MARBENA e-conference on Baltic Sea marine biodiversity (June 2003)
Topic 3: “Where is the ‘Cutting Edge Science’ in the Baltic marine biodiversity?”
Author: dr Jolanta Koszteyn
Institute of Oceanology Polish Academy of Science, Powst. Warszawy 55, 81-712 Sopot, Poland, e-mail sagitta@iopan.gda.pl
Dear Colleagues,
Biodiversity (biological diversity) is usually considered at three different levels:
[1] genetic diversity,
[2] species diversity,
[3] ecosystem diversity.
But it seems that the problem of biodiversity is much deeper than that. It is - de facto –an old and still unanswered question concerning the life, i.e. biological dynamism. It is not possible to answer it, without examining some essential properties of concrete living forms. An oak, a cat, a frog, a sea-gull, a shrimp, a herring, a bacterium, is a concrete living form.
Living form
The expression concrete living form does not imply something “frozen in time”, a segment isolated from its environment, an organic structure, which we see here and now.
Let us take into consideration a very illustrative (although non-marine) example – a frog. When we stand on the bank of a pond in springtime, we can see the frogspawn. A few days later, we can see swimming briskly tadpoles, equipped with gills and a long tail. Then we can notice frogs jumping around in the grass. They have a no tail nor gills, but which now have long hind legs and lungs. Even when the frog reaches maturity, its heart will not be the same as a few days earlier. It will be converted into a “new one”, owing to the ceaseless metabolic turn-over. The same we can say about herring, Pseudocalanus, Aurelia, Pygospio, Balanus, Fucus, etc.
The frog’s (herring’s, Aurelia’s ...) complex chemical structure changes every minute, but the frog (herring, Aurelia ...) keeps its identity as its developmental dynamism goes on. This dynamism “marks out” the non-arbitrary boundaries of the actual and fundamental object of biologist’s research. The “boundaries” of a living form are not delineated by its structure, nor by its envelope of skin, nor by its cellular walls, but by its developmental cycle.
However, this does not mean that the living form is just a developmental dynamism. Nevertheless, this fundamental, integrated biological dynamism determines the proper idea of the living form as a true dynamic whole besides which there is no life.
It does not mean that we can “narrow down” the study of the dynamics of life to a single specimen. The fact that organisms reproduce themselves, directs our attention to the dynamics of transmitting life “down” a lineage. The behavior of a concrete specimen is essentially subordinated to the process of reproduction - the perpetuation of life of the given living form.
The developing and reproducing living forms are the fundamental, “material” subjects of biological and ecological investigations.
Morphology, anatomy, physiology, DNA or biochemistry of particular organisms are the “formal” (but fragmentary) subject of biological study, and these investigations have a proper meaning only in the context of a living whole.
Behavior.
In the study of biodiversity it seems necessary to pay greater attention to the behavior of living form. I propose to look at the organisms not as structural components (“particles”) of ecosystem, nor as components of energy or matter flow through ecosystem, but first of all as the behaving being. It means, that living entity:
[1] possess biological tools (organs) - from molecular (e.g. different enzymes, ribosomes or DNA structure containing enciphered and passive information) up to anatomical level of body organization (e.g. legs, gills, or eyes),
[2] possess an ability to utilize these tools,
[3] possess an aptitude to reach an orientation in some properties or states of surroundings and in the structures of one’s own body.
Almost all the biological tools are created in the course of embryogenesis. Only relatively few are received like a “dowry” from the parental organism within the structures of the gamete. Due to orientation in abiotic and biotic factors of an environment the living form may modify and improve its own actions, as well as repair and adapt the shape, size, constructional or functional details of its own tools. Expression of these abilities amounts - among others – to phenotypic (and genotypic) plasticity of individuals of given living form.
On the top of the structural (anatomical, cytological, organellar, biomolecular) level of the living entity we observe, we do always observe the behaviour of the (whole) living entity. The structure and size of the instrument has no primary significance here.
It is important to realize that behaviour lies at the basis of the fundamental, developmental dynamism of living forms - i.e. the construction, reconstruction and repair of the body’s structures.
Orientation.
Orientation can be recognized when the living form, in an obvious way, choose (select) his actions (their character, moment of a partucular activity, its direction, etc.) as well as the object of its manipulation. Vertical and horizontal migration, selection of mating time, food capture, selection of the material for nest or shell construction, selection of the overwintering water layer, etc., are the examples of actions of living forms „steered” by orientation. It seems that orientation may play an important role in the formation of a complex web of dependencies between living forms within their communities or assemblages.
Biological and abiotic dynamism.
Though biologist are interested first and foremost in the biological dynamism, they cannot lose sight of different types of abiotic dynamism (water mass movement, heating, freezing, river water inflow, light penetration into the water, etc.). It is necessary to discuss the dynamism of living forms in the context of the abiotic (nonliving) dynamics. But it is wrong to mix up these two kinds of dynamism (and talk e.g. about “sand-beach respiration”) or melt them together into one kind of “ecosystem dynamism” (appearing in different forms). Ecosystem is not a true whole (like organism), but it is a set of objects and dynamics objectively different in their nature. The biological dynamism remains in a clear, though specific, relation with the abiotic dynamics. Physico-chemical factors can provoke living forms to different types of behavior (e.g. to search the environmental conditions which are optimal to developmental processes), can shift organisms from one place to another (conditioning, for example, colonization of a new place), or can eliminate (kill) them.
Biology and ecology.
Biology is the study of life. Ecology – in my opinion - is just a division of biology. I propose to define ecology as the study of organisms in their environment of life in aim of understanding the nature, origin and consequences of formation of different types of the behavioral and physical link between living forms, as well as between organisms and abiotic environment. Marine ecologists must seriously take into consideration the results of physical and chemical investigation of the sea, but their main effort should be focused on living forms (species identification, life cycles, behavior, etc.). |
