From: gardengallivant
Date: Fri Feb 14 2003 - 15:14:22 EST
Thank you for the article. A man to admire for his convictions and his
teaching.
Nicole
--- In compost_tea@yahoogroups.com, "John A. Perazzo" <jperazzo@l...>
wrote:
> September 24, 2002, Tuesday
> SCIENCE DESK
> INTO THE WOODS WITH: EDWARD O. WILSON; A Wild, Fearsome World
Under Each
> Fallen Leaf
> By JAMES GORMAN (NYT) 1960 words
> CONCORD, Mass. -- Dr. Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino university research
> professor and honorary curator in entomology of the Museum of
Comparative
> Zoology at Harvard University, winner of two Pulitzer prizes and scientif=
=
ic
> honors too numerous to recount, is on his hands and knees, pawing in the
> leaf litter near Walden Pond.
> He eases into a half-sitting, half-reclining position and holds out a
> handful of humus and dirt. ''This,'' he says, ''is wilderness.''
> Just a dozen yards from the site of Thoreau's cabin Dr. Wilson is delving=
=
> into the ground with a sense of purpose and pleasure that would instantly=
=
> make any 10-year-old join him. His smile suggests that at age 73, with a
> troublesome right knee, he still finds the forest floor as much to his
> liking as a professor's desk.
> These woods are not wild; indeed they were not wild in Thoreau's day.
Today,
> the beach and trails of Walden Pond State Reservation draw about 500,000
> visitors a year. Few of them hunt ants, however. Underfoot and under the
> leaf litter there is a world as wild as it was before human beings came t=
=
o
> this part of North America.
> Dr. Wilson is playing guide to this micro-wilderness -- full of ants, mit=
=
es,
> millipedes and springtails in a miniature forest of fungal threads and pl=
=
ant
> detritus in order to make a point about the value of little creatures and=
=
> small spaces. If he wrote bumper stickers, rather than books, his next mi=
=
ght
> be ''Save the Microfauna'' or ''Sweat the Small Stuff.''
> He begins his most recent book, ''The Future of Life,'' with a ''Dear
> Henry'' letter, talking to Thoreau about the state of the world and the
> Walden Pond woods.
> ''Untrammeled nature exists in the dirt and rotting vegetation beneath ou=
=
r
> shoes,'' he writes. ''The wilderness of ordinary vision may have vanished=
=
--
> wolf, puma and wolverine no longer exist in the tamed forests of
> Massachusetts. But another, even more ancient wilderness lives on.''
> In their world, centipedes are predators as fearsome as saber-toothed
> tigers, ants more numerous than the ungulates of African plains. And, in
> contrast to the vast preserves required by the world's most revered
> megafauna -- grizzlies and elephants, jaguars and condors -- maintaining
> biodiversity among the little creatures, shockingly rich in unexplored
> behavior and biochemistry, can be done on the cheap, in relatively tiny
> patches, as small as a few acres, around the world.
> Dr. Wilson is by no means turning from the grand plans for conservation.
> Indeed, he has suggested that 50 percent of the globe ought to be reserve=
=
d
> for nonhuman nature. But he is a realist, and, as he describes himself, '=
=
'a
> lover of little things.''
> He has been turning over logs and rocks looking into the world of insects=
=
> and other tiny creatures since he was a boy in Alabama and Florida. And h=
=
e
> has not stopped. During the walk, he talks enthusiastically about a comin=
=
g
> field trip to the Dominican Republic to investigate ants there, and about=
=
> the publication this fall of a book-length monograph on the genus Pheidol=
=
e
> describing all 625 species of ants, including 341 new to science.
> Researchers tend to share a kind of acquisitive passion to see, touch, gr=
=
asp
> the world. Nothing passes without comment. As he strolled along the shore=
=
of
> Walden Pond, on the way to the woods, Dr. Wilson spotted a butterfly and
> interrupted his discussion of the sizes of reserves needed for mammals,
> reptiles and amphibians, complete with references and citations to
> scientific studies.
> When the butterfly landed on the beach, Dr. Wilson stopped, leaning
forward
> like a heron on the hunt, and peered at it. ''It's hard to identify,'' he=
=
> said. ''It's a very beat-up little butterfly,'' probably the variety call=
=
ed
> a question mark, because of the design on its wings.
> Having reached the woods and having begun to talk about what lay under
the
> surface of the forest floor, he held the crumbled leaf litter and humus i=
=
n
> his hand as if he were savoring what lovers of certain wines call the ''g=
=
oût
> de terroir,'' or taste of the soil, a certain earthy specificity that the=
=
> wine owes to the ground, not the grape.
> ''When I go on a field trip,'' he said, ''providing you can get me up to =
=
the
> edge of a natural environment, I usually don't go more than a hundred yar=
=
ds
> or so in, because when I settle down immediately I start finding interest=
=
ing
> stuff.''
> ''This ground,'' he said, ''we see it as two-dimensional because we're
> gigantic, like Godzilla. When you just go a few centimeters down, then
> you're in a three-dimensional world where the conditions change
dramatically
> almost millimeter by millimeter. In one square foot of this litter you're=
=
> looking at into the tens of thousands of small creatures that you can sti=
=
ll
> spot with your naked eye.''
> The ground was drier than usual, and Dr. Wilson speculated that the
drought
> might have affected insects. Some he had hoped to see were not there. ''I=
=
f
> we looked long enough,'' he said, breaking open several rotting acorns, '=
=
'we
> would find entire colonies of very small ants living in an acorn.''
> As he moved on, from log to log, he uncovered relatives of cave crickets,=
=
> predatory rove beetles, termites, several varieties of ants, spiderlings,=
=
> beetle larvae -- not quite in the abundance he had hoped for. Still, the
> small wilderness was teeming.
> ''The exact perception of wilderness is a matter of scale,'' he writes in=
=
> ''The Future of Life,'' going on to say that ''microaesthetics'' is ''an
> unexplored wilderness to the creative mind.'' But he also notes that whil=
=
e
> microreserves are ''infinitely better than nothing at all, they are no
> substitute for macro- and megareserves.'' He continues, ''People can
acquire
> an appreciation for savage carnivorous nematodes and shape-shifting
rotifers
> in a drop of pond water, but they need life on the larger scale to which =
=
the
> human intellect and emotion most naturally respond.''
> Dr. Wilson is no sentimentalist, about nematodes or people. His proposals=
=
> for microreserves are practical and hard-headed. The idea is fairly simpl=
=
e.
> While areas of nearly 25,000 acres are needed to have a good chance at
> preserving most large forms of life, plants and insects can sometimes be
> preserved in plots of 25 or even 2.5 acres.
> In the Amazon, for instance, Dr. Wilson said, where the land is being
> savaged, ''You'll see hanging on the side of a ravine somewhere a patch a=
=
> farmer hasn't farmed, one hectare, to maybe 10.'' Such a small area may n=
=
ot
> catch the eye of most conservationists, he said, but, he added, ''The
> entomologist and the botanist is likely to say, hold on a minute.''
> A researcher, he said, may find species not found anywhere else, and such=
=
> plots can grow, with care and reseeding of the surrounding area. ''You ca=
=
n
> do this in most parts of the world, in most developing countries, where a=
=
> farmer or village elders would happily take a thousand bucks for you to s=
=
et
> aside 10 or 100 hectares and even hire them to help with the reseeding,''=
=
he
> said.
> But it is not just the developing world where biodiversity can be preserv=
=
ed,
> bit by bit. City parks may hold small wonders. Even at Walden Pond, in th=
=
e
> midst of the Massachusetts suburbs, he said: ''Many of the species you fi=
=
nd
> here are new to science. The basic biology of most of these things is poo=
=
rly
> known or not known at all.''
> In the Walden woods live two relatively unknown ant species in the genus
> Myrmica. ''They've been noticed, but not named or described,'' he said. A=
=
s
> to the nematodes and mites, he said, lifetimes can be spent and careers c=
=
an
> be made studying them.
> It is not, of course, entomologists, or even weekend naturalists, who nee=
=
d
> convincing about the richness of the forest floor. And there are many
> reasons to try to preserve biological diversity at the near-microscopic
> level and below. There is always potential economic value in new
biochemical
> discoveries. There is real and present economic value in clean air and
> water, to which the plants and insects and microbes contribute. In fact, =
=
Dr.
> Wilson points out, the life of the planet is built on a foundation of tin=
=
y
> creatures. In ecological systems it is the giants that stand on the
> shoulders of mites.
> Finally, there is the simplest argument of all, that life itself, in all =
=
its
> variations, is astonishing and mysterious, and that humans have a
> responsibility to preserve it.
> Under one log turned over on our walk, the environment was moist enough
to
> provide a widely varied selections of insects. Dr. Wilson picked up a goo=
=
ey
> white worm without a trace of discomfort. ''That is a fly larva, a maggot=
=
> actually,'' he said. ''I don't know the kind of fly. It's very slimy.''
> Asked if he might be demonstrating the very reason many people do not lik=
=
e
> to turn over logs and dig under leaves, he laughed. ''I'll admit it's an
> acquired taste,'' he said. ''Don't mistake me, I don't expect legions of
> people, particularly Americans, going out and seeing how many different
> kinds of oribatid mites or fly larvae they can find.''
> ''But,'' he continued, ''they can get a feel, one way or the other, that
> what's at their feet is not dead leaves and dirt, but a living world with=
=
a
> diversity of creatures, some of which are so strange to the average
> experience that they beat most of the things you see in Star Wars.''
> It is not so hard to imagine. Butterfly fanciers are legion. Dragonflies =
=
are
> now attracting watchers with binoculars. ''But mainly,'' he said, ''there=
=
's
> got to be some sense of the beauty and integrity and the extreme age of
> these areas.''
> At the next and last log, he pointed out a predatory rove beetle, a
> millipede (a detritovore), a spiderling, a nematode he caught only a glim=
=
pse
> of (''like a very tiny silvery strand''), more ants and a wood cockroach.=
=
As
> he began to describe the thousands of inoffensive species of cockroach
> throughout the world, a siren went off on a nearby street, a reminder of
> where he was.
> Dr. Wilson looked up from the timeless environment under the log, ''That'=
=
s
> sure a sound that Thoreau never heard.''
>
> Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
> posted by John A Perazzo, Las Vegas, Nevada who purchased a copy for
this
> compost tea discussion/class only.
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