Comparative Behavioral and Biochemical Studies of Bowerbirds, and the Evolution of Bower-Building

Unprecedented human-induced changes in the environment are causing a rapid loss of species and their habitats. Common responses to the loss of biodiversity include habitat conservation and increased efforts to understand the origin and maintenance of biodiversity. While there is no doubt that these are critical activities, it is unclear the extent to which these and related conservation approaches can stem the tide of extinctions. Global threats such as climatic warming and ozone depletion place all species on the planet at risk and complicate attempts to determine the level of threat for particular species or communities. There must be an intensive effort to collect information about species before they go extinct or are relegated to reserves in degraded habitats. Otherwise, we never will have detailed information about the life history, specialized adaptations, social behavior, or relationships with other species for the vast majority of species that go extinct. For those left close to extinction in degraded habitats, in zoos, or in preserves, our ability to understand their ecological and evolutionary relationships to other species and the surrounding habitat will be greatly compromised. Wilson (1992) describes “unmined riches” locked in the diverse and poorly known biotas. He offers recent discoveries of natural seed stocks and the use of secondary compounds from plants as pharmaceutical agents as examples of such riches. But biologists have been less emphatic about the unmined intellectual resources that are lost with extinction. As species go extinct and habitats are degraded, the opportunity to use natural communities as sources of information about basic physiological, ecological, and evolutionary processes is lost forever. CHAPTER 18