Ants are the leading removers of dead creatures on the land. And the rest of life is substantially dependent upon them.
In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems.
Well, let me tell you, ants are the dominant insects. They make up as much as a quarter of the biomass of all insects in the world. They are the principal predators. They're the cemetery workers.
There doesn't seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.
One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.
All three of the Abrahamic religions were born and nurtured in arid, disturbed environments.
I'm very much a Christian in ideals and ethics, especially in terms of belief in fairness, a deep set obligation to others, and the virtues of charity, tolerance and generosity that we associate with traditional Christian teaching.
Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.
It's like having astronomy without knowing where the stars are.
Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?
Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong.
The biological evolutionary perception of life and of human qualities is radically different from that of traditional religion, whether it's Southern Baptist or Islam or any religion that believes in a supernatural supervalance over humanity.
It's obvious that the key problem facing humanity in the coming century is how to bring a better quality of life - for 8 billion or more people - without wrecking the environment entirely in the attempt.
We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity.
For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.
'The Creation' presents an argument for saving biological diversity on Earth. Most of the book is for as broad an audience as possible.
The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology.
What's been gratifying is to live long enough to see molecular biology and evolutionary biology growing toward each other and uniting in research efforts.
Every kid has a bug period... I never grew out of mine.
The historical circumstance of interest is that the tropical rain forests have persisted over broad parts of the continents since their origins as stronghold of the flowering plants 150 million years ago.