Plants don’t support animals, it’s the other way around

It’s certainly exciting times to be writing on this topic. First off, a big shout out to the /r/ecology /r/nature and /r/megafaunarewilding threads on Reddit. The discussions and content are truly enlightening. Thank you to everyone who has interacted.

Yesterday there was a really great conversation that began on the subject of native garden revegetation /u/rflil posted a great resource for native gardens in North America, showing on why native plants are better than non-native for climate adaptation. The study found that native plants have twice as many bees, three times as many butterflies and 50% more birds.

An accompanying graphic stated “native trees support twice the caterpillar diversity”, followed by the statement “caterpillars in your yard might sound alarming …”

Plants do not “support” animals, it’s the other way around and if we knew that, we could more easily convince gardeners (and farmers) that animals are critical to creating better soil, reducing pest-risk, cost us far less in habitat management … not to mention, they are essential to addressing climate risk too (noting that in a discussion on nature-based solutions and “connecting to nature” recently, it was pointed out to me, that people don’t like insects).

Just to be clear, there is nothing wrong with the work.

These two statements together are simply what fascinate me most as they cut to the heart of a problem that the ecology industry faces and could better-empower conservationists and nature-based solutions.

So why do ecologists get this wrong?

In a nutshell, even small ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More like gardens, are highly complex. Ecologists compartmentalise systems in an effort to try to understand the mechanisms but the overall patterns are so complex, they can never be described in totality. It’s also because we’re big, blundering mammals and we only see what we see. We observe a cloak of green and believe that’s the sum total. Animals, birds and insects are both less abundant and free-ranging, so unless we happen to stumble across a moment when there are lots, our instinct is to assume their impact is insignificant.

Today’s dominant scientific approach can be traced back to the early 1900s, where there was a bifurcation in theory. You had Einstein’s views on the second theory of thermodynamicsThermodynamics are at the heart of our understanding of ecosystems and not an altogether difficult concept to grasp but one that isn't widely taught to ecologists. Basically, all life on Earth, is derived from the Sun's heat. This renewable energy source constantly bombards ecosystems with energy but they would overheat, if it wasn't for the absorptive capacity of food webs. More alongside Darwin’s theory of natural selectionDarwin’s theory how species are formed, where those that stand in closest competition with those undergoing beneficial modification and improvement, will go extinct faster. Natural selection is by survival of the likeliest, not survival of the fittest. The fittest are only likely to survive because they happen to be most suited to the environment into which they are born. The More and debate had begun, about the paradox (the Schrödinger paradox) between the two. If ecosystems are entropy-driven, how can they stabilise through natural selection? There is more to discuss about Schrödinger and his infamous cat thought-experiment, but that’s for another blog.

It wasn’t until recently, that scientists such as England [1] and Friston [2], have been able to more completely answer how entropyThe degree of disorder or chaos in a system, most often used to describe thermodynamic energy but also used the behaviour of information. All else being equal, physics determines that all matter and energy moves towards chaos, therefore biological systems are in a continual state of battling against entropic forces in order to remain stable. The most stable ecosystem is More and natural selection are compatible.

Meanwhile, there were two world wars and out of the dust of the “years the locusts hath eaten” (Churchill was talking about the collapse of global economies) came a revolution in scientific method, designed to maximise agricultural yield. This approach branched away and led to much of what we presume about how ecosystems work today and our fundamental approach to experimental research and statistical design.

The latter approach suffers from the complex systems dilemmaThat systems such as ecosystems are so complicated, that there may be a practically infinite number of overlapping mechanisms. Scientists who try to study the mechanisms have to make arbitrary decisions about what minutia to study and in doing so, miss the bigger picture. The mechanisms inside complex systems such as ecosystems also change over time, meaning these compartmentalised results More. It’s easy to experiment with corn and add fertiliser to create maximum yield. It’s relatively simple to experiment with grazing regimes to maximise plant growth to create maximum caterpillar yield but neither of single systems could exist in their own right and it’s highly unlikely, that either would exist in nature, except in specific situations.

We study broken systems and rely on controlled experiments (where we deliberately break a system to see what happens). When we try to rebuild broken systems, we take an inherently linear approach but ecosystems don’t work like that.

Let’s take a pause for thought. What are we trying to achieve? Do we want a self-regulating planet where nature-based solutions are provided as a service, or do we want to pay for and manage ecosystems in perpetuity? I don’t think the latter can work as how would we afford it? If we want a return to steady, stable-state process-driven ecosystems, we need a new paradigm. Because let’s face it, business as usual isn’t working very well is it?

Ecosystem processes are neither linear nor cyclical, they are simultaneous and integral. What we don’t study – and on land in particular, can almost never study – are pristine ecosystems. This is because 70% of the land surface of Earth is already colonised by humans and the remainder is almost completely modified / broken. The situation that created, say, high-diversity ancient grasslands in Europe, stabilised over millions of years (thanks to these being among the richest with animals and plants per unit area in the world) and once the ground is disturbed, it’s almost impossible to recreate.

In order to rebuild an ecosystem, to create a steady stable-state(of an ecosystem) where free surplus energy is minimised, where there is maximum entropy production and minimum waste. In such a system, there is expected to be relatively small fluctuations in atmospheric and other chemistry and where disruption or disturbance occurs, the resulting changes can be absorbed quickly by a succession of new plants and animals that enter to fill More, you have to identify and rebuild structure, function(Of an ecosystem). A subset of ecosystem processes and structures, where the ecosystem does something that provides an ecosystem service of value to people. More and processes simultaneously. That means going back to Einstein’s theory and applying a new way of thinking, a departure from what ecologists have been traditionally taught, about how things work.

There are very few, if any, examples of how this has been done well. The Rothwell Sanctuary in Melbourne’s You Yang ranges is possibly one of the few examples I know of, where a whole-system approach is being taken. But this is incidental … these are land managers who use observational study and field manipulation and have “invented” the result.

In Lovelock’s Novocene, he talks about the fact that research doesn’t invent things. The biggest leaps forward in human endeavour have been created by minds experimenting with that they intuitively thought would work. Science often cannot explain what has occurred until much later. The greatest physicist of the 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell, “lay awake for three nights” trying and failing to explain, how James Watt’s steam engine governor worked.

True inventors don’t know what will work, they just believe based on evidence and experience, they can make it work. We didn’t know for certain that epidemiologists could create a safe and effective mRNA COVID vaccine using lipid-based nanoparticles but we just did it. It’s never been done before. The scientists continuously experimented with ideas and intuition, until they made something. I sincerely doubt they know exactly how it all works, just that it does. What would have been the point in waiting to describe the mechanism?

“Dynamic, self-regulating systems wholly defy a logical explanation that uses step-by-step arguments”

–James Lovelock, Novocene (2020)

The mass extinctionAnimal life hasn't existed for very long on planet Earth. In the last 500 million years, there have been five mass extinctions, defined as events that wiped out at least 75% of animal life. The Devonian mass extinction is considered to have been caused by the rise of plants on land, which polluted the oceans in the absence of animals. More crisis, climate change and human food security are all based on nature and if we resort to science to describe mechanisms upfront using linear thinking, we will never be able to engineer what should be intuitively obvious and this will simply hasten our own demise as a species on Earth.

Back to the subject of why animals are essential for ecosystem stability.

In a thermodynamic system, the greatest sources of energy pose the highest risk, in the absence of something to moderate their effects. Plants are “primary producers” and are so awesomely powerful, that their rise on land during the Devonian, contributed to the extinction of almost all animals on Earth (at the time, living exclusively in the ocean). It was only the rise of animals and entire trophic pyramidsThe gradual reduction in energy content, increase in body size and reduction in number of animals, that occurs the higher you go up the food chain. At the base of the pyramid are a vast number of high-metabolism, tiny creatures and at the summit, are the top predators. To be stable, the pyramid has to have creatures at all levels. More, that captured enough free energyThe energy of a system that is emitted as waste and is not part of ecosystem processes. There is always some free surplus energy as this creates the basis for evolution where new species exploit gaps in the ecosystem where free energy becomes available. Surplus energy can occur as a result of disruption or disturbance. When free surplus energy reaches More, to stabilise the atmosphere and ocean chemistry. This process took a few hundred millions of years.

Humans evolved into, and as part of, these entropy processes. Humans are just another animal and it was the distribution and abundance of animals on Earth, that created habitable conditions for our species. That remains the case today, with 50% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) dependent on nature [3].

So, when we assume vegetation is the most important component of an ecosystem, we ignore the fact that we are animals, born into a community of animals. We ignore the way ecosystems function thermodynamically and the threat plants alone, impose on ecosystem stability. We ignore the fact that we cannot stabilise Earth’s habitatsWhat is habitat for animals and people? Habitat, hence the word "habitable" describes the natural surroundings in which any animal (or human) lives, that houses basic needs, such as food and shelter. Vegetation, for example, is habitat for animals. On its own, habitat is not necessarily stable or sustainable, which is why it differs from an ecosystem. Habitat in disrepair More without animals and that one animal species isn’t enough, to achieve balance and only that can be achieved, with animals in the right proportions.

We also assume vegetation can be recreated like-for-like. Sadly, much of the world’s land has been absent of megafaunaThe largest animals that represent the top of the trophic pyramid. These are the final building blocks in ecosystem structures for maximum entropy production. Megafauna can be measured at any spatial scale. The largest animal that ever lived on Earth is the Blue Whale. In a grassland, spiders could be considered megafauna The term is generally reserved for animals larger More for thousands of years and abundant predators for a hundred or more. The underlying conditions have altered so much, I’m not convinced that the definition of “native” versus “non-native” applies so strongly in many cases. After all, we’ve created “non-native” soil nutrientEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More conditions because we have lost 68% of individual wild animals in the last 50 years [4]–the animals that were critical to ecosystem function, on which ecosystem processes were built and human survival depends.

Whatever we rebuild now, cannot be the same as what came before. It can only be similar, and only in habitats where animals were recently, or still present.

“Changes in vegetation composition due to varying grazing intensity should be more easily reversible in systems with a long evolutionary history of grazing, which are more resilient … in contrast, systems with a short evolutionary history of grazing are non-resilient, and thus will switch irreversibly to an alternative state when subjected to intense recent grazing” [5]

This is why gardeners, farmers, conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More scientists, amateur naturalists and ecologists, academic or corporate, need to separate the study of ecology from the management of ecosystems. Otherwise, we’re trying to rebuild old components into a new operating system.

Think of Earth like software on a PC … at the base is MS-DOS. This basal operating system is like the sunlight that hits the Earth and all the physical continents and ocean. Microsoft Windows sits on top of MS-DOS. It’s like the plant layer, that translates the basic operations into functions that can be read by software. Then, to make life liveable, we need a suite (an “ecosystem”) of interacting software. This is run by the animals (including humans), much in the way you are currently running the computer or phone you’re using to read this. When we all operate altogether, we perform our daily tasks as part of a system, which has ‘biodiversity’ value throughout.

https://simonmustoe.blog/animals-and-ocean-deoxygenation/

Suffice to say, there are far more examples of failures in habitat restoration than there are successes and this has led me to think deeply about what is missing. The answer I always come back to is … wildlife and animals. It seems abundantly clear to me, that an absence of wild animals hinders ecosystem restoration, because free energy makes our efforts mundane and chaotic. Chaos(Of energy and ecosystems). Ecosystems are thermodynamically driven. Disorder occurs when energy dissipates and becomes more chaotic. For example, the release of hot air into the atmosphere results in that energy is freer to disperse (maximum entropy). The opposite is true when energy is locked into biological processes, when it is stored inside molecules (minimum entropy). Stability in ecosystems occurs More is our biggest enemy, because it’s entropy-formed and it’s what leads to cost-blowouts and failures to create sustainable habitat.

Going back to the aforementioned study. It’s a little cynical of me, perhaps, to say the plants don’t support animals in any way. At least in the outset, if you’re recreating habitat in a place where there are still some wild animals e.g. butterflies and birds, then it stands to reason, that plants they feed and breed in, will be beneficial to attracting them. This is only the case, however, in the short-term. If the habitat outcome you’re looking for is low-impact, low-intensity, low-management and long-term, then the animals will become the determining factor that creates the outcome. When we promote conservation, therefore, we could do better to explain why the animals are integrally important and not just the icing on the cake.

How much better would it be, if we could explain to the world, why insects in our gardens are actually essential to planetary health and our own survival?

While the elevation of animals to process drivers may seem trivial to some, it does completely alter the way we value biodiversityWhat is the definition of biodiversity? When we ask, what is the definition of biodiversity? It depends on what we want to do with it. The term is widely and commonly misused, leading to significant misinterpretation of the importance of how animals function on Earth and why they matter a great deal, to human survival. Here I will try to More, the decisions we make and our likelihood of successful land restoration. In my opinion, it’s the missing piece of the biodiversity puzzle. That without restoration of animal populations, we cannot restore our planet’s land to a functioning system.

In the next blog post, I’m going to write about kangaroos. Conservationists are considering widescale killing of these animals (the largest megafauna left in the country) that are essential to stability; why, putting vegetation first, has led to this decision; and how that could be a terrible outcome for land management.

The narrative of why animals matter, will be the subject of my book and I often get asked for citations. This isn’t possible, because no-one has synthesised the bibliography before and what I’ve tried to explain here covers a great deal of information in a very concise way. If you’re interested in knowing more, then make sure you sign up to my mailing list. I’m covering sections of this as topics arise and you’ll be among the first to hear about the book.

Spotlight

Hungry herbivores and thirsty plants: Browsing wildlife shape savanna tree transpiration independently of water use strategies

Herkenrath et al. show us how critical herbivores are for plants. When browsing up to 30% of plant leaves, sap production increases. The fact that I discuss in my book Wildlife in the Balance is that plants are not ecosystems without animals. Animals engineer the conditions for their own survival and humanity depends on this.

https://simonmustoe.blog/join-my-mailing-list/

1. England, J., Statistical Physics of Self-Replication. The Journal of chemical physics, 2013. 139: p. 121923.
2. Friston, K., A Free Energy Principle for Biological Systems. Entropy (Basel, Switzerland), 2012. 14: p. 2100-2121.
3. WEF (2020) Nature Risk Rising: Why the Crisis Engulfing Nature Matters for Business and the Economy. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_New_Nature_Economy_Report_2020.pdf
4. Haddaway, N. and D. Leclère, WWF Living Planet Report 2020. 2020.
5. Cingolani, A., I. Noy-Meir, and S. Diaz, Grazing effects on rangeland diversity: A synthesis of contemporary models. Ecological Applications – ECOL APPL, 2005. 15: p. 757-773.