Natural Selection
Sometimes I’ve had occasion to wonder why we care about biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake? Why do some worry about the fact that mankind has been eating/pillaging/polluting species into extinction for millennia? Such is life, plain and simple, no? What other organizing principle can there really be other than the Darwinian “survival of the fittest,” even if that instinct is properly tempered by the “properly understood” requirement of thinking about things in the long-run and not just with respect for the balance sheet?
Well, it’s not so simple when biodiversity contains useful surprises that we are not always ready to capture and utilize for our human benefit. For example, when raw and random biodiversity can produce a plastic-eating fungi that could solve our human-created continent-sized floating landfills, it makes one think twice about eliminating the laboratory for such naturally produced advances.
To quote a properly deferential approach to nature (though later abandoned by global warming denier Michael Crichton), “Life finds a way.”
The New Print 
Greeting from over the ocean. Great post I shall return for more.