Difference between revisions of "Category:Bio-diversity"

See also Wildlife

The United Nations has designated 2010 the year of biodiversity, in a bid to turn around the rapid loss of the worlds various plant and animal species. The latest data from scientists indicates to us that the loss of species is occurring at anywhere between 100-1000 times faster than has traditionally been the case, about three per hour. Link to text and audio interview. 3/10

Center for Biological Diversity

Wildlife Conservation Society's, State of the Wild is a collection of evocative essays featuring emerging issues in the conservation of wildlife and wild places. current is 2008, we own 2006 S&E Stacks QL82 .S738 2005

New Scientist Site

Edge of Existence

UN report on effects on medicine

"Planet of Weeds" by David Quammen

The End of the Wild By Stephen M. Meyer

Nature Out of Place By Jason Van Driesche on invasive species.

A new report, America’s Hottest Species, highlights a variety of American wildlife that are currently threatened by climate change from a small bird to a coral reef to the world’s largest marine turtle. "Global warming is like a bulldozer shoving species, already on the brink of extinction, perilously closer to the edge of existence," said Leda Huta, executive director of the Endangered Species Coalition which produced the report. "Polar bears, lynx, salmon, coral and many other endangered species are already feeling the heat." More

Mass Extinction website (extensive list of popular articles).

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (report download). Website

Books

Adams, Douglas. Best known for the amazing Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he also wrote Last Chance to See about endangered animals. Intro Ch. 1 password required. Warning, some animals were harmed in the production of this book ;) NEW! at UC talk based on Last Chance experiences.

A review of Watching, from the Edge of Extinction

Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. H2G2 website. The BBC is doing a new version with Stephen Frye; its website which may have some of the media from the original series.

What this world needs," opined the nature writer David Quammen in a 1984 column for Outside magazine, "is a good vicious 60-foot-long Amazon snake." He was kidding, thankfully; the rest of the column goes on to describe the human tendency to massively exaggerate the size of anacondas in the Amazon. Now, though, 19 years later, Quammen has written Monster of God, a book arguing that precisely what the world does need is very large, very predatory animals. In his last book, The Song of the Dodo, Quammen managed to turn the arcane field of island biogeography into a best-selling page-turner; in Monster of God, he reverses the trick, transforming stories of man-eating tigers and 20-foot crocodiles from tabloid perennials into a thoughtful exploration of the ecological and psychological roles of the beasts that eat us whole review.

Ghost Bears by UCSC people.

Video

PBS Nature (full episodes online) list by species

E.O Wilson, brilliant researcher and teacher, TEDtalk video is working on an Encyclopedia of Life

Will Wright, creator of SimCity will soon release Spore, a game for investigating complexity TEDtalk video.

Peter Ward argues that most of Earth's mass extinctions were caused by lowly bacteria. The culprit, a poison called hydrogen sulfide, may have an interesting application in medicine. TEDtalk video.

Adam Savage talks about his fascination with the dodo bird, and how it led him on a strange and surprising double quest. the host of "MythBusters" on the Discovery Channel, is a longtime special-effects artist and a minor obsessive.

Silence of the Bees PBS documentary on colony collapse syndrome.

Plants

Six Ways Mushrooms can save the world (TEDtalk video)

Forests

== Animals == See also Wildlife

A Gap in Nature Author Tim Flannery on extinction (see link to audio interview)

Never Cry Wolf : Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves Farley Mowat

Diane Ackerman The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds

Bats are in trouble in North America. UCSC's Winifred F. Frick, in a study published in the August 6 issue of Science, writes that a disease is spreading quickly across the northeastern U.S. and Canada and now affects seven bat species. NPR.org interviewaction link.

Amphibians

Amphibian Specialist Group is doing a worldwide survey, hoping to find some species thought extinct. npr interview 8/10 Facebook

Pesticide Threatens Frogs. The common pesticide Atrazine is disrupting the sexual development of male frogs, turning one in 10 of them into females, according to a UC Berkeley study released this week. Audio interview w/ integrative biology professor Tyrone Hayes, one of the researchers. KQED Quest.

The Thin Green Line, PBS Nature documentary about frogs

Save the Frogs moves to Santa Cruz.

Insects

E.O Wilson an amazing mind, has spent his life studying insects, especially ants. TEDtalk video is working on an Encyclopedia of Life

Adventures Among Ants By Mark Moffett University of California Press audio interview 6/10 Includes Argentine ants (audio), which live in enormous "supercolonies" and are considered an invasive species. (One colony stretched 560 miles down the coast of California.)

Darwin's Moth PBS Nature

Silence of the Bees PBS documentary on colony collapse syndrome.

Invasive Species

overview

Strange Days on Planet Earth episode, narrated by Edward Norton.

PBS Nature Doc Invasion of the Giant Pythons in Florida.

Asian Carp in Great Lakes goes to the Supreme Court. One solution, eat them (audio) 4/10

History

Nikolay Vavilov, the Indiana Jones of Botany:

The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of Stalin's Persecution of One of the Great Scientists of the Twentieth Century by Peter Pringle audio interview

Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine reflects on What is the Relevance of Vavilov in the Year 2010?:Link

See also Wildlife

Marine Mammals