Mathieu GT

So let’s start this course with a very important point. Life is very exceptional in the universe. It’s not the rule. This is why our planet Earth is extraordinary. That’s very, very important. I will remind you the words of Charles Darwin. He wrote, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. ​

 

So, this is why our planetis really struggling. The same order, or the original species, Charles Darwin wrote that from famine andfrom death, from the struggle of existence, somany species are not even evolved. But we need to understand during thiscourse, why there is not only one species that dominates with a very high fitnessand there are a plethora of species. So this is why we are startingbiological diversity.​

 

Why study biological diversity?

Why diversity so interesting. First of all we need to understandthat diversity is the emergent and fundamental characteristics of life. So diversity makes our Earth alive. And life makes our Earth diverse. We need to understand why biologicaldiversity is autopoietic and autocatalytic and we will do it. I will explain to you the meaningof these during this first lecture.​

 

What is biodiversity?

What is biodiversity? In 1968, Raymond Dasmann wrote inthe book the work, biological diversity. But it’s only 1998 that Edward Wilson titled the acts of our Congresswith the word biodiversity. So you can see that biologicaldiversity’s very young science​

 

Up to now, we recognize different types of biological diversity. We have species diversity, genetic diversity, ecosystem diversity,molecular diversity. But the most used is the conceptof species diversity. To understand what is species diversity,we need to clarify the term species. We have different definition, biological, morphological, typological,chronological and genetical. Biological species is the mostuseful to define the species.​

 

According to Ernst Mayr, the words reproductively isolatedare the key words to define species.​

 

This introduce us to the idea of web of life. Even physicists are interestedin what is life. For instance, Erwin Schrodinger wrotea book about what is Life? The physical aspects of the living cells. Fritjof Capra would later move to biological lifestyles, wrote the book The Web of Life. In this book, he wrote, the more westudy the major problems of our time, the more we come to realize that theycannot be understood in isolation. They are systematic problems which means they are interconnected and interdependent.​

 

There is an important differencebetween an autopoietic system with biodiversity and one without. The energy captured anddissipated is what species are present. And the interaction we give our solar. The ecological network or the web of lifeis characterized by relation among parts, feedbacks, autopoiesis and autocatalysis.

 

We can say that biodiversityis autocatalysis is a reaction where improved cells is the catalyst for the reaction. So a species adds a catalyst inthis autocatalysis reaction or speciation because they canincrease the rate of speciation and reduce the energy they need to. A set of speciation lends can be said out of analytic. If we produce enough speciesto allow a system to continue. So the native side can be self sustained.​

 

Processes for the autocatalysis ofbiodiversity includes cooperation, facilitation, niche displacement,avoidance of competition. But I will tell you aboutthese during the next lecture​