Spineless
creatures under threat, from worms to bees: study
The
vital tasks carried out by tiny "engineers" like earthworms
that recycle waste and bees that pollinate crops are under threat
because one fifth of the world's spineless creatures may be at risk
of extinction, a study showed on Friday.
31
August, 2012
The
rising human population is putting ever more pressure on the
"spineless creatures that rule the world" including slugs,
spiders, jellyfish, lobsters, corals, and bugs such as beetles and
butterflies, it said.
"One
in five invertebrates (creatures without a backbone) look to be
threatened with extinction," said Ben Collen at the Zoological
Society of London (ZSL) of an 87-page report produced with the
International Union for Conservation of Nature.
"The
invertebrates are the eco-system engineers," he told Reuters.
"They produce a lot of the things that humans rely on and they
produce them for free."
The
report said that invertebrates, creatures that have no internal
skeleton, faced loss of habitat, pollution, over-exploitation and
climate change.
The
'services' they provide - helping humans whose growing numbers
threaten their survival - include water purification, pollination,
waste recycling, and keeping soils productive. The value of insect
pollination of crops, for instance, has been valued at 153 billion
euros ($191 billion) a year, it said.
A
1997 study put the global economic value of soil biodiversity -
thanks to often scorned creatures such as worms, woodlice and beetles
- at $1.5 trillion a year.
ROMAN
EMPERORS
Other
services include seafood from mussels and clams, silk spun by worms
and the purple dyes from a type of snail that were used exclusively
in the robes of Roman emperors.
The
study said the level of threat was similar to that facing vertebrates
- creatures with internal skeletons - including mammals like blue
whales and lions as well as reptiles and birds. A 2010 IUCN study
found that one fifth of vertebrates were at risk.
Collen
said people have wrongly tended to ignore spineless creatures,
thinking of them as small, abundant and invulnerable to human
pressures. Until now, conservation spending has focused on
high-profile species such as eagles, tigers and polar bears.
"This
report tries to put invertebrates on the map," he said.
Invertebrates make up almost 80 percent of the world's species.
The
report focused on the current state of the planet. The projected
increase in the world's human population to 9 billion by 2050 from 7
billion now and other factors such as man-made climate change could
make things worse for invertebrates.
The
report, which assessed 12,000 species in the IUCN's Red List of
endangered species, called for a switch to "green accounting"
to ensure that the benefits of services provided by small creatures
are built into national accounts such as GDP.
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