The Diversity of Life by Edward O. Wilson

In The Diversity of Life, Edward O. Wilson reflects on how the living world became diverse and how humans are destroying that diversity. In the book’s preface, Wilson defines biodiversity as “the totality of inherited variation in all organisms in a selected area” (Wilson ix). He adds that modern technology will allow for us to find many new species that were previously unknown to be in existence.

The first section of the book is titled “Violent Nature, Resilient Life.” In the beginning of this section, Wilson recalls one of his trips to the Amazon rainforest, during which an electric thunderstorm in the middle of the night created an incredible display of biodiversity. He says that he has kept going back to this area for almost forty years, as the amount of diversity there almost guarantees that he will discover new species upon each visit. Wilson then states the importance of biodiversity: “It is diversity by which life builds and saturates the rain forest. And diversity has carried life beyond, to the harshest environments on Earth” (Wilson 11). He later adds that biodiversity is the key to the survival of the world as we know it. In order to back up these claims, he cites Krakatau, an island near Indonesia that was bombarded by a series of volcanic eruptions in 1883. Although much of the life seemed to disappear at the time, it soon grew back, and today there are not many visible clues that a disturbance of that magnitude ever occurred. In the following chapter, Wilson discusses extreme disturbances (such as the meteor that killed all the dinosaurs), saying that although they have the potential to drive many species extinct, the level of diversity in affected areas always recovers, as they allow other species to fl...

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...tes on the path that the modern biodiversity movement has taken in the last two decades. Wilson does seem to think that we are going in a somewhat right direction, and he acknowledges that scientists have discovered many species in the time between the two publishings of his book. However, he asserts that although modern technology has given us a better shot at finding more species, the combined level of effort being put forth by humans is too low to make enough of an impact. The tone that Wilson uses throughout the main part of the book is very similar to the one he uses in the updated preface, meaning that his opinions have not really changed since the original printing. This is good evidence to support the idea that The Diversity of Life is still a relevant text, as his tone would likely have been noticeably different had the movement completely changed gears.