this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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Biodiversity

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Welcome to c/Biodiversity @ Mander.xyz!

A community about the variety of life on Earth at all levels; including plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi.



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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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Abstract

While the impacts of black (Rattus rattus) and brown (Rattus norvegicus) rats on human society are well documented—including the spread of disease, broad-scale environmental destruction, and billions spent annually on animal control—little is known about their ecology and behavior in urban areas due to the challenges of studying animals in city environments. We use isotopic and ZooMS analysis of archaeological (1550s–1900 CE) rat remains from eastern North America to provide a large-scale framework for species arrival, interspecific competition, and dietary ecology. Brown rats arrived earlier than expected and rapidly outcompeted black rats in coastal urban areas. This replacement happened despite evidence that the two species occupy different trophic positions. Findings include the earliest molecularly confirmed brown rat in the Americas and show a deep ecological structure to how rats exploit human-structured areas, with implications for understanding urban zoonosis, rat management, and ecosystem planning as well as broader themes of rat dispersal, phylogeny, evolutionary ecology, and climate impacts.

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