Wild Tobago

Dr Anjani Ganase surveys what the world is losing through human activities, and makes an appeal for living within our means in the natural world.   On May 22, we observe the International Day for Biological Diversity. Biodiversity denotes the variety of living organisms that make up the natural world around us. The world as we know it is the culmination of evolution over billions of years, the result of the slowly ever-changing global environment. Organisms evolve and co-evolve with each other and the environment. The biodiversity of ecosystems is the result of balance between competition for resources and external disturbance events that create opportunities for new life. The diversity of habitats and organisms not only sustain biodiversity but is essential to our survival. Plant stocks don’t just supply the fruits and vegetables we eat today but provide the genetic stock for future supplies in a changing climate. The terrestrial and marine habitats provide ...

Corals and sponges have been around for about 500 million years; humans for just about 300,000 years. Will the mass extinction that our species has precipitated see humans returning in a hardier long-surviving form (like the corals)? Or will we go the way of the dinosaur? Dr Anjani Ganase takes the long view of life from its inception in the oceans. Coral or dinosaur? That is the question. After the earth’s violent creation, over 4.5 billion years ago (bya), the next 700 million years were relatively stable as the earth began to cool. Steam turned to rain and the rain filled our oceans. It is also thought that some of our water was imported through a series of bombardments by meteorites. The oceans were much wilder back then, as the moon was much closer, and so the tidal changes were a thousand times more extreme than now. Over time, the moon has moved further away, about 3 cm away from earth every year.  Yet, life on earth did not begin for another billion years. It is t...