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posted by mrpg on Saturday April 21 2018, @12:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the butterflies-always-knew dept.

Freshwater fish diversity is harmed as much by selective logging in rainforests as they are by complete deforestation, according to a new study.

Researchers had expected the level of damage would rise depending on the amount of logging and were surprised to discover the impact of removing relatively few trees.

[...] Lead author Clare Wilkinson, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: "That such a small change can impact fish biodiversity is shocking and worrying. We expected to see a gradient from least affected in the selectively logged areas, to heavily impacted for the streams in oil palm plantations. Instead, we saw almost the same level of fish biodiversity loss in all altered environments."

[...] Researchers believe the reasons for these dramatic changes are likely to be down to a range of factors that affect stream habitats when trees are lost. Trees provide shade, creating cooler patches of stream that many fish need to spawn. Older, taller trees provide more of this shade, but they are the ones usually removed in selective logging. Leaf litter from these trees also helps to keep the streams cool and to concentrate food sources.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 21 2018, @04:57PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 21 2018, @04:57PM (#670104)

    Another possible angle on this is that sometimes(always?) ecosystems are designed by nature to have all the right elements/quantities of everything so it can work properly. We don't even understand how everything works, yet we go in there and bastardize "just a little part"(and that's when we're trying to do it right) and have the audacity to think everything is going to be OK. I'm not saying we can't touch anything. We have to survive too, but a little humility would go a long way. We can't have pockets/swathes of violent exploitation. We have to do a tiny bit of everything everywhere, like nature does it. This requires individual empowerment(education, technology, means, etc.) though, so there's not a big push for this societal evolution by the masters.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @08:39AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @08:39AM (#670276)

    Nature doesn't design anything you hippy.
    Read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, then when you think you can understand the concepts in it, stretch your mind a bit by following it up with his The Extended Phenotype.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @07:03PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @07:03PM (#670443)

      maybe you could open your mind to think about my point instead of being pedantic, like a pissy little nerd. trees "talk" to each other over miles about new invading fungus and develop defenses in advance, but if you don't like "nature's design" call it whatever you want, motherfucker.