Comments on: Dear New Scientist

By: Brittany Sears

Brittany Sears — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 02:11:23 +0000

A very good point! At the American Society of Parasitologists meeting this summer, parasite diversity was mentioned several times in the context of conservation. There are likely far more endangered parasites than there are endangered hosts, since each host houses dozens of species, some of them exclusive to that host. There’s an Amphibian Ark – where’s the yacht full of trematodes??

By: Ed Rybicki

Ed Rybicki — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:06:48 +0000

Dorian!! Viruses not alive?? Shame on you…yes they are – in the continuum of life, from molecules through to whales – and yes, they most certainly do contribute to biodiversity. In a VERY big way.

True, if there were no hosts there would be no viruses – but then, if we had no E coli or no plants we’d be dead too, so who’s the more dependent organism?

If eukaryotes disappeared? Well, +90% of viruses would carry on just fine, given most cellular organisms are prokaryotes, and therefore most viruses infect prokaryotes, so that’s where the greatest diversity is.

Of course, there’s less money in looking at those, so we don’t, very much.

By: Ed Rybicki

Ed Rybicki — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:04:52 +0000

The final – on TV…. I was out of the country for the whole thing!

By: DMcILROY

DMcILROY — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:40:57 +0000

BTW – did you get to see any of the games?

By: DMcILROY

DMcILROY — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:40:27 +0000

Yeah, well, since viruses aren’t even properly alive, I guess they don’t count for biodiversity. Just for the sake of argument, if all the eukaryote viruses disappeared tomorrow, would we (that is, their hosts) miss them? On the other hand, if all their eukaryote hosts disappeared, then where would the viruses be? The point is, viruses don’t need special care to protect their diversity. Protecting hosts protects virus diversity just fine.

DMc

By: Ed Rybicki

Ed Rybicki — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 15:16:44 +0000

Cellism: yes, most biologists (and civilians) are…but they need to learn!! If most of the biological and genetic diversity on the planet is in the form of viruses, then we won’t understand much about large-scale ecological interactions without them.

Like the fact that 5% of the oxygen generated on this planet is due to cyanophages.

Or viruses that alter the behaviour of insects and other animals so as to to get themselves passed on to secondary hosts…so who knows what is “normal” behaviour?

By: César Sánchez

César Sánchez — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 11:57:02 +0000

That’s an excellent point.

I confess I tend to be a “cellist” (although I don’t play the violoncello) and a “bacterist”. But I’m working on it.

I am really disappointed with the way biodiversity is generally understood and explained, even by scientists who should know much better. And I wrote a blog post about it:

Year of Biodiversity: only for cute animals and plants?
http://twistedbacteria.blogspot.com/2010/03/year-of-biodiversity-only-for-cute.html

Note that in my post I used the general terms “microbes” or “microorganisms” to avoid falling on “bacterism” or “cellism”…