Titre :	Comparative behavioral and biochemical studies of bowerbirds and the evolution of bower-building
Type de document :	texte imprimé
Auteurs :	Gerald Borgia, Auteur
Année de publication :	1996
Importance :	p 263-276
Langues :	Anglais (eng)
Catégories :	SCIENCES DE LA VIE
Mots-clés :	ETUDE BIOCHIMIQUE  BOWERBIRDS  BOWER-BUILDING
Résumé :	Unprecedented human-induced changes in the environment are causing a rapid loss of species and their habitats. Common responses to the loss of biodiversity include habitat conservation and increased efforts to understand the origin and maintenance of biodiversity. While there is no doubt that these are critical activities, it is unclear the extent to which these and related conservation approaches can stem the tide of extinctions. Global threat such as climatic warming and ozone depletion place all species on the planet at risk and complicate attempts to determine the level of threat for particular species or communities. There must be an intensive effort to collect the information about species before they go extinct or are relegated to reserves in degraded habitats. Otherwise, we never will have detailed information about the life history, specialized adaptations, social behavior or relationship with other species for the vast majority of species that go extinct. For those left close to extinction on degraded habitats in zoos or in preserves, our ability to understand their ecological and evolutionary relationships to other species and the surrounding habitat will be great compromised. One author describes “unmined riches” locked in the diverse and poorly known biotas. He offers recent discoveries of natural seed stocks and the use of secondary compounds from plants as pharmaceutical agents as examples of such riches. But biologists have been less emphatic about the unmined intellectual resources that are lost with extinction. As species go extinct and habitats are degraded, the opportunity to use natural communities as sources of information about basic physiological, ecological and evolutionary processes is lost forever. As with basic research in other areas, the natural historical sciences also offer prospects for unforeseen intellectual and economically important discoveries. The grim prospect of the loss of much biodiversity is tempered somewhat by the availability of many well-trained experts in a variety of natural historical fields, by the maturation of these fields in which intellectually significant issues have been identified, and the explosion of new tools to decode the information locked up in natural systems. Molecular methods for phylogenetic reconstruction, methodologies for comparative studies and automated equipment that allows collection of data on diverse sorts of organisms all are becoming available and are being put to use in field studies. It is a sad coincidence that, as we are gaining sophisticated tools for exploring the natural history of organisms, there is a dramatic loss of species that can be studied. We are at a critical time when we have the opportunity to collect some of the most detailed and useful natural history information before many species go extinct. A broadly based biodiversity initiative that emphasizes both conservation and natural historical studies directed as species in still vibrant populations must be considered the only appropriate response to the loss of biodiversity.
Numéro du document :	A/BIO
Niveau Bibliographique :	2
Bull1 (Theme principale) :	BIOLOGIE
Bull2 (Theme secondaire) :	BIOLOGIE GENERALE

Comparative behavioral and biochemical studies of bowerbirds and the evolution of bower-building [texte imprimé] / Gerald Borgia, Auteur . - 1996 . - p 263-276.
Langues : Anglais (eng)

Catégories :	SCIENCES DE LA VIE
Mots-clés :	ETUDE BIOCHIMIQUE  BOWERBIRDS  BOWER-BUILDING
Résumé :	Unprecedented human-induced changes in the environment are causing a rapid loss of species and their habitats. Common responses to the loss of biodiversity include habitat conservation and increased efforts to understand the origin and maintenance of biodiversity. While there is no doubt that these are critical activities, it is unclear the extent to which these and related conservation approaches can stem the tide of extinctions. Global threat such as climatic warming and ozone depletion place all species on the planet at risk and complicate attempts to determine the level of threat for particular species or communities. There must be an intensive effort to collect the information about species before they go extinct or are relegated to reserves in degraded habitats. Otherwise, we never will have detailed information about the life history, specialized adaptations, social behavior or relationship with other species for the vast majority of species that go extinct. For those left close to extinction on degraded habitats in zoos or in preserves, our ability to understand their ecological and evolutionary relationships to other species and the surrounding habitat will be great compromised. One author describes “unmined riches” locked in the diverse and poorly known biotas. He offers recent discoveries of natural seed stocks and the use of secondary compounds from plants as pharmaceutical agents as examples of such riches. But biologists have been less emphatic about the unmined intellectual resources that are lost with extinction. As species go extinct and habitats are degraded, the opportunity to use natural communities as sources of information about basic physiological, ecological and evolutionary processes is lost forever. As with basic research in other areas, the natural historical sciences also offer prospects for unforeseen intellectual and economically important discoveries. The grim prospect of the loss of much biodiversity is tempered somewhat by the availability of many well-trained experts in a variety of natural historical fields, by the maturation of these fields in which intellectually significant issues have been identified, and the explosion of new tools to decode the information locked up in natural systems. Molecular methods for phylogenetic reconstruction, methodologies for comparative studies and automated equipment that allows collection of data on diverse sorts of organisms all are becoming available and are being put to use in field studies. It is a sad coincidence that, as we are gaining sophisticated tools for exploring the natural history of organisms, there is a dramatic loss of species that can be studied. We are at a critical time when we have the opportunity to collect some of the most detailed and useful natural history information before many species go extinct. A broadly based biodiversity initiative that emphasizes both conservation and natural historical studies directed as species in still vibrant populations must be considered the only appropriate response to the loss of biodiversity.
Numéro du document :	A/BIO
Niveau Bibliographique :	2
Bull1 (Theme principale) :	BIOLOGIE
Bull2 (Theme secondaire) :	BIOLOGIE GENERALE