonous periods without morphological body modifications of species which periods he coined ‘stasis’ (from static) and hypothesised that the same environment pressures directing extinctions are also responsible for speciation patterns. With that, he formulated the “punctuated equilibrium” theory in which new speciation patterns punctuate long and monotonous periods of biological stasis. Transposable genetic elements (transposons) play a crucial role in this phenomenon.

Environment pressure must reach all the species geographically and morphological change only occurs after genetic evolution and when isolated breeding communities can no longer exchange information with related species (subspecies).

In Darwin’s notes when he transected South America, Brazil and Argentina, in 1832, he wondered whatever the reason for low species diversity of some biological genera. If space were more important than time in the history of life, that could explain species stability in an integrated continental territory such as Brazil over time, in contrast with species related to each other albeit morphologically distinct he observed in archipelagos.

Biological diversity rates can be calculated subtracting speciation and extinction rates over a geographical locality (macroecology) or over time (macroevolution). Since approximately the 1600s, there are well recorded changes in species composition in various areas in the world.

Excluding archaea, bacteria, fungi and virus, that is estimated to be about 1.5-1.9 million described species while the great majority has not been. Total number of terrestrial plants must be greater than 450 thousand. Animal estimates range from 3 to 11 million species on planet Earth, while insects alone can range from 5 to 6 million species. Other authors question the possibility of a plausible estimate when all uncertainties in the number of insects and fungi are taken under account. Marine species are estimated between 700 thousand and 2.2 million, with only approximately 226 thousand described out of those. Observed mean lifetime of invertebrate and vertebrate species is from one to 10 million years.

In geological history, there were five great extinction events, all recorded in the Phanerozoic some 570 million years ago and mostly their conclusion coincided with the start of speciation events. The first great speciation event was the Cambrian Explosion of skeletal marine animals approximately 540 million years ago. The second is called the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE). That would be an excessive simplification to think that a dramatic event unchained big biodiversity pulses in all fossil groups at the global scale in a particular time frame, for example, GOBE was not a single event.

There was biodiversity increase in local richness during Cretaceous (K) and Paleogene (Pg), followed by relative stasis until present terrestrial tetrapods. Stasis pattern in local richness of species before and after the K/Pg frontier was broken by an abrupt increase of two to three times in number of species.

After a time lapse of the order of ten million years after a mass extinction the original level of biodiversity is restored in communities as result of increased speciation rate. Speciation rate apparently culminates roughly ten million years after the end of a mass extinction event and remains accelerated.

## Discussion

Plant production increase has always been linked to local biodiversity gain. In the last decade, there were published papers which go against various conservationism assumptions. Recent analyses refute the link between diversity loss of plant species and ecosystem function and question alleged motivations of current biodiversity conservationism when confronted with experimental results.

In the absence of total habitat conversion, e. g. when a tropical forest becomes a parking lot or a monoculture crop, local plant diversity declined very little or not at all, on average, in the last century (figure 1, upper panel in B and lower panel), nor there is available data that can forecast otherwise in the future. Observed species diversity rates are irrelevant in ecosystem function assessment, e. g. production and nutrient cycling.

Species play more influent roles in the local scale interface. There are as many increases as reductions in biodiversity, specially of plant species, in all scales except global which, arguably, registers decline.

Figure 1. Upper panel: these figures show a plot of LRS (log ratio of species richness) versus log spatial scale, indicating trends (positive is an increase, negative a decrease in richness). Light circles are survey-based data. Dark circles are checklist-based data. Data are presented for (A) terrestrial birds, (B) terrestrial plants, (C) terrestrial mammals and (D) marine fishes during Antropocene. The solid line is the fit from a quadratic ordinary least squares regression and the dashed lines are the 10 and 90% quantiles. Context dependence (scale) allows a wide range of variation for each forcing in whatever direction (Chase, 2019). Lower panel: in comparison, similar graph for plants from Vellend (2017).

Conservation programmes decreed “ecological successes” are opinion of each individual groups and their goals debatable, e. g. how to reconcile conservation efforts that require conflicting resources for various species (even with human beings)? Hairy and feathery animals in the top of the food chain are very much valued by people, however they occupy a more plastic niche (place) in the ecosystem and are less important than animals from the base of the food chain, such as cockroaches, which do not attract as much attention.

Researchers from Rio de Janeiro evaluated restoration plans of hundreds of medium and large-sized localities in South Bahia in which there were vast Eucalyptus forests. Those areas were compared to other tropical restoration areas with regeneration time from half to 200 years. The response of biodiversity ratio in naturally regenerated forests was more similar to reference forests from countries with low, high and very high Human Development Index. This potentially reflects biodiversity restoration projected by the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC).

The EKC is used by economists for projecting pollution emission vs per capta income. In early stages of economical growth human impacts increase, including pollution emission, however after reaching certain development levels this trend reverts. When the abscissa axis contains time and the ordinate axis the level of some pollutant, that can be observed an “inverted-U” curve of the pollutant level over time, which is characteristic of EKC.

### RED LISTS AND REPORTS FROM INTERNATIONAL IPBES AND LPI, BRAZILIAN MMA, ICMBio AND IBGE AGENCIES

In primary analysis, some weak points can be verified about WWF Living Planet Index (LPI). In one index from the report, the region with highest ecological footprint is the Neartic (includes United States), whereas the Neotropical region has low ecological footprint. However, the Neartic region, within the confidence levels, practically restores its LPI index to levels close to 1970 marks, whereas the Neotropical region is presented as the worse contributor for the decline in the global index throughout the period of study. In order to conciliate these results, we must resort to EKC.

There was debate in the scientific community about WWF LPI data and assertions which state that more than 50% of animal species had gone extinct in the world. Such an assertion turns out to be an artefact due to less than 3% of the index vertebrate population distorting it. When these extreme decline populations are taken out from the calculation, the global trend turns to increase of species.

There are a couple authoritative lists that register extinct and extinction risk specie names. These lists are used world-wide and are frequently cited reciprocally, however their methodologies are strikingly different. In certain lists, species that were not even properly described or seen only once are considered extinct. Methodological changes that hasten the verdict of extinction of species are problematic, for e. g. mammals are frequently rediscovered, such effect called the “Lazarus effect”.