Tag Archives: Ecosystem Diversity

Ecosystem Diversity and Species Diversity The coarse-filter–fine-filter metaphor captures the strategic value of protecting ecosystems as a vehicle for maintaining species diversity, but the relationship between ecosystem-level conservation and species level conservation is more complex than this. Some of this complexity is captured in two related questions that have long …

The Instrumental Values of Species When we think about the instrumental value of a species, we are likely to go straight to the basics. Materialistic uses of a species may be the core of instrumental values, but this is not the whole story. People also value species for purely aesthetic …

Ecosystem Diversity Flying over the countryside in an airplane you see patterns: blue patches and ribbons that are lakes and rivers, dark green patches that are forests, brown patches that are tilled fields, and so on. These are the coarse manifestations of an enormously complicated web of ecological interactions, a …

What is Biodiversity? A tropical forest ringing with a cacophony of unseen frogs, insects, and birds; a coral reef seething with schools of myriad iridescent fishes; a vast tawny carpet of grass punctuated by herds of wildebeest and other antelope  these images are well known, and for many people they …