Home > Work > The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters
1 " But in just the past hundred years or so, we have turned the tables and taken control of biology. Smallpox, a virus that killed as many as 300 million people in the first part of the twentieth century (far more than in all wars combined) has not merely been tamed but has been eradicated from the planet. "
― Sean B. Carroll , The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters
2 " The metropolitan area of one-half million people was brought to a standstill. Restaurants, public buildings, and even the city zoo closed. People quickly bought up whatever bottled water was on store shelves. The governor of Ohio declared a state of emergency. The National Guard was enlisted to truck in water and portable water treatment plants. The national and international news media covered the story of a modern American city without the 80 million gallons of water it needed daily. It was not the sort of attention the long-struggling, rust-belt city wanted. "
3 " Algal populations dropped, fish populations grew. The recovery of Lake Erie was so dramatic that in 1986, Dr. Seuss even agreed to remove its mention from later editions of The Lorax. But Lake Erie is again getting glumped. The immediate culprit is a tiny, single-celled, blue-green algae called Microcystis that forms thick mats that can cover many miles of lake surface. "
4 " it was not that plants treated with insecticides had as many eggs, nymphs, and insects on them as untreated plants—they had more! Indeed, insecticide treatment caused up to an 800-fold increase in insect density. This meant that insecticides weren’t preventing hopperburn, they were largely responsible for causing it. How the hell could that happen? "
5 " It worked remarkably well. Even though just 15 percent of the population had been vaccinated, within six weeks, the outbreak had been stymied, and no further cases occurred. Their success encouraged Foege’s team to extend the strategy throughout eastern Nigeria, where they were able to contain every outbreak while vaccinating far fewer people than mass vaccination would have required. "
6 " I will call these ecological rules the “Serengeti Rules,” because that is one place where they have been well documented through valiant, long-term studies, and because they determine, for example, how many lions or elephants live on an African savannah. "
7 " Now, you might think to increase those numbers, you might add thousands of fish. Think again. Fish live a Darwinian existence. A female walleye can lay 50,000 eggs in a single night, but in a stable population, all but two will perish before adulthood from predation, starvation, and other perils. "
8 " Fifty years ago, when the human population was about 3 billion, we were using about 70 percent of the Earth’s annual capacity each year. That broke 100 percent by 1980 and stands at about 150 percent now, meaning that we need one and one-half Earths to regenerate what we use in a year. As the authors of this now annual study note, we have a total of just one Earth available. "
9 " We have taken control of biology, but not of ourselves. "
10 " So, for our own sake, let’s know all the rules, not just those that pertain to our bodies. Only through wider understanding and application of these ecological rules will we control and have a chance to reverse the side effects we are causing across the globe. "
11 " SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS "
