Biodiversity is a gigantic, destabilizing, beautiful, funny and moving world for anyone who is curious and has room for environmentalism in their hearts. As for taking a more scientific interest in it, it is a great way to relearn humility and to question our true place in what we like to call “our” planet.
In truth, Earth is much more of a plant, fungal, and bacterial planet. Taken together, fungi, bacteria and plants represent 96.7% of its biomass. Moreover, when viewed from space, it is the blue of the water and the chlorophyllous green that largely dominate in the images. If we get rid of this human supremacy over the rest of life, what is our real place in the diversity of organisms that inhabit the planet?
In his excellent book entitled The secret life of insects, prefaced by Marianne Desautels-Marissal, the Norwegian biologist Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson answers this question in a very colorful way. If there were a joint UN Parliament representative of biodiversity, here is what she said: “Insects would get more than half of the votes. Other small species such as spiders, snails and earthworms, among others, would alone constitute a fifth of the votes. Wild plants in the broad sense of the term would reach around 16%, while known species of fungi and lichens would share a small 5% of the vote. »
What place for the human in all this? Even if our navel-gazing leads us to see the planet as our private property, the human species would not have been represented in this Parliament. At best, says the author, an association with all the other terrestrial vertebrates would guarantee us only a few crumbs of power.
Unfortunately, if this pictorial vision of biodiversity is inspiring, the reality is quite different, because humans are the terrible child who reigns supreme in the biosphere.
In question, after having endowed it with a great intelligence combined with a genetics of dissatisfaction, nature has lost control of this biped.
Since then, like in science fiction movies, the creature has evolved and turned against its creator. What do you want ? The recognition of a donkey, my grandfather used to say, is a kick in the testicles of the one who takes care of it. Today, all over the planet, species are bowing out, overcome by the lack of wisdom of the one to whom Descartes advised, in his famous and appalling quote, to be master and possessor of nature. If today we organize major conferences for the preservation of biodiversity, it is because the anthropocentrism of our species is leading us quietly towards catastrophe. We have forgotten that it is symbiosis with nature, much more than domination, which guarantees a lasting coexistence with the rest of creation.
This biodiversity deserves to exist as much as we do and even has a lot to teach us. To be interested in it is to find life stories that can help us improve our humanity or get out of our deleterious navel-gazing.
I give you an example. When I was a student, I was often told by my teachers that agriculture and animal husbandry were human inventions that date back to the Neolithic era, around 10,000 years ago. However, millions of years before the appearance of our species, so-called mushroom ants mastered the workings of “agriculture” and others practiced aphid “breeding” to delight in the honeydew that these insects excrete, a much like we value the milk of certain domestic mammals.
One of the discoveries about ant “herding” activities that really touched the old shepherd in me was made in the 1960s by Louisiana State University entomologist Gary Ross. This researcher discovered, in the region of Veracruz in Mexico, an extraordinary relationship uniting carpenter ants with the caterpillar of a butterfly whose scientific name is Anatole rossi.
The ants watch over the caterpillars at night and enter them into a sort of “stable” during the day.
In exchange for their services, the “shepherds” obtain droplets of honeydew secreted by excrescences located at the back of the caterpillar’s body. To solidify the relationship, the caterpillar produces pheromones that put its shepherds in a certain euphoria. Under the effect of this almost magical compound, the ants become more attentive and roam the body of the caterpillar. I almost see my father here in front of his beloved herd of zebus.
Like responsible herders, the ants hunt spiders and other insectivores who would like to put the delicious caterpillar on their menu. When daylight dawns, the shepherds whistle the end of the pasture and quietly lead the caterpillar into the dug barn, just below the aerial pasture. They enter their protege in this shelter before closing the entrance hermetically. As winter approaches, the ants dig their barn deeper into the ground to protect the caterpillar from the cold. This is how the relationship between the ants and their honeydew-producing larva goes, until the day when the latter stops, locks itself in a cocoon and begins its metamorphosis. If ants could talk, they would certainly challenge this certainty that makes our species the one that invented agriculture and animal husbandry.
This is also biodiversity. It is made up of rich pages of life history that simply deserve to be sheltered from the utilitarianism of our species. In other words, just because it doesn’t serve our immediate interests doesn’t mean it’s not important.