Year: 2022

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend with a consideration of "nature red in tooth and claw", which is the ubiquitous -- and tiresome -- media message on any nature broadcast. This out-dated viewpoint needs to be modified to bring it in line with current research thinking. It also has social Darwinism influences, which are also rather past their sell-by-date. Time to refresh the message. View in LinkedIn

THE PROPORTION OF AUTOTROPHS is part of the answer to the question of whether the fundamental fact of life is that "life eats life". There are some who like to count the accumulated weight of each group. And others who like to count noses. View in LinkedIn

BY WEIGHT. "The biomass of plants on land has been estimated to be around 1,000 times that of animals." Autotrophs who derive their energy from the sun win by sheer weight. http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150211-whats-the-most-dominant-life-form View in LinkedIn

BIOMASS allocation of living things on this planet is a funny way to describe a cartoon of planet earth. But if I told you that my zoo inhabitants were 4,000,000 kgs of species A, 1,500,000 kgs of species B, and 8,000 of species C, you would really be none the wiser. This is the Sumo wrestler argument. Better to say I had 13 great apes, 3 ruminants, and 100 smaller monkeys. Counting noses seems to make more sense. View in LinkedIn

1ST WHOPPING IGNORED CATEGORY. "Parasitism is the most common animal lifestyle, yet food webs rarely include parasites." https://lnkd.in/dvemNYR View in LinkedIn

2ND WHOPPING IGNORED CATEGORY. "Microbial and metazoan food webs are one. Believe it or not, this integrated approach is rare. Prokaryotic global biomass is at least 60% that of plants. Perhaps much more." And we only know a few percent of the species of bacteria, viruses and fungi. https://lnkd.in/dFC_Kpj View in LinkedIn

BY NOSES, BACTERIA: 4-6 x 10(30) cells. "The total amount of prokaryotic carbon is 60–100% of the estimated total carbon in plants, and inclusion of prokaryotic carbon in global models will almost double estimates of the amount of carbon stored in living organisms." Can be either heterotrophs or autotrophs. https://lnkd.in/dU7VJwv View in LinkedIn

BY NOSES, VIRUSES: TEN TO ONE. "The ocean contains many mysteries, but none so great as its viruses. Scientists estimate that there are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 virus particles in all the world’s seas. They outnumber all cellular life forms by roughly a factor of 10." But, confoundingly, viruses are neither autotrophs nor heterotrophs. They do not "troph", only reproduce. https://lnkd.in/dKbvY75 View in LinkedIn

THE VAST MAJORITY OF LIVING ORGANISMS on planet earth eat photons from the sun as their primary energy source, any way that you wish to count them. By biomass. By noses. View in LinkedIn

"ORGANISMS EATING EACH OTHER are only one of many types of well documented and important interactions among species." Simply put, deeply unpacked. https://lnkd.in/da5D-GT View in LinkedIn