Paul R. Ehrlich

Can we save threatened animals and ecosystems in the midst of a mass extinction? The answer is a resounding yes, and Before They Vanish shows us how. In their ambitious, impassioned, and wise new book, conservation scientists Paul R. Ehrlich, Gerardo Ceballos, and Rodolfo Dirzo urge us to shift our thinking rather than bow our heads, grieving over the losses that humanity faces. This comprehensive look at a crucial but often overlooked aspect of...

Mass extinctions during the past 500 million y rapidly removed branches from the phylogenetic tree of life and required millions of years for evolution to generate functional replacements for the extinct (EX) organisms. Here we show, by examining 5,400 vertebrate genera (excluding fishes) comprising 34,600 species, that 73 genera became EX since 1500 AD. Beyond any doubt, the human-driven sixth mass extinction is more severe than previously assessed and is rapidly accelerating. The current generic extinction rates are 35 times higher than expected background rates prevailing in the last million years under the absence of human impacts. The genera lost in the last five centuries would have taken some 18,000 y to vanish in the absence of human beings. Current generic extinction rates will likely greatly accelerate in the next few decades due to drivers accompanying the growth and consumption of the human …

Objective: The present systematic review aimed to provide an overview of training load (TL), along with their responses, monitoring during training sessions in highly trained and elite adult women soccer players.Data source: Electronic databases searches (PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Ebsco) for relevant studies published in peer-reviewed journals were conducted, and eligibility criteria were based on the PICOS model in accordance with PRISMA guidelines.Study selection: Studies were considered as follows:(a) highly trained and elite adult (> 18 years) women's soccer players;(b) continuous (minimum1-week duration) TL monitoring in the context of the team routine;(c) TL collected from entire training session. Methodological qualitative assessments and risk of bias criteria were used for judging the studies.Data extraction: A total of 1,163 studies were identified, and 16 were included. The selected studies were fully screened to extract the population characteristics; the number of players; a type of study design; region where the study was performed; the main findings.Data synthesis: Accumulated external TL (ETL) during the pre-season was positively correlated to enhanced adaptations in intermittent exercise capacity. Daily ETL was negatively correlated to next-day self-reported fatigue and muscle soreness. Daily internal TL (ITL) was negatively correlated to postsession sleep duration and sleep efficiency. One study showed that higher accumulated player load and total distance were associated with injury.

How human modification of native habitats changes the feeding patterns and nutritional ecology of tropical birds is critical to conserving avian biodiversity, but tropical bird diets are laborious to investigate using the traditional methods of diet analysis. Stable isotope analysis provides a cost-effective and efficient proxy to identify general foraging patterns, especially when dietary shifts spanning multiple trophic levels have occurred due to ecosystem disturbance or transformation. To characterize the diets of forest bird species that persist in tropical agricultural countryside, we compared feather carbon (13C) and nitrogen (15N) isotope values of four species caught and radio-tracked in a 270 hectare forest reserve, smaller forest remnants (including mature forest, secondary forest, and riparian strips), and coffee plantations in mid-elevation (ca. 800-1400 m) southern Costa Rica. Bird habitat choice had a significant effect on diet composition as revealed by 13C and 15N values. Three of the four species studied showed evidence of significantly reduced consumption of invertebrates in coffee plantations, with the isotope values of two species (Tangara icterocephala and Turdus assimilis) indicating, by comparison, nearly a doubling of invertebrate consumption in forest remnants. Our results suggest that coffee plantations are deficient in invertebrates preferred by forest generalist birds that forage in both native forest remnants and coffee plantations. In this region, typical of mountainous American tropics, small forest remnants and a larger forest reserve provide critical dietary resources for native forest birds that utilize the agricultural countryside.

Humanity has triggered the sixth mass extinction episode since the beginning of the Phanerozoic. The complexity of this extinction crisis is centred on the intersection of two complex adaptive systems: human culture and ecosystem functioning, although the significance of this intersection is not properly appreciated. Human beings are part of biodiversity and elements in a global ecosystem. Civilization, and perhaps even the fate of our species, is utterly dependent on that ecosystem's proper functioning, which society is increasingly degrading. The crisis seems rooted in three factors. First, relatively few people globally are aware of its existence. Second, most people who are, and even many scientists, assume incorrectly that the problem is primarily one of the disappearance of species, when it is the existential threat of myriad population extinctions. Third, while concerned scientists know there are many individual …

Forum https://academic. oup. com/bioscienc e August 2022/Vol. 72 No. 8• BioScience 779 century to today, he would have a very different view of normal human behavior from that of an average American. We believe it is only by examining what is known of physically modern Homo sapiens’ entire 300,000-year history, including the ways in which human psychology has been shaped by both genetic and cultural evolution and their interactions, that the current threats to humanity can be understood and possibly averted. Indeed, if one expands the definition of human to include all our upright, toolimproving ancestors, human history must be considered to go back millions of years.Mismatch: Old genes and new perceptual needs Mismatches and culture gaps are foundational to civilization's grave present situation. Even the most casual consideration of human history brings to light dramatic mismatches (Ehrlich and …

Seventy five percent of the world's food crops benefit from insect pollination. Hence, there has been increased interest in how global change drivers impact this critical ecosystem service. Because standardized data on crop pollination are rarely available, we are limited in our capacity to understand the variation in pollination benefits to crop yield, as well as to anticipate changes in this service, develop predictions, and inform management actions. Here, we present CropPol, a dynamic, open, and global database on crop pollination. It contains measurements recorded from 202 crop studies, covering 3,394 field observations, 2,552 yield measurements (i.e., berry mass, number of fruits, and fruit density [kg/ha], among others), and 47,752 insect records from 48 commercial crops distributed around the globe. CropPol comprises 32 of the 87 leading global crops and commodities that are pollinator dependent. Malus …

“American collapse is ‘hypercollapse,’made of bots and ‘fake news’ and hacked elections, not just demagogues and speeches, which are radicalizing people already left ignorant by failing education institutions and civic norms”(1)A group of concerned climate scientists said in a recent wide-ranging peer-reviewed article:“In our view, the evidence from tipping points alone suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency: both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute”(2). Despite this, the deep, decades-old, and frequently voiced concerns of the scientific community have been generally ignored (3-7).