this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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Biodiversity

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Biodiversity is a term used to describe the enormous variety of life on Earth. It can be used more specifically to refer to all of the species in one region or ecosystem. Biodiversity refers to every living thing, including plants, bacteria, animals, and humans. Scientists have estimated that there are around 8.7 million species of plants and animals in existence. However, only around 1.2 million species have been identified and described so far, most of which are insects. This means that millions of other organisms remain a complete mystery.

Over generations, all of the species that are currently alive today have evolved unique traits that make them distinct from other species. These differences are what scientists use to tell one species from another. Organisms that have evolved to be so different from one another that they can no longer reproduce with each other are considered different species. All organisms that can reproduce with each other fall into one species. Read more...

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How the Biosphere 2 experiment changed our understanding of the Earth (www.bbc.com)
submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
8 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

A good write-up of an amazing (and cautionary) story that should be more widely known.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Great article! So I understand the place is still standing and we're still experimenting? Had no idea!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

It does seem so, but I'm guessing it's mostly a tourism venue at this point.

What I find interesting is how the experiment effectively taught us some humility:

But the most important lesson from the biospherians' experience, experts agree, is the realisation of how difficult it would be to live anywhere else than on Earth. Humans can't exist in isolation; they come in "biospheric packages", as Nelson puts it, and recreating these complex systems is no easy task. While Tilman reckons that some of the problems may have been solvable, it was clear during his visit to the facility that it was a long way away from being able to sustain human life. "It really impacted me when I saw that, because… my initial guess was that you would probably make it work," he says. Now, "I firmly believe that this really is our only planet ever".