Earth Pulse

Specific species of importance as well as generic indicator species, which include those of little economic significance, but whose population suggests a healthy ecosystem, are identified for wildlife benefits. Wildlife has been given much-needed attention and management practices for the wildlife solely have begun to flourish everywhere. As a result, wildlife resources were inventoried in a systematic manner at all levels (from a protected area to a national to a global level). Studies have attempted to estimate the number of species in a given area. This estimation technique is known as a census of the population of a species/animal group. The identification and counting of a certain species in a specific area/habitat at a specific period, and the division of them into age and sex groups, is referred to as a wildlife census. The purpose of the census is not only to assess the number of species, but to get insight into their density, sex-ratio (masculine-feminine ratio), age-ratio, an...

Living creatures have an immune system that comprises specialized cells that go across the body in search of threats. There is also an adaptive immune response that is able to identify previously encountered pathogens and give immunity to repetitive infections. However, both mobile and adaptive immune cells are absent in the plant. The plant immune system only works at the level of individual cells, which are all the same. Just as living creatures do, plants need to defend them against bacterial, viral, and fungal diseases, which are together called pathogenic diseases. A plant must be susceptible to the pathogen in order for infection to develop when the pathogen's capacity to attack the plant, as well as the plant's ability to build a successful defense, is influenced by environmental factors such as temperature. While we use terminology like attack and defense to describe the pathogen, it (pathogen) is doing just what other creatures do, taking nutrition from another creatur...

The first recorded attempt to document and classify biodiversity may be traced back to ancient Greece. Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, examined many creatures and divided them into categories based on their morphology, behavior, and physiology. Until the early 17th century, it was assumed that all of the species visible on Earth at the time had existed indefinitely. By the middle of the 19th century, people had started recognizing that life on earth existed in a form that was completely different from current living species and that biodiversity might change, develop and maybe, most significantly, go out of existence. Although it was a solved issue to recognize different animal groups and plants, a greater mystery was about the interrelationship and interdependence of these plant creatures and animals in an ecosystem. During the course of several research worldwide, biodiversity may be better appreciated and this linkage and interdependence are explored. Specifically stated, biodiversi...