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The biologist Dr. Henry Zuill wrote the following:
In recent years, much consideration and research has gone into studying biodiversity. In general, biodiversity studies have focused on conservation and how to preserve ecosystems. They have provided a whole new understanding and approach to saving endangered species. Instead of trying to save individual species, the approach now is to save intact ecosystems that are necessary for preserving and providing for endangered species – as well as for those not so endangered.
The word „biodiversity“ was first used at a conference at the Smithsonian Institute in September 1986, and reported in the November 1986 edition of Smithsonian Magazine. The idea of biodiversity was understood much earlier by some ecologists, but it began to spread widely as a result of the conference. Since then, it has been increasingly used and books have been written on the subject. So, what is the idea of biodiversity?
„Biodiversity“ obviously refers to plants, animals, and microbes, from bacteria to fungi, that collectively make up living systems – ecosytems. What are not so obvious are other meanings that have become attached to the word. It also refers to different populations of species, with their unique sets of genes and gene products. Even more importantly, it includes the collective ecological services provided by those different species and populations working together for each other, keeping our planet healthy and suitable for life. Baskin describes the relationship this way: „It is the lavish array of organisms that we call „biodiversity“, an intricately linked web of living things whose activities work in concert to make the earth a uniquely habitable planet.“
If I tried to completely list all ecological services, I would undoubtedly fail and besides, it would be tedious for you. But a few examples may be helpful. We know plants and animals maintain relatively constant atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and oxygen through photosynthesis and respiration. Many decomposers keep soil fertile. Biodiversity services purify water, detoxify toxins, moderate climate, and pollinate flowers. All organisms provide habitats and niches for other creatures.
Some ecological relationships are so necessary that involved organisms could not survive without them. An example of this is the mutually beneficial relationship between plants and mycorrhizal fungi. As many as 90 percent of plant species interact with either generalized fungi that can service a variety of plants, or with others that are highly selective in the plants with which they interact. Regardless, these fungi enable plants to obtain nutrients that would otherwise not be sufficiently available. Plants in turn provide carbohydrates for their fungi.
Several experiments have been made to examine biodiversity. Evidently highly biodiverse communities are more stable, more productive, have higher soil fertility, and are generally better off. Under stress, however, individual species population may noticeably vary in size but, fortunately, redundant services appear to cover for immediate lacks. Nevertheless, when we look at the broad picture, higher biodiversity communities are more productive and more able to recover from stress. As we look at the broad picture of biodiversity, it is clear that just as a body depends upon division of labor among cells, so an ecosystem depends upon division of labor provided by biodiversity. Just as there are important metabolic pathways in cells, so there are „ecochemical“ pathways in ecosystems. The nitrogen cycle, among many possibilities, is an example of this. Different organisms, with different enzyme systems, are essential links in these ecochemical pathways.
Redundant services
An interesting phenomenon in ecosystems is ecological services redundancy. This means that a service provided by one species may also be provided by other species. Some have suggested that redundancy may make some species unnecessary. Research reveals that above a certain level of plant biodiversity, soil fertility or productivity did not increase, even when biodiversity continues to increase. The „extra“ biodiversity appeared redundant. Does this mean that some species really are expendable?
Since all plants generally contribute to both soil fertility and productivity, it is dfficult to make a case for expendability based on these studies alone. What about other services provided by the same species? Are they not needed? As a result, ecologists have reportedly moved away from the species expendability position and may even refrain from using the word „redundancy“.
A single species may provide not just one, but several services, some of which may not be redundant. Consequently, with these variously overlapping and species-entwining redundancies, together with non-redundant services, it may not be possible to eliminate species with impunity after all.
Fundamentally, species making up an ecosystem need each other. As already seen, when under stress, populations of individual species may vary in size. Consequently, when one species is down, services it ordinarily provides will have to be provided by other species not as seriously affected. They cover for each other. Under different situations, of course, the roles may be reversed. Ecological backup is important and necessary for the long-range operation of ecosystems. When we look at a species in terms of both the services it provides and those it requires, we are essentially referring the „ecological niche“, generally defined as the role of a species in its environment. Since no two occupied niches can be identical, or redundant, without one of the two species being competitively excluded, it appears reasonable to say that two species cannot provide and require identical ecological services. There may be some overlap in services, however. When that happens, the niches of the two species may be compressed and thereby avoid or reduce competition. Different niches could lead to changes in the species itself.
Ecological Resiliency
Ecosystems are dynamic! They can withstand a certain amount of abuse without ecological collapse. When one species becomes extinct, a few other species, but not all other species, become extinct. Redundant systems prevent mass extermination. Lost services are provided by other species, as far as possible. Nevertheless there is a limit to the abuse an ecosystem can withstand. Any loss weakens it. There is always a price to pay for environmental mistreatment. Continued species loss could eventually lead to ecosystem collapse, of course.
Two ecosystems may be functionally similar, but not identical in species biodiversity. Biodiversity is flexible and resilient. Those two ecosystems reflect available biodiversity. Opportunism must be taken into account when trying to understand differences that actually exist. Redundancy undoubtedly plays a part in ecosystem resiliency. Species move into ecosystems when they can. Some species may not be found because they are not locally available. On the other hand, certain available propagules or offspring may not germinate, grow, or survive because necessary ecological services may not be available. When provided with those essential services, however, those species would be able to move into the ecosystem. The dynamic nature of ecosystems provides for making use of what species are available and able to function.
Biodiversity, redundancy, and resiliency permit an ecosystem to recover from severe damage and even ecosystem destruction. When this happens, the recovery is stepwise and may take a number of years. The process is called „ecological succession“.
All of these necessary ecosystem qualities, in summary, allow ecosystems to function, to adapt, and to recover from injury.
Biodiversity and Creation
What does biodiversity tell us about creation? Does it tell us anything about the Creator? Does it have anything to say about why it was created? Does it support a six-day creation?
I believe there is a connection between biodiversity and creation, although I have seen no such connection made by other authors. All of the attention that I have seen has been directed toward the immediate problem of conservation. Without biodiversity and its ecochemical and ecophysical services, it is doubtful that ecosystems, or possibly even life itself, could exist. This much seems clear.
Behe noted complex biochemical relationships in cells and suggested design to explain their origin. We tend to see the world through the „lenses“ of our scientific disciplines. Thus Behe, a biochemist, understood cell complexity to result from design. If we jump to the ecological level, at the other end of the spectrum of life, our „ecology glasses“ reveal unimaginable complexity there as well.
When we look broadly at the panorama of life and ecological relationships, we see that ecological complexity is built on layer upon layer of complexity, going all the way down through different hierarchical structural and organizational levels to the cell and even lower. Thus, if we think cytological complexity is impressive, what must we think when we realize the full scale of ecological complexity?
The biodiversity picture is still being developed. Some refer to biodiversity studies as an „emerging science“. Certainly there is much more to learn. It may not yet be possible to predict precisely what will happen when species are removed from an ecosystem, but we know an effect of some kind is certain. What has already been discovered, however, suggests that ecological relationships are essential. If biodiversity is as necessary for normal ecosystem operation as appears to be the case, it suggests that these services, and organisms providing them, had to have been simultaneously present right from the beginning. If these ecological interrelationships are really indispensable, then there is no easy evolutionary explanation. This suggests that ecology was designed.
The situation parallels what happened with the cell. As long as cells were visualized as mere sacks of nucleated protoplasm, and little else, it was quite possible for many to be content with the assertion that it originated through natural processes, otherwise known as biochemical evolution! The development of the electron microscope and biochemistry changed all of that. Yet, the claim continues. Nevertheless, such a claim must now get by an overwhelming amount of information documenting an extremely high level of internal cell structure. Complexity of the cell is now just too daunting to flippantly assert biochemical evolution to explain it, unless you close your mind and press on blindly and boldly. It has now become quite a feat to think about cells originating through biochemical evolution. And if cells could not originate naturally, then nothing else could.
In the same way as with the cell, as long as ecology appeared to be only a loose collection of organisms without binding interrelationships, one could likewise think of it as possibly originating through natural processes. But now that ecosystems appear to be held together by essential and unbelievably complex biodiversity, about which information is steadily increasing, we have a dilemma similar to the one faced when the intricate structure of a cell was discovered. Since ecology is built upon so much underlying multi-species complexity, trying to explain the origin of ecology by chance events painfully stretches one’s credulity.
Coevolution is often given as the way ecology came into existence. But, coevolution is defined as „joint evolution of two or more noninterbreeding species that have a close ecological relationship“. Note that ecological relationships had to preced coevolution. Consequently, coevolution appears to be no answer for understanding the origin of ecology. I have no problem with two species fine-tuning an existing ecological relationship; I do have a problem with using coevolution to explain the origin of ecological services. That is an altogether different problem. Remember, we are talking about an essential multi-species integrated service system – an entire integrated system. There seems to be no adequate evolutionary way to explain this. How could multiple organisms have once lived independently of services they now require?
Systems of living things supporting each other, the modus operandi of biodiversity, is exactly what we would expect to find from the Creator who said „Give, and it shall be given unto you“ (Lk 6:38) and „Freely ye have received, freely give“ (Mt 10:8). If this is the way heaven operates, would we not expect that it would also have been this way among creatues, including man, in the beginning?
It appears that life on earth actually makes life on earth possible. That is, life on earth makes it possible for life on earth to continue. This is not saying that life made (past tense) life on earth exist, of course. It is saying that the whole system had to be present for life to go on existing. If this is true, there is no room for gradually unfolding ecology. Is that overstating the case? Although life is a gift of the Creator, He evidently gave His creatures important roles by which they were to contribute to each other.
Biodiversity, as well as Scripture, tells us that God placed humans in nature. We need the services that are there for us. Our services are needed as well. We must contribute together to the safe and smooth operation of nature because it nurtures all of us. Is this not what the Creator meant when He told man to tend and keep the garden? This is the way of heaven – to give and to receive without worry – as taught us by Jesus himself.
Biodiversity is a powerful testimony about the Creator that confirms Romans 1:20: „From the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly observed in what he made“.
What does all this tell us about the six days during which God put ecosystems together? Biodiversity does not specify a six-day creation, it is not that finely focused, but it strongly supports such a possibility. It suggests that ecosystems were assembled during a very short time indeed. Otherwise, life could have failed for lack of mutually benefiting multi-species ecological services that are now requirements. Biodiversity consequently suggests that ecology was created.
Interestingly, much scientific energy has been devoted toward determining the age of earth, but little has been expended to investigate a six-day or even a short-duration creation. In fact, what of a scientific nature could be done to research this? Biodiversity studies, involving cross-species ecological integration, may be among the scientific pursuits that have the potential for supporting what Scripture emphatically states:
„In six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth“ (Ex 20:11).
Dr. Zuill is Professor of Biology at Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska. He holds a B.A. in biology from Atlantic Union College, an M.A. in biology from Loma Linda University and a Ph.D. in biology from Loma Linda University. Dr. Zuill also serves as curator of the Joshua C. Turner Arboretum, which is an affiliate of the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum.
- From In Six Days, published by John F. Ashton
In recent years, much consideration and research has gone into studying biodiversity. In general, biodiversity studies have focused on conservation and how to preserve ecosystems. They have provided a whole new understanding and approach to saving endangered species. Instead of trying to save individual species, the approach now is to save intact ecosystems that are necessary for preserving and providing for endangered species – as well as for those not so endangered.
The word „biodiversity“ was first used at a conference at the Smithsonian Institute in September 1986, and reported in the November 1986 edition of Smithsonian Magazine. The idea of biodiversity was understood much earlier by some ecologists, but it began to spread widely as a result of the conference. Since then, it has been increasingly used and books have been written on the subject. So, what is the idea of biodiversity?
„Biodiversity“ obviously refers to plants, animals, and microbes, from bacteria to fungi, that collectively make up living systems – ecosytems. What are not so obvious are other meanings that have become attached to the word. It also refers to different populations of species, with their unique sets of genes and gene products. Even more importantly, it includes the collective ecological services provided by those different species and populations working together for each other, keeping our planet healthy and suitable for life. Baskin describes the relationship this way: „It is the lavish array of organisms that we call „biodiversity“, an intricately linked web of living things whose activities work in concert to make the earth a uniquely habitable planet.“
If I tried to completely list all ecological services, I would undoubtedly fail and besides, it would be tedious for you. But a few examples may be helpful. We know plants and animals maintain relatively constant atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and oxygen through photosynthesis and respiration. Many decomposers keep soil fertile. Biodiversity services purify water, detoxify toxins, moderate climate, and pollinate flowers. All organisms provide habitats and niches for other creatures.
Some ecological relationships are so necessary that involved organisms could not survive without them. An example of this is the mutually beneficial relationship between plants and mycorrhizal fungi. As many as 90 percent of plant species interact with either generalized fungi that can service a variety of plants, or with others that are highly selective in the plants with which they interact. Regardless, these fungi enable plants to obtain nutrients that would otherwise not be sufficiently available. Plants in turn provide carbohydrates for their fungi.
Several experiments have been made to examine biodiversity. Evidently highly biodiverse communities are more stable, more productive, have higher soil fertility, and are generally better off. Under stress, however, individual species population may noticeably vary in size but, fortunately, redundant services appear to cover for immediate lacks. Nevertheless, when we look at the broad picture, higher biodiversity communities are more productive and more able to recover from stress. As we look at the broad picture of biodiversity, it is clear that just as a body depends upon division of labor among cells, so an ecosystem depends upon division of labor provided by biodiversity. Just as there are important metabolic pathways in cells, so there are „ecochemical“ pathways in ecosystems. The nitrogen cycle, among many possibilities, is an example of this. Different organisms, with different enzyme systems, are essential links in these ecochemical pathways.
Redundant services
An interesting phenomenon in ecosystems is ecological services redundancy. This means that a service provided by one species may also be provided by other species. Some have suggested that redundancy may make some species unnecessary. Research reveals that above a certain level of plant biodiversity, soil fertility or productivity did not increase, even when biodiversity continues to increase. The „extra“ biodiversity appeared redundant. Does this mean that some species really are expendable?
Since all plants generally contribute to both soil fertility and productivity, it is dfficult to make a case for expendability based on these studies alone. What about other services provided by the same species? Are they not needed? As a result, ecologists have reportedly moved away from the species expendability position and may even refrain from using the word „redundancy“.
A single species may provide not just one, but several services, some of which may not be redundant. Consequently, with these variously overlapping and species-entwining redundancies, together with non-redundant services, it may not be possible to eliminate species with impunity after all.
Fundamentally, species making up an ecosystem need each other. As already seen, when under stress, populations of individual species may vary in size. Consequently, when one species is down, services it ordinarily provides will have to be provided by other species not as seriously affected. They cover for each other. Under different situations, of course, the roles may be reversed. Ecological backup is important and necessary for the long-range operation of ecosystems. When we look at a species in terms of both the services it provides and those it requires, we are essentially referring the „ecological niche“, generally defined as the role of a species in its environment. Since no two occupied niches can be identical, or redundant, without one of the two species being competitively excluded, it appears reasonable to say that two species cannot provide and require identical ecological services. There may be some overlap in services, however. When that happens, the niches of the two species may be compressed and thereby avoid or reduce competition. Different niches could lead to changes in the species itself.
Ecological Resiliency
Ecosystems are dynamic! They can withstand a certain amount of abuse without ecological collapse. When one species becomes extinct, a few other species, but not all other species, become extinct. Redundant systems prevent mass extermination. Lost services are provided by other species, as far as possible. Nevertheless there is a limit to the abuse an ecosystem can withstand. Any loss weakens it. There is always a price to pay for environmental mistreatment. Continued species loss could eventually lead to ecosystem collapse, of course.
Two ecosystems may be functionally similar, but not identical in species biodiversity. Biodiversity is flexible and resilient. Those two ecosystems reflect available biodiversity. Opportunism must be taken into account when trying to understand differences that actually exist. Redundancy undoubtedly plays a part in ecosystem resiliency. Species move into ecosystems when they can. Some species may not be found because they are not locally available. On the other hand, certain available propagules or offspring may not germinate, grow, or survive because necessary ecological services may not be available. When provided with those essential services, however, those species would be able to move into the ecosystem. The dynamic nature of ecosystems provides for making use of what species are available and able to function.
Biodiversity, redundancy, and resiliency permit an ecosystem to recover from severe damage and even ecosystem destruction. When this happens, the recovery is stepwise and may take a number of years. The process is called „ecological succession“.
All of these necessary ecosystem qualities, in summary, allow ecosystems to function, to adapt, and to recover from injury.
Biodiversity and Creation
What does biodiversity tell us about creation? Does it tell us anything about the Creator? Does it have anything to say about why it was created? Does it support a six-day creation?
I believe there is a connection between biodiversity and creation, although I have seen no such connection made by other authors. All of the attention that I have seen has been directed toward the immediate problem of conservation. Without biodiversity and its ecochemical and ecophysical services, it is doubtful that ecosystems, or possibly even life itself, could exist. This much seems clear.
Behe noted complex biochemical relationships in cells and suggested design to explain their origin. We tend to see the world through the „lenses“ of our scientific disciplines. Thus Behe, a biochemist, understood cell complexity to result from design. If we jump to the ecological level, at the other end of the spectrum of life, our „ecology glasses“ reveal unimaginable complexity there as well.
When we look broadly at the panorama of life and ecological relationships, we see that ecological complexity is built on layer upon layer of complexity, going all the way down through different hierarchical structural and organizational levels to the cell and even lower. Thus, if we think cytological complexity is impressive, what must we think when we realize the full scale of ecological complexity?
The biodiversity picture is still being developed. Some refer to biodiversity studies as an „emerging science“. Certainly there is much more to learn. It may not yet be possible to predict precisely what will happen when species are removed from an ecosystem, but we know an effect of some kind is certain. What has already been discovered, however, suggests that ecological relationships are essential. If biodiversity is as necessary for normal ecosystem operation as appears to be the case, it suggests that these services, and organisms providing them, had to have been simultaneously present right from the beginning. If these ecological interrelationships are really indispensable, then there is no easy evolutionary explanation. This suggests that ecology was designed.
The situation parallels what happened with the cell. As long as cells were visualized as mere sacks of nucleated protoplasm, and little else, it was quite possible for many to be content with the assertion that it originated through natural processes, otherwise known as biochemical evolution! The development of the electron microscope and biochemistry changed all of that. Yet, the claim continues. Nevertheless, such a claim must now get by an overwhelming amount of information documenting an extremely high level of internal cell structure. Complexity of the cell is now just too daunting to flippantly assert biochemical evolution to explain it, unless you close your mind and press on blindly and boldly. It has now become quite a feat to think about cells originating through biochemical evolution. And if cells could not originate naturally, then nothing else could.
In the same way as with the cell, as long as ecology appeared to be only a loose collection of organisms without binding interrelationships, one could likewise think of it as possibly originating through natural processes. But now that ecosystems appear to be held together by essential and unbelievably complex biodiversity, about which information is steadily increasing, we have a dilemma similar to the one faced when the intricate structure of a cell was discovered. Since ecology is built upon so much underlying multi-species complexity, trying to explain the origin of ecology by chance events painfully stretches one’s credulity.
Coevolution is often given as the way ecology came into existence. But, coevolution is defined as „joint evolution of two or more noninterbreeding species that have a close ecological relationship“. Note that ecological relationships had to preced coevolution. Consequently, coevolution appears to be no answer for understanding the origin of ecology. I have no problem with two species fine-tuning an existing ecological relationship; I do have a problem with using coevolution to explain the origin of ecological services. That is an altogether different problem. Remember, we are talking about an essential multi-species integrated service system – an entire integrated system. There seems to be no adequate evolutionary way to explain this. How could multiple organisms have once lived independently of services they now require?
Systems of living things supporting each other, the modus operandi of biodiversity, is exactly what we would expect to find from the Creator who said „Give, and it shall be given unto you“ (Lk 6:38) and „Freely ye have received, freely give“ (Mt 10:8). If this is the way heaven operates, would we not expect that it would also have been this way among creatues, including man, in the beginning?
It appears that life on earth actually makes life on earth possible. That is, life on earth makes it possible for life on earth to continue. This is not saying that life made (past tense) life on earth exist, of course. It is saying that the whole system had to be present for life to go on existing. If this is true, there is no room for gradually unfolding ecology. Is that overstating the case? Although life is a gift of the Creator, He evidently gave His creatures important roles by which they were to contribute to each other.
Biodiversity, as well as Scripture, tells us that God placed humans in nature. We need the services that are there for us. Our services are needed as well. We must contribute together to the safe and smooth operation of nature because it nurtures all of us. Is this not what the Creator meant when He told man to tend and keep the garden? This is the way of heaven – to give and to receive without worry – as taught us by Jesus himself.
Biodiversity is a powerful testimony about the Creator that confirms Romans 1:20: „From the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly observed in what he made“.
What does all this tell us about the six days during which God put ecosystems together? Biodiversity does not specify a six-day creation, it is not that finely focused, but it strongly supports such a possibility. It suggests that ecosystems were assembled during a very short time indeed. Otherwise, life could have failed for lack of mutually benefiting multi-species ecological services that are now requirements. Biodiversity consequently suggests that ecology was created.
Interestingly, much scientific energy has been devoted toward determining the age of earth, but little has been expended to investigate a six-day or even a short-duration creation. In fact, what of a scientific nature could be done to research this? Biodiversity studies, involving cross-species ecological integration, may be among the scientific pursuits that have the potential for supporting what Scripture emphatically states:
„In six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth“ (Ex 20:11).
Dr. Zuill is Professor of Biology at Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska. He holds a B.A. in biology from Atlantic Union College, an M.A. in biology from Loma Linda University and a Ph.D. in biology from Loma Linda University. Dr. Zuill also serves as curator of the Joshua C. Turner Arboretum, which is an affiliate of the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum.
- From In Six Days, published by John F. Ashton
