The Origins of Aging
Shamim I. Ahmad in Aging: Exploring a Complex Phenomenon, 2017
During past geological eras, there have been five mass extinctions and the loss of biodiversity during the present Anthropocene era has been considered a sixth mass extinction. Hull et al. (2015) looked at this possibility. Human cultural behaviors have resulted in a significant reduction in the abundance of many species largely due to loss of habitat through human use of land for purposes such as agriculture, cities, and roadways to name a few. Hull et al. (2015) note that to date the number of species extinctions is small compared to the number of species mass rarities across the globe. Hull et al. (2015) argue that relying on the fossil record has made it difficult to collect unequivocal evidence as to past mass extinctions. In fact, a mass rarity due to a profound reduction in the abundance of a species can masquerade as extinction since the small number of remaining individuals in the species will be invisible in the fossil record. Past mass extinctions may have actually been widespread mass rarity events and if so the present global reduction in the abundance of many species would be on a par with past mass rarities/extinctions.
Diabetes and the ‘cascade of complexity’
Helen Cooper, Robert Geyer, Ian Botham in Riding the Diabetes Rollercoaster, 2018
Building on the idea of punctuated equilibrium are the concepts of frozen accidents and gateway events. Frozen accidents are best understood as the chance events of the past that have a significant impact on the future. In the shaping of our planet, ecosystem and human evolution, frozen accidents – both big and small – have played an enormous role. Think of the random elements of chance that positioned our planet at an appropriate distance from the life-giving rays of the sun, or the leap from single-celled creatures to multi-celled ones during the early phases of life on Earth. More dramatically, think of the mass extinctions that occurred at the end of the Permian period, 245 million years ago, when more than half of all species on earth disappeared, and during the Cretaceous extinction, about 185 million years later when, due to a massive asteroid strike, dinosaurs became extinct along with one-third of the world’s animal and plant life. Without this accident that was frozen into time, the lowly mammals (small furry creatures living in holes in the ground, too insignificant to be of interest to most of the dinosaurs) would have been unable to benefit from the new conditions, and human life as we know it may not have come about.
‘New’ Recombinant Ecologies and their Implications – with Insights from Britain
Kezia Barker, Robert A. Francis in Routledge Handbook of Biosecurity and Invasive Species, 2021
Nature conservation is often concerned with halting or reversing the declines of habitats, communities and species. Within this spectrum of target actions, those species of ecosystems considered to be ‘native’ and/or ‘natural’ are generally taken as priorities. However, as we move into the Anthropocene, globalisation increasingly tips the balance towards widespread declines and, ultimately, mass extinctions. Associated with these broader trends are the increasing emergence of novel ecological systems and ‘new’ species. It has also been argued that the extinction events in the past have triggered rapid speciation and the evolution of new biodiverse ecologies (e.g. Thomas, 2011, 2013). However, it is worth noting that the emerging ‘new’ species generally do not provide like-for-like compensation for those lost, and while in a geological time frame new biodiverse systems might emerge, in any reasonably human-related historical time frame, this is not the case (Rotherham, 2015, 2017a, 2017b). In the British context, species lost include the wolf, brown bear, beaver, wild boar, wildcat, golden eagle, etc. Emerging species include varie-gated yellow archangel, montbretia, hybrid wildcat, red deer x sika deer hybrid, polecat-ferret, Rhododendron ponticum hybrid, etc.
The Dog Who Barks and the Noise of the Human: Psychoanalysis After the Animal Turn
Published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2018
For all the rich vocabulary psychoanalysis gives us about object relations, nonetheless, conceptions of relationality still pivot around the human, an enlargement of the human that shrinks our “response-ability” to the wider world of objects that make us up (Gentile, this issue). “Psychoanalysis,” Katie Gentile says, “remains defended against knowing what we know, that there is a sublime intimacy of being co-emergent with all beings in our surroundings. But to acknowledge this is to also acknowledge that we are merely one type of object in a world of objects” (Gentile, this issue). During this time of devastating human-wrought transformations of the earth’s climate and “a massive anthropogenic erosion of biodiversity,” which scientists are describing as a “sixth mass extinction” (Ceballos, Ehrlich, and Dirzo, 2017), decentering the human has never seemed more necessary. It was also, arguably, the path not taken—or at least not consistently taken—by psychoanalysis.
Lesbian vitality: a provocation
Published in Journal of Lesbian Studies, 2021
Finally, part of why this idea of “lesbian erasure” is so disturbing to me is that we are actually living in a time of mass extinction on the planet. Climate change is creating the conditions of mass extinction in profound and disturbing ways; plants and animals are dying at a tremendous rate through no fault of their own. The environmental conditions of our planet are a crisis. Lesbian writers have been exploring this crisis—and other environmental crises—for decades, drawing our attention to these perilous times (Caldicott, 1978, 1984, 1992; Carson, 1962; Greenham Commons Collection; Griffin, 1978, 1992; Pettitt, 2006; Snitow, 2015). Why link lesbian lives to that rhetoric conceptually?
Education for the Anthropocene: Planetary health, sustainable health care, and the health workforce
Published in Medical Teacher, 2020
Stefi Barna, Filip Maric, Julia Simons, Shashank Kumar, Peter J. Blankestijn
Health professional students must be prepared to respond to the health effects of global environmental changes, including climate instability and the mass extinction of species.A simple re-framing of the curriculum allows a fresh understanding of professionalism and the integration of socio-ecological determinants of health into clinical practice.
Related Knowledge Centers
- Biodiversity
- Extinction
- Multicellular Organism
- Sampling Bias
- Hypoxia
- Speciation
- Great Oxidation Event
- Species
- Triassic–Jurassic Extinction Event
- Clade