Scientists say the current extinction rate exceeds events in the distant past, and human activity is contributing to it. “It is changing the trajectory of evolution on a global scale and destroying the conditions that make human life possibleEcologists warn in their new study. – “This is an irreversible threat to the preservation of civilization and the suitability of the future environment for the life of Homo sapiens.”.

Extinction became visible with disaster

Why are species disappearing?

• One of the reasons for this is the mass hunting of animals whose fur or other body parts, for example, are valuable to poachers, collectors, fashion and medicine.
• They can also be killed by other animal species that are invasive to a particular area, that is, introduced from other parts of the planet. Every ecosystem exists in a certain balance where predators control the number of smaller herbivores or predators, which in turn eat animals or plants lower in the food chain. But when an artificially introduced species appears in the environment, it can become more aggressive and skillful at hunting, begin to breed, displace competitors, and eventually change the ecosystem.
• However, the biggest impact on this process is Climate change and habitat destruction.

We regularly witness mass deaths of seabirds, fish unable to breathe, poisoning of sea lions due to algal blooms caused by abnormal temperature, and even this year mass deaths of penguin chicks, resulting in the complete extinction of four out of five colonies. This year’s cubs in Antarctica. Even insects are showing an alarming decline in their numbers. If this continues, it will sooner or later lead to population aging and extinction.

Ecologist Gerardo Ceballos of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and biologist Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University estimated that species extinctions began in AD 1500 and compared them to the last 500 million years. They found this We’ve caused 73 vertebrate species to become extinct in the last 500 years.

It is worth noting that the concept of “genus” is different from the concept of “species” and is somewhat broader. Genus is a taxonomic classification that groups organisms that are closest together, such as siblings, into a family tree. For example, we belong to the genus “Human” (Homo), which includes Homo sapiens (intelligent human), Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals), Homo heidelbergensis (Heidelberg man), Homo erectus, Homo habilis and many more species.

Implications for an interconnected ecosystem

It’s hard to say exactly what awaits us, but we can easily guess. The biosphere we live in is extremely interconnected. It co-evolved with all species, changing and adapting to certain weather conditions, food availability, living in the environment of certain animals. The loss of species that perform specific functions in the ecosystem brings changes for other organisms and can cause serious, cascading effects.

• A well-known story about rabbits being brought to Australia on ships in 1788. Rabbits became a serious pest, multiplying on an unheard of scale, and by the late 1800s a veritable uncontrolled nightmare for residents. Animals simply mowed down vegetation, leading to soil erosion, the extinction of many species of Australian animals (the scale is still unknown), the destruction of crops and other consequences.
• Another story happened in Central America. A sharp increase in the number of malaria cases was recorded there after the disappearance of mosquito-eating frogs.

According to predictions, the extinction rate will increase. If we continue on our current trajectory and all currently extinct species disappear from the face of the earth by 2100, the equivalent loss of 300 years since 1800 would take 106,000 years at normal background extinction rates.

The most vulnerable species are often the most unique, but they are forgotten on the planet. With them, we will lose millions of years of unrepeatable evolutionary history and the critical functions they perform in nature, helping to maintain balance and biological cycles.

sixth extinction

Evolution is an extremely slow process. It took millions of years to create a functional replacement for species that disappeared during previous extinction events. The last of the five great extinctions occurred 66 million years ago during the transition from the Cretaceous to the Paleogene, hence the name Cretaceous-Paleogene. During that period, 17% of all families, 50% of all genera, and 75% of all animal species became extinct. All ammonites, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs disappeared from the seas, and the percentage of sessile animals dropped to about 33%. During this time, all non-avian dinosaurs became extinct. The threshold event was large-scale and there was significant variability in extinction rates. Mammals (descendants of synapsids) and birds (descendants of theropod dinosaurs) became the dominant land animals. All of the new animals no longer resembled the previous ones.

Therefore, we can safely say that all animals that have become extinct in our time will never roam the planet again, unless mankind “resurrects” them with the help of technology. The first steps in this direction are already being taken for mammoths and thalassins.

But the current sixth mass extinction, or Holocene, is much more than a mass catastrophe caused by climate change. From plastic to pesticides, from habitat loss to poaching, we give wildlife no rest. We need urgent political, economic and social efforts on an unprecedented scale to prevent species extinction and all the possible consequences that await humans. Unlike the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs, we are aware of our actions and have the ability to change direction.