We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater
There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead
Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater
The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller
The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller
According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater
Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater
Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger
Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton
I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon
Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII
Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut
Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest
We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater
People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon
Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater
An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater
Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann
Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner
“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton
The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon
The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul
The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah
If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon
Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson
We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord
Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater
To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement
Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma
It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater
God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater
In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall
Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater
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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater
Paul Smith is an incredible artist who creates amazing pieces of art using only a typewriter. Unfortunately, he was born with cerebral palsy, a severe disability that affects motor abilities and strength. At an Oregon nursing home, he tirelessly types away using only 1 finger. Once you see what he’s creating, you’ll notice his artistic abilities are really extraordinary. The bottom line is.. never let anything stop you from pursuing your passion.
Is there a woman alive over 40 who hasn’t stood in front of the mirror and pulled her brow upwards, her cheeks sideways or her décolletage inwards and wistfully admired the fleeting transformation, before gravity takes hold again?
It used to be a potent combination of common sense, cost and social stigma that stopped femmes d’un certain âge turning cosmetic surgery fantasies into reality. But no more.
An estimated million-plus women are resorting to medical procedures in a bid to, if not turn back time per se, then at the very least suspend it, one unnervingly immobilised wrinkle at a time.
The controversy over the removal and replacement of sub-standard breast implants has thrown a spotlight on to the extent to which women in Britain have come to rely on the surgeon’s knife for their sense of personal worth or professional marketability.
It wasn’t always so; I vividly remember the first time I broached the subject of cosmetic surgery in an interview. I was sitting in a hotel garden with Helen, now Dame, Mirren, in the mid-1990s and, as a star-struck twentysomething, felt so mortified to be raising the subject with her that I blushed to my roots.
She laughed throatily, drily pointed out several unenhanced physical attributes and sensously took another mouthful of single malt. These days, such enquiries – and surgical interventions – are so commonplace, that actresses half her age don’t bat an eyelid at Have you? Could you? Would you? Instead, the pat response from these fresh-faced ingenues, with their milkmaid cheeks and unfurrowed brows, tends, alarmingly, to be “never say never”.
When music svengali Simon Cowell, he of the megawatt smile and that notorious drooping eyelid, observed that Botox was “no more unusual than toothpaste”, he was summing up a modern mindset where health and beauty have, appallingly, cataclysmically, parted ways. Add incredibly: the hyper-inflated collagen lip implants of Leslie Ash back in 2003 failed to become a cautionary tale.
Along this road to perdition masquerading as a quest for physical perfection, we have forgotten – weirdly, given the terrifying name – that Botox derives from a toxin in the bacterium responsible for botulism, that lumps of cheap silicone do not belong in the human body and that breasts aren’t supposed to protrude pneumatically from the recumbent female form.
Recent years have seen a dismally retrograde return to a preoccupation with taut, tanned, cartoonesque cleavages, aided and abetted by the plunging pornification of fashion; hooker heels and porn boots, curve-accentuating bodycon dresses, skirt lengths leaving little to the imagination and even less to modesty.
It is a phenomenon that has crept up on us, as documented by Natasha Walter in her scathing analysis Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism. Modern feminism is in a crisis as female empowerment has come to mean the right – in some quarters, the obligation – to dress tartily, moonlight in lapdancing clubs to pay Oxbridge fees and conform to an unrealistic ideal of plasticised pulchritude.
“Barbie isn’t just back – she has taken over the world,” is the crisp analysis from Dr Alessia Ciani, consultant psychiatrist at the independent Capio Nightingale hospital in London. “Women are predisposed to feeling conscious about their appearance; since earliest times, men’s power has resided in money, women’s in their appearance, and as we all live longer, there’s a great pressure on women to maintain a stereotypical image of youthfulness.”
This perceived need to annihilate crow’s feet and maintain a perky embonpoint at all times, has created a booming plastic surgery industry. Some, like Weakest Link host Anne Robinson and Sky presenter Kay Burley, are upfront. Last year, at the age of 50, Burley treated herself to a facelift, while Robinson has said: “Anything that allows women to feel better about themselves is worth the money.” Nor are such insecurities confined to women of a certain age: 23-year-old Strictly Come Dancing contestant Chelsee Healey recently admitted to regretting having breast implants at the age of 18. Amanda Holden admits she quit her Botox habit after seeing the effects it had on the rich and famous in Los Angeles.
Others, such as Kylie, attract whispers for their preternaturally youthful appearance. Tory MP Louise Mensch, not usually backward at coming forward, is more reticent about this subject. When asked by an interviewer whether she had had a facelift, Mensch replied: “Without denying it, I’m going to refuse to answer your question because, as soon as I do that, you will end up becoming the minister for mascara.”
According to the most recent figures from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (felicitously known by the acronym BAAPS), women underwent 34,400 procedures in 2010, the most popular of which was breast augmentation (9,400), up 10 per cent from the previous year, followed by blepharoplasty (eyelid lifts: 5,127) and face and neck lifts (4,493).
Men accounted for 3,860 procedures, the most popular of which were rhinoplasty (3,860) and breast reduction (741), an increase of 27 per cent. While diet and exercise can go a long way towards banishing moobs, the quick fix – however invasive – remains more attractive than expending effort and energy.
Add non-surgical procedures, such as laser treatments for skin and eyes, and the overall figure soars to around 1.3 million procedures, figures from market researchers Mintel show. It’s so widespread that it’s rare for the topic of cosmetic surgery to rise an eyebrow (and not just because it’s been paralysed by Botox). But there are dishonourable exceptions.
Last June, Sarah Burge, 50, a mother from Cambridgeshire, gave her daughter, Poppy, a £6,000 breast-enhancement voucher for her birthday. Her seventh birthday. Yet, instead of being placed in care, the beaming child was photographed in the national press, along with her mother, who has spent £500,000 on plastic surgery for herself. While we can only hope that social services read Closer magazine, elsewhere a stand is being made.
In August 2011, Kate Winslet announced in these pages that she refused to be bullied into surgery, however career-enhancing studio bases might consider it. Her sentiments were echoed by fellow British actresses Rachel Weisz and Emma Thompson, and they declared it time to establish the British Anti-Cosmetic Surgery League.
It was an admirable stand, particularly for an A-list Oscar-winner who is no stranger to airbrush controversy, but begs the question of what, exactly, constitutes surgery.
I know of at least one female broadcaster, whose features are known to resemble melted cheese, who dismisses the suggestion she’s had work done. She’s not dissembling, it’s just that she – and a generation of starlets and presenters – don’t consider lunchtime procedures such as Botox, dermal fillers and chemical peels, to be “work”.
We are losing any connection with our bodies; by gorging ourselves on food, we have achieved the unenviable distinction of being crowned Europe’s fatties. Self-pity and self-indulgence have been rebranded as self-determination and self-fulfilment, and a well-trodden route to happiness that leads straight to the surgeon’s door.
“Human beings strive to fit in, and cosmetic procedures are now so widespread they are accepted as the norm,” says health psychologist Kerri McPherson, based at Glasgow Caledonian University. “Because we live in an image-conscious age, we are expected to look after our appearance and failing to doing so would raise many more questions than going to extreme lengths.”
Another factor is the rise of Facebook and other sites where our photos are on display, and the rise of anyone-can-be-a-celebrity culture.
“We used to admire celebrities from afar, now we compare ourselves to them. We see the girl next door becoming a star and having a makeover, and that glamour and success and perfection seems much more attainable to us.”
Blame Barbie, blame the tacky profusion of tabloid magazines, the lowest-common-denominator television encapsulated by The Only Way is Essex and the overtly sexualised gyrating on Strictly and The X Factor, where contestants must undergo obligatory teeth whitening before their talent can be exposed.
At some point the buck stops with us. We must ask ourselves what has made us so uncomfortable in our skins that we crave – and, crucially – have normalised, dermabrasion and liposuction, scalpels and trout pouts. And where seven-year-old girls from Cambridgeshire dream of the day they can cash in their boob job vouchers.
Renee Zellweger was once one of the most recognisable actresses in the world.
Ten years on from her last outing as Bridget Jones, Zellweger, 45, appears to have an entirely new face.
Fans expressed bafflement at the actress’s appearance when she was pictured at the Elle Women in Hollywood Awards.
While many Hollywood stars show the tell-tale signs of facelifts, Botox and fillers – wrinkle-free, hamster-cheeked and looking a couple of decades younger than their actual age – Zellweger simply looks like a different person.The Oscar-winning star now bears a passing resemblance to fellow actress Robin Wright Penn, with a hint of Daryl Hannah and Cameron Diaz.
Zellweger attended the event with her boyfriend, Doyle Bramhall II.
On Twitter, the writer Viv Groskop said: "Renee Zellwegger: this is not Botox or even surgery it's a MISSING PERSON ENQUIRY"
The actress recently raised the prospect of returning for a third Bridget Jones film, saying the idea "would be fun".
"The Sixth Great Extinction Is Underway—and We're to Blame," Time's headline declared. "Earth in the midst of sixth mass extinction,"echoed USA Today. The headline-writers at The Mirror adopted an even more apocalyptic tone: "End of the world predicted by scientists who warn Earth's animals are heading for mass extinction."
The research team, led by the Stanford biologist Rodolfo Dirzo, reviewed the scientific literature on species abundance and extinction. They report that 322 species of vertebrates (birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, and other animals with backbones) have gone extinct since 1500. In addition, the populations of the remaining vertebrates have dropped an average of 25 percent over the past 500 years. For invertebrates—animals without backbones, such as insects and mollusks—the trends for the species we monitor are even worse, with population declines averaging 45 percent. "Such animal declines will cascade onto ecosystem functioning and human well-being," Dirzo and his colleages warn. The ongoing defaunation, they conclude, is "both a pervasive component of the planet's sixth mass extinction and also a major driver of global ecological change."They were all reacting to a study in Sciencereporting researchers' concerns about "mass defaunation." (Defaunation is a fancy way to say that human beings are killing off lots of animals.) The authors are comparing their estimates of future species loss to the five prior mass extinctions of the past 540 million years, in each of which around 75 percent of all then-living species died off. The most famous extinction episode—likely triggered by an asteroid crashing into the earth—killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. This time, instead of a killer asteroid, there's us.
Why are so many wildlife species in danger of going extinct? Overexploitation, habitat destruction, invasive species, and now man-made climate disruption, comes the answer. Based on a conservative estimate of 5 to 9 million animal species on the planet, the scientists cite studies that suggest the world is "likely losing 11,000 to 58,000 species annually." That would mean we're losing at least one animal species per hour. At the higher rate, something like 40 percent of all animal species will be gone by 2050.
To slow and hopefully halt the wave of extinctions, they continue, requires the "mitigation of animal overexploitation and land-use change." Put more simply, they want us to stop eating so many wild animals and stop cutting down forests. They also offer a bit of somewhat gratuitous socioeconomic advice when they assert that "human population growth and increasingly uneven per capita consumption...ultimately drive all these threats," concluding that we therefore need "reduced and more evenly distributed global resources consumption."
This is not the first time biologists have sounded the alarm over allegedly accelerated extinctions. In 1970, S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, predicted that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals would be extinct. That is, between 75 and 80 percent of all species of animals that were alive in 1970 would be extinct by 1995. In 1975, the biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich wrote that "since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it." Nearly 40 years later, nowhere near 90 percent of the rainforests have been cut and no one thinks that half of the species inhabiting tropical forests have vanished.
In his 1979 book The Sinking Ark, the Oxford biologist Norman Myers stated that 40,000 species per year were going extinct and that 1 million species would be gone by the year 2000. At a symposium at Brigham Young University that year, Thomas Lovejoy—who would go on to draw up the first projections of worldwide extinction rates for the Global 2000 Report to the President—predicted between 15 and 20 percent of all species alive in 1980 would be extinct by the end of the century. That was his "conservative" estimate. No one believes that extinctions of this magnitude have occurred over the last three decades.
Make no mistake about it: Human beings have been pretty good at killing off other species. As the last major ice age was ending, our hunter-gatherer ancestors spread across the world killing off megafaunal populations already stressed by climate change. By one reckoning, 178 mammal species that weigh more than 100 pounds disappeared, drastically reducing the total mammalian biomass of the planet. After humans arrived in North America, more than 30 different groups of large mammals disappeared, including horses, camels, mammoths, and mastodons. In South America, we lost 100 percent of mammals weighing more than a ton, including ground sloths, armadillo-like glyptodonts and rhinoceros-like toxodons. Eighty percent of those weighing more than 100 pounds went extinct. A 2013 study estimates that Polynesian wayfarers killed off 1,300 species of bird as they colonized the isolated islands of the Pacific Ocean. The arrival of Europeans eliminated an additional 40 Pacific bird species.
But are we really heading for the mass die-off that Dirzo's team predicts?
Oddly, when Dirzo and company calculated their projects, they didn't use the more recent estimate of species extinction rates, which Science published in May [see large map with source link at end of posting]. That group of researchers, led by the Duke biologist Stuart Pimm, concluded that current extinction rates "are about 1000 times the likely background rate of extinction." The background rate is what the rate of extinction would be without human influence; Pimm's team reckons that it's about 0.1 species per million species-years. This means that if one followed the fates of one million species, one would expect to observe about one species going extinct every 10 years. If the rate really is a thousand times higher, that would mean that 100 species are going extinct per million species years. Let’s assume that the world contains about 5,000,000 species, which would suggest that 500 are going extinct every year. Still bad, but far less scary than the 11,000 to 58,000 in Dirzo's forecast.
Meanwhile, some countervailing trends suggest the future of animal species may not be so grim. These trends include urbanization, slowing deforestation, the global increase in protected areas, and the advent of peak farmland.
Transforming hundreds of millions of hardscrabble subsistence farmers scattered across the landscape into urban dwellers would greatly reduce the pressure on wildlife and their habitats. The good news is that that process is happening. According to the United Nations Population Division's World Urbanization Prospects 2014 report, 54 percent of people live in cities—up from 30 percent in 1950. The U.N. demographers forecast that proportion will rise to 66 percent by 2050. [And] if world population follows the medium fertility trend, rising to 9.5 billion by 2050, that means that 3.2 billion people will still live in rural areas, down slightly from 3.4 billion today. In that scenario, population pressure will not be pushing the expansion of the human frontier into more wildlands. And if population growth traverses along the U.N.'s low fertility trend, the year 2050 will see human numbers peaking at 8.3 billion people. If 66 percent live in cities, only 2.8 billion people will be living on the landscape.
Looking further into the future, the U.N. expects that 80 percent of people will be urbanites by 2100. Medium and low fertility population projections suggest that would mean that only 2.2 to 1.3 billion rural dwellers.
Since most species live in forests, chiefly tropical forests, we should take a look at global forest cover trends. Happily, the deforestation rate is slowing. The Food and Agriculture Organization's State of the World's Forests 2012 report notes that the global rate of deforestation slowed from 0.2 percent per year between 1990 and 2000 to 0.14 percent between 2005 and 2010. Between 2000 and 2010, a total of 130 million hectares were cut, but 78 million hectares returned to forests. So globally, forests declined on average by 5.2 million hectares per year—at which rate, the report notes, "It will take 775 years to lose all of the world's forests." It adds, "This would seem to provide enough time for actions to slow or stop global deforestation." And indeed, researchers in 2006 found that more and more countries are passing through a "forest transition" in which their forest area starts expanding. Roger Sedjo, a forest ecologist at Resources for the Future,predicts that by 2050 most of the world's industrial wood will be grown on forest plantations covering only 5 to 10 percent of the extent of today's global forests.
One dark blot on forest restoration trends is biofuel mandates in rich countries, which have spurred tropical countries to chop down forests to grow palm oil to produce biodiesel. Byone estimate, 87 percent of the deforestation in Malaysia and 118 percent in Indonesia occurred as result of expanding palm oil plantations.
Another beneficial trend is that protected areas such as parks and marine preserves are expanding at a remarkably fast pace. The World Bank notes that protected areas have nearly doubled from 8.5 percent of the world's total land area in 1990 to 14.3 percent in 2012. That's an area twice the size of the entire United States. Marine protected areas have increased from 4.7 percent of territorial waters in 1990 to 10 percent in 2012. Under the Convention on Biological Diversity, governments of the world have committed to protecting 17 percent of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas by 2020.
Considering that agriculture is the most expansive and intensive way in which people transform natural landscapes, the really good news is that the amount of land globally devoted to food production may be falling as population growth slows and agricultural productivity increases. "We believe that projecting conservative values for population, affluence, consumers, and technology shows humanity peaking in the use of farmland," concludes Jesse Ausubel, the director of the Human Environment Program at the Rockefeller University. In a 2013 article titled "Peak Farmland and the Prospect for Land Sparing," Ausubel and his colleagues write: "Global arable land and permanent crops spanned 1,371 million hectares in 1961 and 1,533 million hectares in 2009, and we project a return to 1,385 million hectares in 2060."
As a result of these trends, humanity will likely restore at least 146 million hectares of land, an area two and a half times that of France, or ten Iowas—and possibly much more. Relaxing those biofuel mandates would spare an additional 256 million hectares from the plow, the researchers estimate. That mean nearly 400 million hectares—an area nearly double the size of the United States east of the Mississippi River—could be restored to nature by 2060.
The late 20th century's predictions of imminent mass extinction happily proved wrong. The positive trends cited above provide good grounds to believe that the new ones may also turn out to be exaggerated.
Mastadons in the Pleistocene Megafauna
Mastadons in the Pleistocene Megafauna
Mastadons in the Pleistocene Megafauna
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End of the world predicted by scientists who warn Earth's animals are heading for mass extinction
After 3.5 billion years of trial and error, the world as we know it has reached a tipping point
GettyWipe out: Scientists are warning that another global mass extinction may be imminent
The Earth could be heading for extinction ... and it is all man's fault.
Respected scientists from around the world are warning we may have reached a 'tipping point' after 3.5 billion years of evolutionary trial and error.
And the problem lies with the loss of major species such as elephants which has a knock-on effect on the world we live in.
In a new review of scientific literature and analysis of data published in Science, an international team of scientists warn the loss of such animals could trigger the planet's sixth mass biological extinction event.
Previous extinctions - including the complete disappearance of dinosaurs - are believed to have been caused by natural planetary transformations or catastrophic asteroid strikes.
But the current one, says lead author Rodolfo Dirzo, a professor of biology at Stanford, is associated with human activity.
The statistics are frightening.
Since 1500, more than 320 terrestrial vertebrates- animals with backbones - have become extinct.
Populations of the remaining species show a 25 percent average decline in abundance.
The situation is similarly dire for invertebrate animal life such as insects and worms.
Across vertebrates, 16 to 33 percent of all species are estimated to be globally threatened or endangered.
Large animals -- described as megafauna and including elephants, rhinoceroses, polar bears and countless other species worldwide -- face the highest rate of decline, a trend that matches previous extinction events.
Larger animals tend to have lower population growth rates and produce fewer offspring and their size and meat mass make them easier and more attractive hunting targets for humans.
The scientists say we are at risk because of what they call the 'trickle-down' effect.
Experiments conducted in Kenya have isolated patches of land from megafauna such as zebras, giraffes and elephants, and observed how the ecosystem reacts to the removal of those species.
They noted the areas quickly become overwhelmed with rodents. Grass and shrubs increase and the rate of soil compaction decreases.
Seeds and shelter become more easily available, and the risk of predation drops.
Consequently, the number of rodents doubles -- and so does the abundance of the disease-carrying ectoparasites that they harbor.
"Where human density is high, you get high rates of defaunation, high incidence of rodents, and thus high levels of pathogens, which increases the risks of disease transmission," said Dirzo,
"Who would have thought that just defaunation would have all these dramatic consequences? But it can be a vicious circle."
The scientists also detailed a troubling trend in invertebrates.
Human population has doubled in the past 35 years; in the same period, the number of invertebrate animals - such as beetles, butterflies, spiders and worms - has decreased by 45 percent.
As with larger animals, the loss is driven primarily by loss of habitat and global climate disruption, and could have trickle-up effects in our everyday lives.
For instance, insects pollinate roughly 75 percent of the world's food crops, an estimated 10 percent of the economic value of the world's food supply.
Insects also play a critical role in nutrient cycling and decomposing organic materials, which helps ensure ecosystem productivity.
In the United States alone, the value of pest control by native predators is estimated at $4.5 billion annually.
Dirzo added: "We tend to think about extinction as loss of a species from the face of Earth, and that's very important, but there's a loss of critical ecosystem functioning in which animals play a central role that we need to pay attention to as well.
"Ironically, we have long considered that defaunation is a cryptic phenomenon, but I think we will end up with a situation that is non-cryptic because of the increasingly obvious consequences to the planet and to human wellbeing."
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