Sublime

Unable to adapt fast enough, the native species is deprived of the resources it needs. Another cause, and one of the most common, is a change in environment. This

Roughgarden’s wonderful study of evolutionary diversity, Evolution’s Rainbow (2004), explains that most biologists observe “nature” through a narrow and biased lens of socionormativity and therefore misinterpret all kinds of biodiversity. And so, although transsexual fish, hermaphroditic hyenas, nonmonoga-

One way to make sense of the biodiversity crisis would simply be to accept it. The history of life has, after all, been punctuated by extinction events, both big and very, very big. The impact that brought an end to the Cretaceous wiped out something like seventy-five percent of all species on earth. No one wept for them, and, eventually, new speci

In terms of evolutionary biology, the virus has had what is known as an “ecological release.” This refers to the expansion of range and the population explosion that occurs when a species is freed from constraints it previously faced. The typical example of this is invasive species introduced by humans such as the cane toads that overwhelmed Austra