The global economy hasn’t just opened up new markets for humans, it’s been a catalyst for bringing species to into habitats where they don’t belong. Biologists have recorded the many places where these invasives have thrown foreign ecosystems into disorder. However, there hasn’t been a lot of research that looks at how globalization has changed the way we calculate biodiversity.
A new study, published in today’s Nature, argues that human economic activity should be included as a major factor for predicting the total number of species in a given ecosystem. Based on research that compares shipping activity to the proliferation of lizards called anoles (pronounced ah-NOL-ee) in the islands of the Caribbean, the authors believe that economic activity should be added as a parameter to the theory of island biogeography, which attempts to explain an ecosystem’s biological richness based on its size and a few other factors, including the rate at which new species arrive and old ones go extinct.
via Wired
Image: Félix Pharand-Deschênes/Globaïa
