Showing papers by "Edward O. Wilson published in 2000"

Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition

Abstract: Will reading habit influence your life? Many say yes. Reading sociobiology the new synthesis twenty fifth anniversary edition is a good habit; you can develop this habit to be such interesting way. Yeah, reading habit will not only make you have any favourite activity. It will be one of guidance of your life. When reading has become a habit, you will not make it as disturbing activities or as boring activity. You can gain many benefits and importances of reading.

A Global Biodiversity Map

Abstract: A s genomics and biomedicine are to human health, so ecology and conservation biology are to the planet's health. Unfortunately, compared with their sister disciplines, ecology and conservation biology are still disadvantaged. Their growth is hampered by a seldom-acknowledged deficiency: our ignorance of most of the world's biodiversity, particularly at the level of individual species, where knowledge is foundational to all other studies of diversity and hence of the whole living environment. The number of species given a scientific name is believed to fall between 1.5 million and 1.8 million. The true, full number, including those still undescribed, can only be guessed at to the nearest order of magnitude, with the opinion of many experts gravitating toward the vicinity of 10 million. Reliable biodiversity assessments are limited to a few relatively well-known groups, including the vascular plants, vertebrates, and a small number of invertebrates such as corals and butterflies. If the true number of species is about 10 million, these focal groups add up to fewer than 5% of the total. Bacteria, mites, nematode worms, fungi, beetles, and other major environmental players are necessarily ignored, or at best given “morphospecies” code numbers. Even among the small minority of all species diagnosed and named, fewer than 1% have been subject to the kind of careful biological studies needed to undergird ecology and conservation biology. To describe and classify all of the surviving species of the world deserves to be one of the great scientific goals of the new century. In applied science, this completion of the Linnaean enterprise is needed for effective conservation practices, for bioprospecting (the search for new natural products in wild species), and for impact studies of environmental change. In basic science, it is a key element in the maturing of ecology, including the grasp of ecosystem functioning and of evolutionary biology. It also offers an unsurpassable adventure: the exploration of a little-known planet. Pieces of a worldwide biodiversity project are being put in place. In 1999, the Megascience Forum of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development created the Global Biodiversity Information Facility to coordinate and bring online all electronic databases for various groups of organisms. CD-ROMs of individual groups for different parts of the world proliferate, augmenting a continued flow of traditional print monographs. New electronic technology, increasing exponentially in power, is trimming the cost and time required for taxonomic description and data analysis. It promises to speed traditional systematics by 2 orders of magnitude. What is lacking and needed now is a concerted effort, comparable to the Human Genome Project (HGP), to complete a global biodiversity survey—pole to pole, whales to bacteria, and in a reasonably short period of time. If treated as a near-horizon goal instead of an eventual destination, the survey will multiply benefits in basic and applied science. The key choke point will also be quickly revealed. It is not the needed tools of informatics, most of which are already at hand. Nor is it a persuasive rationale, which can be readily expressed to scientists and the public alike. Rather, it is the severely limited capacity of museums and other collections-oriented facilities to collect, prepare, and analyze specimens, and the shortage of expert taxonomists to do the job. According to a recent survey by the Association of Systematic Collections, in North America only 3000 Ph.D.-level researchers are active in the exploration and description of the world's fauna and flora. At a rough guess, another 3000 are engaged elsewhere in the world. Museums, universities, and government agencies in the United States collectively spend between $150 million and $200 million each year on systematics research. These levels are incommensurate with the magnitude of the task and of the benefit it offers humanity. What will it cost to complete such a map? Suppose there are in fact about 10 million living species. The cost per species, using newly available informatics technology, might be $500, for a total of $5 billion spread over 10 to 20 years, hence roughly comparable to the HGP. As in that enterprise, per-unit cost can be expected to drop as technology is improved, while scientific and practical benefits from the accumulating knowledge grow exponentially.

The evolution wars : a guide to the debates

Abstract: The Evolution Wars draws on history, science, and philosophy to examine the development of evolutionary thought through the past two and a half centuries. It focuses on the debates that have engaged, divided, and ultimately provoked scientists to ponder the origins of organisms - including humankind - paying regard to the nineteenth-century clash over the nature of classification and debates about the fossil record, genetics, and human nature. Much attention is paid to external factors and the underlying motives of scientists. In these pages you will meet Charles Darwin's ebullient grandfather Erasmus, the contentious Frenchmen Georges Cuvier and Etienne Geoffroy Stain-Hillaire, new creationist Phillip Johnson, the brilliant J. B. S. Haldane, outspoken Richard Dawkins, and many other stars of the debates. The Evolution Wars explores the ten greatest controversies surrounding evolution in world history, with emphasis on recent times, including. * The infamous Scopes trial of the 1920s * The search for human origins and speculation about the ""missing link,"" spurred by the discovery of ""Lucy"" * The debate surrounding the new theory of paleontology proposed by Stephen Jay Gould * The rise of teaching ""creation science"" in public school as a subject on par with evolution. Although the author takes a strong stand on the side of evolution, he also shows respect for dissenting viewpoints. Thus, the book is intellectually rewarding not only for evolutionists but also for opponents of evolution theory, especially those who want to see how one of the great ideas of Western civilization resonates through time, both within and beyond the scientific community.

A Memorial Tribute to William L. Brown

Abstract: I knew him for 50 years, and I've never met anyone else remotely like him. Bill Brown was unique, and I don't think we'll ever see his like again, not just for the rareness of his character, but for the uniqueness of the time in which he lived and worked on his beloved ants. I've thought a lot about what made Bill different, what caused him to bum with such a pure inner light, and I've come up with this: the devotion to his art. His art. He was a scientist to the bone, a hard-core factual investigator, relentless for more information, skeptical in mood, all those things and yet . . . myrmecology, the study of ants, was an art form to him. It was the center of his creative life, and he was a very creative man. The passion he radiated about this subject turned younger people (we all seemed younger than Uncle Bill) into acolytes, into apprentices; and there was no prize the academic world could offer us more than a rare, measured compliment from the master, something like \"Yeah, that's pretty good; that's really interesting.\" I first met Bill through correspondence in 1947, when I was 18, and already taken my vows, so to speak, in ant taxonomy, just as he had been in contact with his mentor, William S. (Bill) Creighton, since he was 16. In natural history, addiction occurs early. In the summer of 1950, I rode a Greyhound bus all the way from Mobile, Alabama, to Boston, and stayed with Bill and Doris in their little apartment near Harvard, as they prepared to leave for Australia and momentous field research in that still myrmecologically underexplored continent. We worked in the MCZ ant collection together, and he gave me the kind of plain, sincere egalitarian treatment he was to bestow on dozens of other students in his field in the decades to follow. He welcomed you, he treated you with respect, he stood in awe with you before the intricacy

William Hamilton (1936-2000)

Abstract: David Haig, Naomi Pierce, and Edward Wilson of Harvard University discuss the life of their friend and colleague, evolutionary biologist Bill Hamilton, who recently died of malaria contracted on a trip to the Congo where he was trying to discover the origin of AIDS.