Genetic Diversity Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Genetic diversity refers to a healthy and diverse gene pool for a specific species of either a plant or an animal. The term is also used to refer to the diversity of genetic material within an individual, a population, or an ecosystem. The latter is also and most often referred to as biodiversity (or biological diversity) and inevitably embraces all the levels of genetic diversity-namely genetic, species, community and ecosystem – needed to maintain the comprehensive health of an ecosystem.

Genetic diversity is important when discussing both microand macro-organisms. In terms of the former, public health intervention strategies to track the global spread of disease pathogens, to develop diagnostics and vaccines, and to understand the emergence of new and drug resistant vaccines are founded upon the insights provided by research into the genetic diversity of pathogens.

Individuals, species, and entire ecosystems are advantaged by high genetic diversity via their increased capacity to adapt. Such capacity is often referred to as resilience. Ecosystems, which are made up of many interacting species, are healthiest when species interactions are maximized or all relevant niches are filled. High genetic diversity is correlated with a healthy species and/or ecosystem in that it provides that species and/or ecosystem with the necessary materials for adaptation to environmental and physiological perturbations. Low genetic diversity is considered problematic in that it limits a specie’s and/or ecosystem’s ability to respond to changes.

A well known example of the dangers of low genetic diversity is the devastation that ensued when a virus infected and killed much of the potato crop of Ireland resulting in the 19th century Irish potato famine. Had there been more of a genetically diverse potato cultivation, it could have potentially averted this famine by allowing varieties resistant to the virus to continue. On an ecosystem level low genetic diversity is common in extreme environments (high latitude/altitude, overly dry) where only species with particular adaptations to those stressful environmental conditions can thrive. As global warming changes the temperature and water regimes of these areas, researchers are concerned about the native species’ ability to adapt.

Biocomplexity is another term that is critical to understanding the role that genetic diversity plays in human-environment interactions, and refers to the multitude of biological, chemical, physical, behavioral, and social interactions that affect, sustain, or are modified by plants, animals and humans. Because all systems associated with life, both biological and human-made, interact and interdepend, they all exhibit biocomplexity.

Issues

As E.O. Wilson (and other scientists concerned abut the relatively rapid loss of biodiversity) tells us-“The human species came into being at the time of greatest biological diversity in the history of the earth. Today as human populations expand and alter the natural environment, they are reducing biological diversity to its lowest level since the end of the Mesozoic era, 65 million years ago”humans are the biggest contributor to the genetic erosion that is imperiling life on earth. However, to the extent that humans have and continue to destroy that diversity, they also have the power to protect and enhance it.

Genetic diversity has gained a lot of attention in the last decades in almost parallel relation to two main human activities: increased destruction and/or fragmentation of natural habitat for human activities including resource extraction, settlement and food production and an increased reliance on centralized industrial agriculture. Both of these actions result from increasing human population pressure and the need to acquire more energy resources and space for human settlement and to grow more food through intensified industrial means.

Habitat loss and fragmentation result from the human drive to exploit resources and to provide areas for human settlement. Both activities permanently alter the ecosystem they invade. Resource extraction activities disrupt the ecosystem by removing plant communities and alienating resident fauna. Although often slated with the task of reclamation, resource extraction companies rarely achieve the level of species or ecosystem diversity that existed originally. In addition, genetic diversity is lost due not only to the removal of natural areas of habitation for plant and animal species but also through the consequent introduction of nonnative invasive species that enter the ecosystem and can work to highly diminish or wipe out a species.

One of the most destructive aspects of any resource extraction activity is the creation of roads into and out of an area. Most notably, roads work to fragment habitat into smaller and more isolated units, limiting the forage and breeding range of faunal inhabitants and thereby diminishing populations’ genetic diversity. Similarly, roads invite the influx of nonnative plant and animal species, in some cases, the most destructive being squatters and other human populations that often overtax the biological resources in question. Roads also “fragment” a given area with their increased noise pollution and nonpoint source pollution to adjacent surface and ground water systems. These effects in turn also negatively affect resident plant and animal species.

Centralized industrial agriculture, a mode of mass producing food in monoculture environments with little or no human labor input, has also contributed greatly to the loss of genetic diversity in domestic and wild crop races. This is due to the reliance on fewer and fewer varieties of crops, chosen for such qualities as disease resistance, shelf life, and appearance. In the process of favoring a few varieties, the rest are not grown out lost. For example, in the last half century the United States alone has gone from depending on several hundred varieties of apple to less than a dozen. Similar changes have occurred in all major food crops. In tandem, industrial agriculture depends on a heavy use of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides, which work to undermine the adjacent natural ecosystem, destroying more of the natural genetic diversity in the process. Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are of major concern because they further threaten genetic diversity of both domestic and wild races due to their potential to invade a plants’ genetic material via the same invasive characteristics that invaded the parent plant. GMOs also introduce ethical issues since they represent the first cases of the patenting of biological materials. Many multinational corporations, most notably Monsanto, have actually sued small farmers across the United States and Canada because they found canola plants in those farmers’ fields that were patented GMOs belonging to Monsanto.

Actions

There are many ways that humans can act to enhance genetic diversity, mostly by taking precautions to bolster biodiversity. Individuals/households can choose to purchase products grown in ways that preserve biodiversity. For example, buying certified organic produce is a way of not supporting the industrial agriculture paradigm as does buying locally grown produce at farmers markets or through a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Growing part of all of your own food also contributes. Communities can also be proactive by protecting local habitat from fragmentation that is threatened by unsustainable development. Although development cannot often be stopped completely, it can be planned is such a way that corridors and tracts needed to maintain healthy populations can remain.

Lastly, policy makers need to be more proactive and forward-thinking by maintaining ecosystem integrity of areas designated as crucial to the perpetuation of endangered and threatened species.

Bibliography:

Cary Fowler and Patrick Mooney Shattering: Food, Politics, and the Loss of Genetic Diversity (University of Arizona Press, 1990);
Gary Paul Nabhan, Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity (Island Press, 2006);
Peter Pringle, Food, : Mendel to Monsanto-the Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest (Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, 2005).