We are fragile, not the Earth

摘要

It is old news to say that life on Earth constitutes an intricate web of mutual relationships so crucial to each of its many partners that disruption to one can be catastrophic to others. This is the basic concept of ecology, and especially of synecology (the ecology of communities of species living together).rnNevertheless, it is useful to be reminded that there is no place on Earth for which we know everything about all its inhabitant species - from its largest plants and animals to its microbes and viruses - and about the relationships that exist betweenrnthem. Such an understanding of the whole biosphere, then, is beyond our reach.