Biodiversity
Welcome to c/Biodiversity @ Mander.xyz!
A community about the variety of life on Earth at all levels; including plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi.
Notice Board
This is a work in progress, please don't mind the mess.
2023-06-16: We invite our users to contribute resources for the sidebar.
2023-06-15: Looking for mods!
About
Biodiversity is a term used to describe the enormous variety of life on Earth. It can be used more specifically to refer to all of the species in one region or ecosystem. Biodiversity refers to every living thing, including plants, bacteria, animals, and humans. Scientists have estimated that there are around 8.7 million species of plants and animals in existence. However, only around 1.2 million species have been identified and described so far, most of which are insects. This means that millions of other organisms remain a complete mystery.
Over generations, all of the species that are currently alive today have evolved unique traits that make them distinct from other species. These differences are what scientists use to tell one species from another. Organisms that have evolved to be so different from one another that they can no longer reproduce with each other are considered different species. All organisms that can reproduce with each other fall into one species. Read more...
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Be kind and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
Quick Links
Resources
- The Convention on Biological Diversity (UN)
- The Biodiversity Heritage Library
- Maps of the World's Biodiversity
- Ecosystems and Human Well-Being (free e-book)
- Falling Fruit: Map of the Urban Harvest
Bypass Paywalls
- On Ethics 1 2 3 4
- WaybackMachine (archive.org)
- Behind the Overlay Browser Extension
- ladder
- Anna's Archive
- Bypass Paywalls Browser Extension (see readme for Chrome & mobile options.)
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Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
Plants & Gardening
Physical Sciences
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80% of soy is fed to animals for humans to exploit, so not really sure what you're getting at.
A plant based diet eliminates the vast majority of animal suffering (bonus points for reduced climate destruction, antibiotic degradation and future pandemic likelihood)
A plant based diet in the current food system produces massive amounts of animal suffering. If everything more complex than a nematode is sentient then you just have to accept that sentient suffering is the price for a large human population no matter what they are eating.
You produce far more animal suffering by farming/eating animals. Most of those animals people eat have to be fed, you know.
Sure, but you can’t let perfection be the enemy of progress.
That would be like saying, “Antibiotics cause digestive upset, and you already have a deadly bacterial infection in your colon causing digestive upset, so you’re just going to have to accept the infection because the antibiotics aren’t going to fix the digestive upset.”
The plants are already being grown. Whatever animal suffering exists from the plant being grown is going to exist either way. What we can do is eliminate or reduce the middle layer of additional animal suffering that comes from raising animals for food.