this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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Biodiversity

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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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Indigenous aguaje tree climbers bring down profits in Peru’s Amazon — sustainably (news.mongabay.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/21166771

The large leaves of the aguaje, a tropical palm tree that grows in the peatlands and other seasonal wetland areas in tropical South America, form a rounded crown on its head from which its oval-shaped fruits hang heavily in bunches from December to June. When the reddish maroon reptilian-looking fruits are ready for harvest, trained tree climbers from the Indigenous Maijuna communities in the Peruvian Amazon climb the 35-meter (115-foot) gangling trees to collect them.

Previously, the Maijuna people harvested the fruit by cutting down the trees. So did many others, such as Kichwa and Kukama Kukamiria communities. While easier, this led to the degradation of the landscape and genetic diversity as aguaje trees (Mauritia flexuosa) are dioecious, meaning only female trees produce fruit. In the 1990s, the discovery of its market potential led to large-scale commercial extraction by both Indigenous communities and outsiders across the Peruvian Amazon.

“Our ancestors weren’t aware that they were harming their palm trees,” Edber Tang Rios, president of the Maijuna-Kichwa Regional Conservation Area (ACR) management committee, told Mongabay over WhatsApp voice messages. “They had no knowledge. They cut it down and, little by little, it was dying out.”

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