"Nature Guide Journal"

30 March 2002

It's spring cleaning time for many people; cleaning and organizing our private worlds and making them tidy. The real world, however, is not neat and tidy.

We humans tend to interpret our world with sharp edges and in simple black-and-white designs. One of the most wonderful things about studying nature is to awaken to the complexities of the natural world, its soft edges and muddy middles.

Most nature studies focus on those complexities and the processes that produce them. One of the fundamental areas of ecology is the study of diversity within closely-related groups of organisms and how that diversity develops. (Investigations of how and why birds develop regional dialects in their songs are an example.)

To human eyes, individual members of non-human species may look identical. A "species" is usually defined as a group of organisms that are related closely enough to interbreed successfully. While quite similar genetically, organisms in the same species are not genetically identical.

Diversity within a population, though perhaps "messy" by human standards, allows the species to survive challenges that may adversely affect only some of its members. Looking from the other direction, a particular threat is more likely to wipe out a whole species if all the members of the populations are identical.

Many humans have learned about the power of population diversity in a very personal way. Invisible diversity in a particular species of bacteria allows some members of that species to survive antibiotics that kill other members. Over time, and with enough antibiotics, there will be more of the resistant bacteria and fewer of the non-resistant bacteria in the population. This process has, in fact, made it harder to treat many kinds of infections—which, while unfortunate for the humans infected, the "messiness" of a diverse population clearly benefits the bacteria.

Geographic dispersal can promote diversity because the environment presents slightly different challenges in different locations. While meeting the general criteria for survival, the environment at one end of a species' range may be quite different in some ways than the environment at the other end.

The members of a species that thrive at the edges of it's habitat or range may be a vital part of that species' diversity and may play a critical role in it's survival. From slightly different salmon runs in adjacent small streams to shorebirds on a distant beach, small populations on the fringe of a species range may have profound value to the whole species. Diversity is the key to stability.

Quite contrary to human garages, this apparent messiness of nature is actually one of its great assets.

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Visit our pages on related topics:  

fractals                                                                                                                                     plant communities                                                                                                                microclimates                                                                                                                           watercycle                                                                                                                                life of a dead tree

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