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Caselist.CitesClass[15]

Cites

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1		-====Biodiversity loss is irrelevant- species will adapt====
2		-**Willis ‘9** ~~Kathy J. Willis, Long-Term Ecology Laboratory, Oxford University Centre for the Environment and Department of Biology, University of Bergen. Shonil A. Bhagwat, Long-Term Ecology Laboratory, Oxford University Centre for the Environment. "Biodiversity and Climate Change." Science 6 November 2009: Vol. 326 no. 5954 pp. 806-807. ETB~~
3		-Another complexity, however, is the impact of climate change on already highly altered fragmented landscapes outside of protected areas. Over 75 of the Earth's terrestrial biomes now show evidence of alteration as a result of human residence and land use (10). Yet, recent case studies suggest that even in a highly fragmented landscape, all is not lost for biodiversity. ¶ It has long been assumed that in a fragmented landscape, the fragment size and its isolation are important factors in determining species persistence; the smaller and more isolated the fragment, the lower its occupancy. Yet few worldwide studies have attempted to quantify this relation. Prugh et al. (11) compiled and analyzed raw data from previous research on the occurrence of 785 animal species in 12,000 discrete habitat fragments on six continents. In many cases, fragment size and isolation were poor predictors of occupancy. The quality of the matrix surrounding the fragment had a greater influence on persistence: When the matrix provided conditions suitable to live and reproduce, fragment size and isolation were less important and species were able to persist. ¶ This ability of species to persist in what would appear to be a highly undesirable and fragmented landscape has also been recently demonstrated in West Africa. In a census on the presence of 972 forest butterflies over the past 16 years, Larsen found that despite an 87 reduction in forest cover, 97 of all species ever recorded in the area are still present (12). For reasons that are not entirely clear, these butterfly species appear to be able to survive in the remaining primary and secondary forest fragments and disturbed lands in the West African rainforest. However, presence or absence does not take into account lag effects of declining populations; a more worrying interpretation is therefore that the full effects of fragmentation will only be seen in future years.
4		-
5		-====Species loss won’t snowball or threaten human life====
6		-**Moore ‘98** (Senior Fellow – Hoover Institute, Climate of Fear, Pg. 99)
7		-Nevertheless, the loss of a class of living being does not typically threaten other species. Most animals and plants can derive their nutrients or receive the other benefits provided by a particular species from more than a single source. If it were true that the extinction of a single species would produce a cascade of losses, then the massive extinctions of the past should have wiped out all life. Evolution forces various life forms to adjust to change. A few may not make the adaptation but others will mutate to meet the new conditions. Although a particular chain of DNA may be eliminated through the loss of a species, other animals or plants adapting to the same environment often produce similar genetic solutions with like proteins. It is almost impossible to imagine a single species that, if eliminated, would threaten us humans.
8		-
9		-====Not key to ecosystem stability====
10		-**Sasaki and Lauenroth, 11** Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University. PhD from the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo. Member of the Ecological Society of Japan, and Winner of the Best Poster Prize in 2007 and 2008 at the Annual Meeting of Ecological Society of Japan (section: Plant Community and Species Diversity) – AND ** Professor at the Department of Botany at the University of Wyoming. PhD in Range Science from the University of Colorado (1/11/11, Dr. Takehiro Sasaki and Dr. William K. Lauenroth, "Dominant species, rather than diversity, regulates temporal stability of plant communities," Oecologia, 166(3):761-8 CS)
11		-We found a significant negative relationship between temporal stability and species richness, number of rare species, and relative abundance of rare species (Fig. 2a, d, h). This is counter to the growing body of empirical evidence that suggests that the temporal stability of communities increases with diversity (Tilman 1999; Cottingham et al. 2001; Valone and Hoffman 2003; Tilman et al. 2006). Many theoretical studies have focused on the portfolio and covariance effects (see ‘‘Materials and methods’’) in demonstrating how increased diversity can confer increased temporal stability (Tilman 1999; Yachi and Loreau 1999; Hughes and Roughgarden 2000). However, we found no significant relationships between summed variances and species richness and number of rare species (Fig. 3a, b), and we found significant positive relationships between summed covariances and species richness and number of rare spe- cies (Fig. 3e, f). Neither the portfolio nor the covariance effect contributed significantly to temporal stability in our communities. Rare species that generally exhibit greater temporal fluctuations than common species should more often exhibit years of zero abundance than common species because of their small population sizes (Lande 1993; Valone and Schutzenhofer 2007), resulting in synchrony in response to high interannual variability in rainfall. This probably dampened the expected stabilizing effect of species richness on temporal stability (Yachi and Loreau 1999). Valone and Barber (2008) also showed that covariances between most pairs of species in natural communities were more often positive than negative, potentially because of shared responses of coexisting species to fluctuations in a common resource base, pos- sibly driven by climatic fluctuations. Moreover, the rela- tionship between summed abundance and species richness was not significant (Fig. 3i), suggesting that overyielding was not important in our communities. A previous study has indicated that functional diversity is a good predictor of the overyielding effect of species richness (Griffin et al. 2009). Our findings suggest that, although we do not know the explicit mechanism, the lack of change in functional diversity, despite the increase in species rich- ness resulting from the removal of dominant species, might explain the absence of an overyielding effect. Thus, there were no operational stabilizing effects of greater diversity; rather, greater species richness supported by an increase in the number of rare species destabilized the communities.

EntryDate

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1		-2017-04-12 18:59:46.0

Judge

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1		-Ryan Stephens, Bryant Andrade, Forgot Last one

Opponent

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1		-Reagan RV

ParentRound

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1		-49

Round

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1		-Semis

Team

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1		-Warren Okunlola Neg

Title

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1		-7 - Case Defense - Biodiversity Loss - Brandeis Semis

Tournament

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1		-Brandeis