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Sometimes I find myself telling people I encounter only every once in a while — like cab drivers, friend’s friends, the guy at the deli counter — what I do for a living.

“I work on protecting threatened wildlife in the tropics, like in rainforests,” I say.

“So what kind of animals are we talkin’ ‘bout here?” Sal asks as he daubs more spicy brown mustard on my pastrami sandwich.

“Oh, all sorts of stuff,” I say. “You know, elephants, monkeys, frogs…”

“Frogs!” Sal exclaims, mustard flying across the kitchen as his knife swings up with his full-body motion of disbelief. “Watcha tryna save a frog for?”

The deli. Home base of so many great conversations.

I get questions like this all the time. Which prompts the question: What are we tryna save frogs for?

In fact, let’s continue that line of questioning. What are we trying to save spiders for? What are we trying to save sharks for? What are we trying to save chimpanzees for?

For goodness sake, what are we trying to save elephants for?

Sal’s question, despite my facetiousness, isn’t a bad one. In fact, it’s a good one. It dives at a deeper question of conservation’s purpose and mindset.

Public attitudes about conservation, and, in a lot of ways, the actual work of conservation in the past century have focused on the big species. The iconic ones. Jaguars. Whales. Pandas.

Two reasons for that. Number one: Everyone knows a whale. You see a whale, the average guy on the street says “That’s a whale.” You see a Terrestrial Arboreal Alligator Lizard? Average guy on the street says “I don’t know, Iguana?”

The Terrestrial Arboreal Alligator Lizard. Or, I don’t know, an iguana? Photo by Luis Canseco Márquez.

Number two: They’re all mammals. Humans gravitate more towards species that look like us. So conservationists focus on these classic animals — pandas, whales, etc. — to keep people interested. But are these species more important?

We could get into a whole conversation (or, this is only me talking, so let’s say… a personal diatribe) on the philosophy of evolution, environmental ethics and the inherent value of organisms. But let’s talk about this with some measure of empirical evaluation.

Let’s define “ecological value” for now as relative value to ecosystem stability. As in, which species are more important to keep an ecosystem intact? Different researchers have had different theories on which species hold together an ecosystem. Plant-life is the obvious first thought, right? Every ecosystem needs a flow of nutrients, and where do nutrients always start? In plants. Photosynthesis takes sunlight (available in some quantity pretty much everywhere except cave ecosystems) and turns it into sustenance. Every species that doesn’t photosynthesize eats something that does, or eats something that eats something that does or eats something that eats something that eats something that does. You get my point. Without plants — life has nothing to stand on.

But in the later 20th century, a group of scientists made a series of discoveries that pointed to a much different reality. One scientist, a guy named Robert Paine, spent a lot of time knee deep in a patch of the Pacific Northwest coast. He, one by one, removed every individual of a predatory starfish species from one location over time. In another location, he left everything untouched.

Pisaster ochraceus, the deadly predator starfish Robert Paine focused his studies on. Look at its deadly… purple things. Ok, I don’t know that much about starfish anatomy. CC 2.0/Photo by Jerry Kirkhart.

The micro-ecosystem in the location without the predatory starfish ended up collapsing. Which led Dr. Paine — and plenty of other scientists, in what is now a widespread belief because of repeated studies in other ecosystems with other criteria — to theorize that predators, often apex predators, stabilize ecosystems.

Let’s look at a theoretical example to understand why.

If an apex predator, such as a Lion, disappears or drops in population, the dominant prey species, such as an Impala, will see population growth. Fewer Lions = Fewer Dead Impala. Impala eat plants. With more Impala, they’ll be consuming more plants. If the Impala population grows out of control, they would eat all the plants. So now, by removing the Lions, we’ve killed all the plants. And once all the plants are dead, so will be the Impala.

But you could say the same about the Impala, right? If you removed the Impala, wouldn’t you have the same impact? Not quite.

Based on how food chains (or, to be more exact, food webs) work, an ecosystem will usually have more prey species than predator species. In that Lion-Impala ecosystem, you might also have Thompson’s Gazelle, Grant’s Gazelle, Wildebeest, Hartebeest, Topi, Ostrich, Reedbuck, a few species of Duiker, Eland, African Buffalo, Zebra and Giraffe. Those are all prey species. And I didn’t even list smaller mammals or birds, let alone lizard and fish species. Predator species other than Lions might include Cheetahs, Leopards, Painted Dogs, Crocodiles, two or three Jackal species and two Hyena species. Maybe some Bat-eared Fox and Honey Badger to eat the smaller stuff.

Remove one prey species — an ecosystem has more to fall back on. Remove one predator species — the ecosystem has a lot less wiggle room.

The Bat-eared Fox, who could eat the smaller stuff. CC 2.0/Photo by Derek Keats.

We know that apex predators play an outsize role in ecosystem regulation. But sometimes other species carry a lot of weight as well. Elephants, while not eating anyone else, topple so many trees, some researchers believe they keep grasslands from becoming forests. Parrotfish eat and excrete so much coral, they make much of the sand you find on the beach near a reef.

These are what Robert Paine called “keystone species.” Like the keystone in an arch, if you take these species out of the equation, the whole structure is a lot more likely to collapse than if you take out some other random stone. A lot of keystone species are predators. Some are not. A lot of the time, keystone species are also the species conservationists tend to focus public attention on — like tigers, jaguars and elephants. These species garner public attention and help regulate ecosystem stability more than other species. It’s a win-win for conservationists.

Hold on, wait a second. What about those frogs? Weren’t we going into this whole thing to learn about why saving some random frog is important?

Yes, we were. And I’m not done.

Some species make more of an individual difference. But all those other species add up. One by one, as they go extinct, you’ll have the same impact as losing a predator species: ecosystem collapse.

Imagine, from my earlier thought experiment, instead of the Lions, the Impala (and most of the other prey species I listed) went extinct. Now the predators have nothing to eat, and they’ll die, too. Only the plants would remain — and even then, not for long. I’d bet all the Impala and Zebra dung helped fertilize the soil. Or, the herbivores ate a few species enough to prevent them from overtaking the whole ecosystem. I don’t even know what all the ramifications might be.

The mighty Impala.

Neither do conservation scientists. Yes folks, despite all we understand about how ecosystems work, we don’t understand everything. And we never will. But there’s one thing we know for certain: If we let those little species, the ones who couldn’t possibly mean anything, go extinct, we might not witness any immediate crises.

But right now, scientists say we’re experiencing extinction at 1,000 times the normal rate. If all those species play some role in their ecosystems and die off one by one, wouldn’t that mean that eventually…?

Yup. Definitely trouble.

And if our theoretical ecosystem of plants, Impalas and Lions collapses, it’s not as if everything else nearby will be fine. Every ecosystem, from the poles to the rainforest, connects to another ecosystem. Mess one up, you mess up the one next door. Which affects the one next to that, and the one next to that, and so on and so forth.

You live in one of those ecosystems. Your food comes from one or a few of them, too. So does your water. One species, any species anywhere, going extinct puts us one step closer to global ecosystem collapse. I’m not trying to be an alarmist — it’ll take plenty of extinction to collapse life as we know it. But we’re on a path toward plenty of extinction.

That’s one reason saving every single species, no matter how obscure, unheard-off, freaky-looking, isolated or unimportant it might seem to be, is vital to the survival of life on Earth. Yeah, I said it.

Life. On. Earth.

So one reason we’re tryna save frogs ‘round here, is ‘cause they’s worth it, ya know? For everyone. Saving that frog is part of the difference between a world we can live in and one we can’t.

Sal, I’ll take that pastrami to go. We have a lot of work to do.

Walter Gaona works as a forest guardian in the Copalinga Nature Reserve in southern Ecuador. Rainforest Trust and our local partner Fundación Jocotoco founded Copalinga in 2018, with an ecolodge for tourists already in place. Walter spends much of his time maintaining trails for visitors to enjoy and “learning how life unfolds in the reserve.”

But the more trying aspect of Walter’s role is monitoring the 370-acre property for harmful activities. Rainforest Trust Guardians strive to safeguard the protected areas we help create across the tropics. They are essential in this region of Ecuador, where premontane forests hold the greatest concentration of biodiversity in the country. Logging, mining, agriculture and human settlements threaten the region.

Part of the forest that Walter Gaona patrols. Photo by Doug Wechsler.

Walter receives his honorary inspector’s license. Photo by Fundación Jocotoco.

“In a healthy forest, you can find many things, among which I like to find very rare bird nests,” Walter shared. At least 432 bird species have been recorded in Copalinga, along with monkeys, endangered frogs and butterflies. But the illegal wildlife trade threatens animals there, and Walter said the most difficult part of his job is blocking poachers and their dogs from entering the reserve.

But Walter is now armed with more skills in combating illicit activities, along with the authority to take legal action against forest exploiters in Copalinga. In January, Walter attended a two-day training session to become an honorary inspector by the Ecuadorean Ministry of the Environment.

“Being an honorary inspector means that I can act in cases of extraction and/or transport of wild species in the reserve and other places,” Walter said. “After the training, I have legal tools to prevent these activities from happening.” He learned tactics to handle poachers and other threats, and received a license that underpins his work in Copalinga.

Walter shared his appreciation of being recognized for his work to protect the rainforest: “For me it is an honor to have been taken into account in this space. I am also grateful for this designation because I can contribute to taking better care of our ecosystems.”

Rainforest Trust projects thrive thanks to the important conservation work of people on the ground. Our Voices from the Rainforest series brings you news from our projects in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific — from the perspectives of those working in and for the rainforests.

Header image: The Vulnerable Military Macaw, found in Copalinga. Photo by Michell Leon.

Ever see a field guide to the trees of North America? They’re hefty, with lots of pictures or drawings of elms, poplars, spruces, maples and such.

But have you ever seen a field guide to trees of a tropical region, such as the Chocó or the Congo Basin? I haven’t. And you know why?

Because it would be massive. Like… unpublishable.

The Sibley Field Guide to Trees of North America covers over 600 species. 426 pages.

A Field Guide to the Families and Genera of Woody Plants of Northwest South America? 920 pages. And it only covers families and genera — not even every specific species.

Ecologists and naturalists have long known that tropical forests are home to a higher tree diversity than temperate forests. This makes sense — tropical ecosystems often have higher species diversity.

Look at all those different species!

But, as the authors of a new paper (whose findings I’ll get to) start off by saying, the ecological work of drift and species competition tends to reduce diversity in individual ecosystems.

To oversimplify:

Drift refers to what will happen in a population as it reproduces. Dominant traits become more prevalent and recessive traits become less prevalent. (Everyone remembers their high school biology class?) So dominant traits tend to win out and replace recessive traits, and the overall diversity of a population decreases.

Species competition is when two species who use the same resources, or occupy the same niche, compete until one species wins and the other moves elsewhere or goes extinct. So, by eliminating one of those species, competition reduces diversity.

These two phenomena should mean that in individual ecosystems, one species should dominate each niche, with maybe a few other rarities present. This is true in both tropical and temperate ecosystems. The tropics have higher biodiversity despite this (at least in part). Tropical areas have more isolated ecosystems per area and more resources, leading to more niches in those ecosystems.

But why are some individual ecosystems in the tropics home to upwards of1,000 tree species?

You would think, based on the processes of drift and competition, that one or even a few species should dominate tropical forests. Not so fast.

“In the tropics, all of the tree species appear to have a similar competitive advantage,” says Taal Levi of Oregon State University, lead author of a recent paper describing an explanation to this staggering diversity. “There is an abundance of species, but few individuals of each species… there has to be a mechanism that keeps one species from becoming common, becoming dominant.”

Turns out, such a mechanism does exist.

The paper describes how microorganisms — sometimes fungi and arthropods — who live in the soil around trees target the seeds of individual tree species. As the trees drop seeds, these microorganisms attack them. But they only attack the seeds of that one species. They don’t care about seeds from other species.

See those little seeds in that fig? They don’t stand a chance against a fungus.

But these creatures live in “rings” around the trees in question, not everywhere. So if a tree’s seeds happen to end up further away, such as after a ride on the wind or a bird, they can germinate and grow, no problem. Of course, those seeds are less numerous than the seeds that fall to the ground near the parent tree. Those apple-fell-not-so-far-from-the-tree seeds? Murdered by a fungus.

These specialized microorganisms can prevent individual species from taking over an ecosystem. And this could explain the sky-high tree species diversity even over small areas of tropical forests. No one species can gain a foothold on domination because dropping a whole bunch of seeds nearby won’t do anything. This theory was actually first proposed almost 50 years ago, by ecologists Dan Janzen and Joseph Connell. But this new paper provides concrete evidence backing them up.

So don’t worry trees, the tropical forests are all for you. What would they be without you? But if you think something is out to get your seeds…

Yeah. Something is. But it’s making those ecosystems all the more interesting.

Author Note: One of the co-authors of this paper, John Terborgh, is a member of Rainforest Trust’s Council.

Rainforest Trust’s work to protect habitats for threatened species is grounded in cutting-edge conservation science. But in this series, we explore the basics of conservation science and how they inform Rainforest Trust’s scientists.

Our species loves to categorize things. Categories can be simple to understand, such as spotting the distinction between red and blue. Categories can be complex, such as identifying the distinctions between Impressionist and Fauvist paintings. Categories can also confound, such as trying to understand the distinctions between grunge metal, prog metal and thrash metal; each style should be in one category of “fork in the garbage disposal.” (Opinions of the author on the musical quality of any style of music are not reflective of the opinions of Rainforest Trust on the musical quality of any style of music.)

Inevitably, we ended up categorizing our fellow inhabitants of this fine planet. Early in our recorded history we figured there were different species; we could see that a crab differed from a turtle. But species were classified on an ad hoc basis solely based on visual evidence. Hence, we often got things wrong. We figured out that birds and lizards and mammals were different, but we sometimes mis-categorized bats as birds and dolphins as fish. We had the beginnings of taxonomy, but no way to move forward. Until, in the 18th century, came Carl Linnaeus.

A diagram of the taxonomical hierarchy.

Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist with an idea. He decided on a rigid, hierarchical classification in which every species’ description fits into the same number of ranked levels. Let me break that down. Linnaeus decided on six levels of categorization: kingdom, class, order, family, genus and species. We later added phylum between kingdom and class. Kingdom is the broadest category and species is the most specific. (We’re going to ignore an even broader category, “domain,” for the sake of this blog post.)

Much like a forced game of 20 Questions, Linnaeus used the three kingdoms of animal, mineral or vegetable. Minerals are, of course, not alive and no longer classified like living things. Each kingdom is divided into phyla, which are divided into classes. Classes are divided into orders, orders are divided into families, families are divided into genera (plural of “genus”) and genera are divided into species.

Get all that? No? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Stay with me, I promise I’ll get you there.

The first thing to remember is the order of the ranked levels. While Linnaeus may not have created a simple way to remember these levels and their sequence, many since have attempted to do so with mnemonics, often involving King Philip. The most common: “King Philip comes over for good spaghetti.” Sometimes, King Philip comes over for great spaghetti. For others, King Philip is gluten intolerant and comes over for good soup. Some even beg of him, “King Philip, come out for goodness sake!” I do not know why King Philip has entrenched himself but I can only imagine the stress of having to go places to eat mediocre spaghetti has taken its toll on the poor monarch.

The best taxonomy mnemonic I’ve found is, “King Penguins congregate on frozen ground sometimes.” This is true, King Penguins will (sometimes) congregate on frozen ground. Sometimes, King Penguins congregate on other types of ground, including ground that isn’t frozen. Not only is this taxonomically relevant, it’s ecologically thoughtful.

Now that we can remember the order, the next thing to understand is how the ranked levels work. Let’s follow the King Penguin from kingdom to species.

King Penguins congregating on frozen ground, which they do sometimes.

At the broadest category, King Penguins are in the kingdom “Animalia,” the Animal kingdom. This is the same category as humans, lobsters, cockroaches, coral (yes, coral), tuna and worms. Not in the animal kingdom: plants, fungi, bacteria or algae, to name a few. Most species on earth, by a wide margin, are not in the animal kingdom.

Within the Animal kingdom, King Penguins reside in the phylum “Chordata.” Often confused with vertebrates, Chordata includes the sub-phylum “Vertebrata,” the vertebrates, but also includes some species that aren’t quite vertebrates. (The actual distinctions are complicated.)

Within Chordata, King Penguins fall into class “Aves,” the birds. All birds are Aves, all things not in Aves are not birds. Within Aves, we classify King Penguins into the order “Sphenisciformes,” or penguins. All penguins are Sphenisciformes, all things not in Sphenisciformes are not penguins.

Now, in the case of penguins, there is only one family, “Spheniscidae.” This happens sometimes. Other bird orders, like Passeriformes, the passerines (perching birds), have many families such as Troglodytidae, the wrens, or Emberizidae, the buntings. But penguins have only one.

An indigo bunting, which is in the same Class as a penguin (Aves), but not the same family.

Within the family Spheniscidae, King Penguins are in the genus “Aptenodytes.” (Genera and species are always written in italics.) The only other species in Aptenodytes are the Emperor Penguins. The other living penguin species are in other genera, but only King Penguins and Emperor Penguins are in Aptenodytes.

Finally, the species name of the King Penguin is “patagonicus,” which bring us to Linnaeus’ seminal legacy: good spaghetti. This is the so-called “binomial nomenclature,” whereby we refer to a species by its genus and species names. For example, the King Penguin’s scientific name is Aptenodytes patagonicus. The Emperor Penguin is called Aptenodytes forsteri, with the same genus name but a different species name. There are other species named patagonicus, such as Lyncodon patagonicus, the Patagonian weasel. (The only relation between the Patagonian weasel and the King Penguin are that they are found in the Western Southern Hemisphere.) But only one species has the name combination Aptenodytes patagonicus. That’s great spaghetti.

Linnaeus’ legacy

We still eat some of Linnaeus’s spaghetti. While many of his rules and categorizations have changed, the principles have stayed the same. We still use binomial nomenclature. Other sublevels (subspecies, subphylum, subfamily, etc.) were added to further classify differences within levels but every species still fits into the same rigid hierarchy. We still even use some of Linnaeus’s names for species, such as Panthera leo, his name for lions.

Two Critically Endangered Hirolas. Photo by Hirola Conservation Programme.

For conservation, taxonomy is king. (See footnote #1) The concept of species is just one color in the tapestry of biodiversity, but a dominant color. If we thought a Hirola (Beatragus hunteri, classified as Critically Endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List) was the same as a Hartebeest (Alcelaphus buselaphus, Least Concern), there wouldn’t be a serious effort to save the Hirola. Cue: Extinction.

While not always clear-cut, taxonomy is a useful, and (pun intended) evolving tool. There are programs to save entire classes and programs to save subspecies. But to conserve wildlife, we don’t need to understand every facet of taxonomy. We only need to see it as a useful, fluid organization filled with good spaghetti.

1. Philip