...Keith Lyman Professor Patrick Welsh AMH2020 – 218620 21 October 2016 Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring Book Review In the environmentally historical book Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, the horrific consequences of insecticide use on the environment and ecosystem are chronicled. Carson’s novel was originally published as a three-part journal article in the New Yorker in June followed by the publication of the book in September of 1962. The book is known for beginning the modern environmental movement, which eventually led to the banning of “the domestic production of DDT and the creation of a grass-roots movement demanding protection of the environment through state and federal regulations” (Carson/Lear 9). Carson used her widespread knowledge...
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...One of the greatest scientific mystery has involved the comet that caused extinction of dinosaurs and mass destruction to food chain that has existed. Although the modern world has advanced significantly in technology and science, there is still much more mystery to be discovered about the early earth and the events that took place for the extinction of many species. Many scientists have created multiple theories on how the dinosaurs and other species went extinct. Walter Alvarez, a Berkeley scientist, investigates the giant impact and writes “T. rex and the Crater of Doom,” which explains a giant extraterrestrial impact that brought destruction to many of the plant and animal species, including dinosaurs, sixty five million years ago. Alvarez...
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...includes diversity within species between species, and of ecosystems. Literal meaning of biodiversity is the (b) diversity of all life forms on earth. This includes the various races and species of all micro-organisms, plants, and animals that live on earth, including their genetic differences. Bangladesh is a (c ) transitional zone of flora and fauna, because of its geographical settings and climatic characteristics. There are many rivers and streams existing in the country covering a length of 22,155 km. In addition to the regular inland waters, seasonally a large part of the country remains (d) submerged for 3-4 months during monsoon. This country is rich in fish and aquatic (e) resources, and other biodiversity. Bangladesh’s inland water bodies are known to be the (f) habitat of 266 species of indigenous fish, 13 exotic fish, 56 prawns, about 26 freshwater molluscs, and 150 birds. The marine water bodies (200 nautical miles along the seashore) are also (g) remarkable for being habitat of 442 species of fish. There are at least 36 species of marine shrimps. About 336 species of molluscs, covering 151 genera have been identified from the Bay of Bengal. In addition, several species of crabs, and 31 species of turtles and tortoises, of which 24 live in freshwater, are found in Bangladesh. In Bangladesh only about 8-10 per cent of the land area is covered by tree. It supports approximately 5000 species of angiosperms, out of which about 300 species are being cultivated. The...
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...Hannah Muller ENVR 102 Book Report For this book report, I read Teaching the Trees by Joan Maloof. Joan Maloof studied Plant Science at the University of Delaware, Environmental Science at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, and Ecology at the University of Maryland College Park. Maloof is a professor at Salisbury University who teaches biology and environmental studies at Salisbury University. Aside from being a professor, Maloof is a biologist. She was always very interested in forests so from very early on Maloof has been exploring forests all over the eastern United States. She puts a lot of focus on the intertwined connections between specific tree species and the specific animals and insects that need to tree to live and in turn the tree needs them as well. Maloof possesses great enthusiasm for the woods and everything that they contain and is working on developing networking old growth forests across the United States. Teaching the Trees starts out with Joan Maloof saying how we would lose the “Magical Web” of relationships between organisms and trees (Maloof xiii). She begins talking about the services that trees provide for us. She also talks about how the benefits of trees equal healthier air for us to breathe. Japanese researchers have even found that there are 120 chemical compounds in mountain forest air that are good for us (Maloof 3). Inhaling this air can even be cancer preventing. Perhaps by trying to save the forests we are actually trying to save...
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...negative effect on the species existence, on global climate changes, flooding, and erosion. Subsistence farming, logging, shifted cultivators, mining, and fuel wood collection are the major causes that lead to rainforest destruction. If we do not do something to stop rainforest destruction, we may perhaps loose them forever with all the great benefits that come with it such as medicine and cure, scientific knowledge, and biodiversity. The best way to save our forest is by teaching people about the importance of rainforests, restoring ecosystem by planting trees before cutting, banning excessive hunting and making laws to protect the forests. One of the major benefits of the rainforest is medicine. In his book, The Amazon Rain Forest, Johnson states that the United States and other countries depend on the rain forest plants for almost one fourth of the medicines needed (42). Tropical plants, animals, and insects are the major sources from the rainforests to examine medicine potentials. Curare, used by doctors to perform complex heart surgery, is one of the most important medicines discovered from the Amazon rainforest (43). The rainforests provide doctors and scientists various resources to find cure for deadly diseases. According to Chinery, rainforests plants provide painkillers, anesthetics, cough remedies, muscle relaxants, and several drugs used for treating cancer (19). Biodiversity is another benefit of the rainforest. There are about 5 to 50 million plants and animal special...
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...From the opening line of the preface, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel is nothing if not an ambitious work: “This book attempts to provide a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years” (Diamond, 9). This is a bit misleading, however, as Diamond’s motivation is not simply to provide an overview of our species since the dawn of civilization; his aim is to answer the question of “why history unfolded differently on different continents” (Diamond, 9). In the near five-hundred pages of the book, he makes a valiant effort to answer the question in terms of geography (with the adjoining environmental explanations). Indeed, his argument is exceptionally persuasive, and provides strong evidence that Eurasia’s dominance over other parts...
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...+254 20 3741673. E-mail: mimbumi@kenrik.org Survey of Economic Plants of Arid and Semi – Arid Lands, SEPASAL TRADITIONAL LEAFY VEGETABLES OF KENYA INTRODUCTION • Close to 1000 species Commonly used vegetables 1. Amaranthus dubius in Africa are used as 2. Amaranthus hybridus 3. Amaranthus lividus/blitum leafy vegetable but 4. Basella alba key constitute only 5. Cleome gynandra about 5%. 6. Corchorus olitorius and C. trilocularis • About 210 species 7. Crotalaria brevidens and C. ochroleuca recorded in Kenya 8. Cucurbita maxima/moschata • About 20 of these are 9. Cucurbita ficifolia (Kahurura) 10. Launaea cornuta (Mutsunga) the key ones: 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Solanum americanum Solanum scabrum Solanum villosum Urtica massaica Vigna unguiculata Solanum americanum Solanum villosum Solanum scabrum Amaranthus blitum (A. lividus) Amaranthus hybridus Amaranthus dubius Spiderplant [Cleome gynandra] Launaea cornuta Cowpea [Vigna unguiculata] Cucurbita moschata Cucurbita maxima Cucurbita ficifolia Crotalaria brevidens Crotalaria ochroleuca Corchorus olitorius Brassica carinata Basella alba Stinging nettle [Urtica masaica] Introduction cont.. High vegetable diversity is attributed to: • high cultural diversity (55 community groups, each with its own set of vegetables) • High biological diversity (7100 native plant species - the result of varied habitats) Cultural influence and vegetable ...
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...biological diversity. It includes the numerous and vast variety of species of plants, animals, and microorganisms, the diversity of genes in these species, and the different ecosystems on the planet such as deserts, rainforests and coral reefs. They are all part of a biologically diverse Earth. The role of biodiversity is important in the way ecosystems function and in the many services they provide. Biodiversity boosts ecosystem productivity where each species, no matter how small, all have an important role to play. Just think a larger number of plant species means a greater variety of crops, a greater species diversity ensures natural sustainability for all life forms, not to mention healthy ecosystems can better withstand and recover from a variety of disasters. It’s a big deal that we as humans should preserve the diversity of wildlife. By nature a healthy biodiversity provides numerous services for everybody. Provisioning resources, which are the products obtained from ecosystems that have a diversity includes food. The growth of crops, spices, and meats and vegetables. Medicine which is naturally grown in the wild that is of use to humans and wild animals alike, as well as raw material such as lumber, and fertilizer. For example, Waste eaters like the dung beetle help to turn animal waste into organic material that can be reused by plants, which will further the production and growth of plants, which would be eaten as food for animals and turned back into waste...
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...Earth’s tropical forests is very ecologically unsound in many ways. These forests are being harvested and clear-cut in staggering rates and even if we begin taking necessary actions as a whole, worldwide, immediately we still may never get these forests back to where they should be in order to become sustainable once again. The most commonly known effect that harvesting the rainforests has had is the extinction of the majority of the world’s species. The tropical forests contain about half to two-thirds of the world’s species. (Chiras, P. 230) An average of 137 species of life forms are driven into extinction every day in the world's tropical rainforests. Destruction such as harvesting in rainforests have contributed to the loss of millions of acres of tropical rainforest. Animals and people alike lose their homes when trees are cut down therefore, most animals and other species die when trees are cut down. Larger mammals need several acres to be able to roam free and are trapped into smaller living conditions and several other species are only known to be living in one region and will not survive once their habitat has been harvested. Other animals that may not be native to these tropical areas also suffer when forests are destroyed. One example is in the winter when birds fly south for the winter. Birds from North America fly to tropical regions and return to the same location year after year however, many go to return only they are unable to find their temporary home...
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...Plants have been used both in the prevention and cure of various diseases of humans and their pets. With the advent of human civilization, many systems of therapy have been developed primarily based on plants. Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Sidda, Unani, etc. are our traditional systems of medicine. The plant traditional medicinal systems continue to provide the primary health care to more than three-quarters of the world’s population. The World Health Organization has estimated that over 80% of the global populations rely chiefly on traditional medicine (Akerele, 1992). Since the beginning of human civilization, medicinal plants have been used by mankind for its therapeutic value. Nature has been a source of medicinal agents for thousands of years and an impressive number of modern drugs have been isolated from natural sources....
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...environmental law that I choose is Endangered Species Act. This Act was passed in 1973, to protect the extinction of or threatened species. Before I go any further let me define the difference between extinct and threatened species; • Extinction is the process by which a species die out, this means that all genetic buildup of that species is gone forever. Extinction can be the cause of Natural disaster, from human activities. • Threatened species are living organism that can become endangered in our nearby future. Endangered species represent the living species of plants and animals. That have become scarce, this means that they are in danger of becoming extinct. When an endangered species becomes extinct, this can interrupt the food chain or web. This will interrupts the production of new or improve medicine, we would loss that animal species forever because there is no genetic evidence left of that species. All this would be affected by the extinction of a species. The goal of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 is to prevent extinction from happening. ESA was signed by President Nixon, The extinction of animals and plant species was brought about by Rachel Carson who wrote a book called Silent Spring (1962). Rachel warned about destroying wildlife with DDT in our environment. This is what prompted the enactment of the Endangered Species Preservation Act of (1966). This Act was made to protect nature species that were on the brink of extinction...
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...rediscovered Mendel’s law of heredity, his theory of biological mutation and introduction of the term mutation. De Vries spent 13 years of observing his Oenothera lamarckiana (evening primrose) to prove his theory that species came from other species, through huge changes of characteristic traits (the” theory of mutation”). De Vries noticed that once in a while an offspring would have a great difference in characteristic traits from the original plant. In 1901 he published his findings on mutation in his book the Mutation Theory. His theory of mutation was also widely accepted by people because his work was the first experimental study of evolution in a large scale. Hugo de Vries was born on February 16, 1848 in Haalem, Netherland. De Vries is wanted for his 1900 he rediscovered Mendel’s law of heredity, his theory of biological mutation and introduction of the term mutation. De Vries spent 13 years of observing his Oenothera lamarckiana (evening primrose) to prove his theory that species came from other species, through huge changes of characteristic traits (the” theory of mutation”). De Vries noticed that once in a while an offspring would have a great difference in characteristic traits from the original plant. In 1901 he published his findings on mutation in his book the Mutation Theory. His theory of mutation was also widely accepted by people because his work was the first experimental study of evolution in a large scale. Hugo de Vries Dutch Botanist & Geneticist 1848-1935 ...
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...Karl J. Niklas The modern theory of biological evolution: an expanded synthesis Published online: 17 March 2004 Springer-Verlag 2004 Abstract In 1858, two naturalists, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, independently proposed natural selection as the basic mechanism responsible for the origin of new phenotypic variants and, ultimately, new species. A large body of evidence for this hypothesis was published in Darwin’s Origin of Species one year later, the appearance of which provoked other leading scientists like August Weismann to adopt and amplify Darwin’s perspective. Weismann’s neo-Darwinian theory of evolution was further elaborated, most notably in a series of books by Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ernst Mayr, Julian Huxley and others. In this article we first summarize the history of life on Earth and provide recent evidence demonstrating that Darwin’s dilemma (the apparent missing Precambrian record of life) has been resolved. Next, the historical development and structure of the “modern synthesis” is described within the context of the following topics: paleobiology and rates of evolution, mass extinctions and species selection, macroevolution and punctuated equilibrium, sexual reproduction and recombination, sexual selection and altruism, endosymbiosis and eukaryotic cell evolution, evolutionary developmental biology, phenotypic plasticity, epigenetic inheritance and molecular evolution, experimental bacterial evolution, and computer simulations (in silico evolution...
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...Fungi constitute a group of diverse eukaryotes which are only next to insects in terrestrial environments. About 1,28,432 species of fungi are known worldwide, while the existing global estimate of fungal species is 3 million, hence 95.72% remains yet to be described. Mushrooms are distinctive spore producing fruiting bodies which can be either epigenous or hypogenous and large enough to be seen with the naked eye and to be picked by hand. Mushrooms are variously called macrofungi, macromycetes, fructifications, ascocarps, basidiocarps, sporocarps, sporophores, apothecia, morels, stromata, puffballs, conks, chiau (Nepali), chhatu (Bengali), oat, patra (Santali) etc. Most of them belong to Ascomycota or Basidiomycota, but a few are known from...
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...BIODIVERSITY Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life. This can refer to genetic variation, species variation, or ecosystem variation within an area, biome, or planet. Terrestrial biodiversity tends to be highest at low latitudes near the equator, which seems to be the result of the warm climate and high primary productivity. Marine biodiversity tends to be highest along coasts in the Western Pacific, where sea surface temperature is highest and in mid-latitudinal band in all oceans. Biodiversity generally tends to cluster in hotspots, and has been increasing through time but will be likely to slow in the future. Rapid environmental changes typically cause mass extinctions. One estimate is that less than 1-3% of the species that have existed on Earth are extinct. Since life began on Earth, five major mass extinctions and several minor events have led to large and sudden drops in biodiversity. The Phanerozoic eon (the last 540 million years) marked a rapid growth in biodiversity via the Cambrian explosion—a period during which the majority of multi-cellular phyla first appeared. The next 400 million years included repeated, massive biodiversity losses classified as mass extinction events. The Carboniferous, rainforest collapse led to a great loss of plant and animal life. The Permian–Triassic extinction event, 251 million years ago, was the worst; vertebrate recovery took 30 million years. The most recent, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, occurred 65 million...
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