Why wetland environments are important.
microbiologist Jillian Banfield and her colleagues started combing through samples of mud from wetland environments three years ago
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We are destroying wetland habitats right and left. They are flat, easy to drain, and build on. California has destroyed 98% of its freshwater wetlands. When I was growing up the tropical rainforests were being decimated and there were nightly news broadcasts about the dangers of destroying them when the biodiversity they contained could contribute so much to medicine and science. Where are the nightly news shows about the destruction of our wetland environments.
Microbiologists looking at these organisms from wetland environments
have reported large DNA structures in some archaea that defy easy categorization.
Source: Plasmid, Virus or Other? DNA ‘Borgs’ Blur Boundaries. | Quanta Magazine
other scientists …. agree that even the more mundane interpretations show how little is known about the categories of genetic diversity in nature.
(In this case wetland mud!) The scientists say that
It highlights a need “to start thinking about different genetic entities [on] a continuum,” said Cédric Feschotte, a molecular biologist at Cornell University who was not involved in the new work. This kind of thinking could open up a world of possibilities for what we understand about the nature of the genome, how microbes function, and where to look for potential biotechnological applications.
So if this hasn’t convinced you that wetland environments are important on so many levels, beauty, animal habitat, and if you just want to be selfish then science too. I guess I will just have to keep trying :-)