As a fulfillment of the inspiring wish of the great E. O Wilson in his 2008 TED Talk, the Encyclopedia of Life is definitely worth checking out. An international collaboration, the collection is the manifestation of the hope of Wilson and thousands others of cataloguing all our worlds wondrous species, especially since many go extinct without humans ever knowing of their existence.
"Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth,
available everywhere by single access on command." -
Edward O. Wilson
Also, if this interests you.....
Be sure to look for Sustaining Life: How human health depends on biodiversity by Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein.
The foreword is by E.O Wilson and it is "edited and written by two physicians from Harvard Medical School, with contributions by more than 100 leading scientists from around the world." To top that off, the book is co-sponsored by various global environmental
organizations including the U.N Environment Programme, World Conservation Unity and others. Besides all that, I just like the text and it has some really interesting points. One of the first examples, and that I liked, was the Southern Gastric Brooding Frog (Rheobatrachus sil
us). This little guy, not too cute but very valuable in the way of medical science, is now extinct. The frogs raised their young in their stomachs, from the point of her swallowing the fertilized eggs, to vomiting up the tadpoles later.
What is really interesting about all this (to me and at-least a few other people anyway), is that the mother's released certain substances that were able to resist the normal (i.e., in all vertebrate species, including humans) acid and pepsin enzymes present in stomachs in order to digest food. Why I care is that people suffering from peptic ulcers, and conceivably other related issues, could have benefit from the insights gained in the research... However, the species found in the 1980's in Australian rain forests became extinct.
Other resources on Biodiversity include:
Just a side note: I hope everyone likes the links, I went kinda crazy with them.. well I am going to try to post more often and just keep info I think is interesting and I hope you do too!
