this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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Biodiversity

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Welcome to c/Biodiversity @ Mander.xyz!

A community about the variety of life on Earth at all levels; including plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi.



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Biodiversity is a term used to describe the enormous variety of life on Earth. It can be used more specifically to refer to all of the species in one region or ecosystem. Biodiversity refers to every living thing, including plants, bacteria, animals, and humans. Scientists have estimated that there are around 8.7 million species of plants and animals in existence. However, only around 1.2 million species have been identified and described so far, most of which are insects. This means that millions of other organisms remain a complete mystery.

Over generations, all of the species that are currently alive today have evolved unique traits that make them distinct from other species. These differences are what scientists use to tell one species from another. Organisms that have evolved to be so different from one another that they can no longer reproduce with each other are considered different species. All organisms that can reproduce with each other fall into one species. Read more...

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A single drawing from a 94-year-old scientific paper has revived interest in one of the more roundabout ways a spider preps its dinner. First swathe a fruit fly or other tidbit of prey in silk. Then throw up toxins all over it.

“I was like … what are you talking about?” says evolutionary biologist Giulia Zancolli of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland as she remembers the moment she read this detail when reviewing another lab’s scientific paper for possible publication in a journal. Tracing back the references, she eventually ended up with a drawing from a 1931 paper. “That was the only evidence we had.”

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