Is biological diversity eternal?

Biological diversity is the set of living beings existing in the Universe. So far, evidence indicates that there is only biological diversity on our planet Mother Earth. According to scientific research, biological diversity began four billion years ago, only emerging when our planet was half a billion years old.

The knowledge and defense of diversity by humanity has been diverse and has evolved from the separation of humanity from the environment, as a result of the desire to conquer ecosystems (the conquerors called them territories) and peoples. In their imperial eagerness, in their excessive greed for wealth and the development of "bridge" cities, they wiped out ecosystems and people.

It can be said that naturalists begin the period of defense of "nature". They describe the species and their ecosystems, it is openly defined that the anthropic is social, the rest is nature, as if they were separated. From there is born the idea that ecosystems, nature is outside cities and that is why they are surprised when we indicate that cities are ecosystems modified by humanity for its own interpretation of how to live.

Among naturalists there is a whole pleiad of researchers and collectors, tais museums that filled with individuals of so many species in pursuit of science and education. Darwin would be especially pronounced within this group, who developed the theory of natural selection and evolution.

Then, already in the fifties to sixties of the 20th century, a group of people started imposing the conservationist. This trend emphasized the development of protectionist laws for species and ecosystems, both locally and internationally. Bioregions are protected with figures of Areas Under the Regime of Social Administration (ABRAE), National Parks, Natural Reserves, Ramsar Sites, Fishing Free Zones, Natural Sanctuaries and other protection figures. All to conserve existing species and ecosystems.

Social movements or collectives in defence of nature, calling themselves ecologists or environmentalists, have also emerged, all as a social process very different from what had a naturalist, biological and ecological tenor before. Protest, manifestos and environmental education as an instrument in the defense of nature With a lot of load of The conservationists, to save the nature, the species and current ecosystems.

But along the way, we get people who are researchers of the past, of the ecosystems and species before our lives, scientists of paleoecology. These studies developed by these scientists, teach us that biological diversity has been changing. Four thousand million years ago, life began with reducing, anerobic individuals who lacked oxygen. It was a biological diversity that predominated, that we cannot imagine in the present. When the species with chlorophyll appeared and had the capacity to process carbon dioxide in a series of chemical reactions that obtained as product The glucose and discarded oxygen and water, polluting the seas and primitive oceans, leaving that oxidative species that required oxygen to live developed.

Thus, contaminated with oxygen the primitive seas and oceans, a new biological diversity emerged and prevailed, starting a new evolutionary line. When the oxygen left the water, it contaminated the air (the atmosphere), giving raw material to the chemical rectification with the solar energy to form the oxidized oxygen, molecules of three atoms of oxygen called ozone. With the ozone the sky became blue, the ultraviolet rays did not enter and the biological diversity was able to conquer the emerged lands. Ecosystems developed outside water.

Palaeoecology reveals these different phases of ecosystems and biological diversity throughout the different eras and periods of our planet. It tells us that species change, disappearing and a new one appearing, as Darwin said, with adaptations to new demands of physical and chemical conditions (habitat) and of the other species of the community to which they belong.

Adaptation, natural selection, the evolution of species does not stop. Species disappear, new ones appear, others reappear. Biological diversity does not last forever. The problem is to know and manage ecological resilience as a reference for our action as a society (how humanity functions).

That is why, how much and how we are contributing to change the physical and chemical conditions of lands, territories, ecosystems, biomes and bioregions, to create stress in the current biological diversity and influence its evolution. Also why, how and how much we are abducting or extracting species for our consumption, in their different expressions as pets, as food, as raw material for products.

In conclusion, biological diversity is not eternal and humanity has contributed as a factor of change.