The Kingdom of Rarities Read Free Page B

species had always been rare but were now facing even lower numbers, a more limited range, or a new invader.
    Some of the more promising places to look for the causes of rarity and of patterns of rarity and abundance are where there are no people. A remote mountainous region of New Guinea with no history of human visitation, the locale of chapter 2, offers a good venue to investigate the extent of rarity under natural conditions. By comparing what we discover there with what is found in other ranges where local tribes have access, we can begin to answer several fundamental questions about how rarity is created and what pattern exists where humans have had no perceivable influence. New Guinea also offers a rewarding glimpse of how extreme isolation and active geology can lead to rarity and a narrow range of resident species. In contrast, another area with low human activity, the Peruvian region of Madre de Dios, the locale of chapter 3, illustrates a condition that exists for many tropical rarities, from jaguars to canopy trees—a wide range of species living at extremely low densities.
    The string of insults to nature brought about by human activities covers a staggering range including habitat loss, poaching and the consumption of body parts of rare creatures, introduction of diseases and invasive predators, expansion of agriculture to feed a growing human population, and the horrors of war. In this book I examine these human-induced causes of rarity, along with many natural influences, in a journey that spans most continents. In the natural world, the causes of rarity are often difficult to pin down or isolate to a single source. To untangle these strands, in each chapter that follows I sample different manifestations of rarity and considerprobable causes and consequences for species and the ecosystems they inhabit. Much can be done in the short term to preserve species populations. Ultimately, though, the future of many species depends on our ability to live in greater harmony with the rare creatures among us. In Bhutan, the setting of chapter 9, where Tibetan Buddhism is the dominant religion and cultural conservation is part of the fabric of society, we see how rare species can persist and recover when humans coexist peacefully with wildlife and treat rare species with respect and compassion.
    What is in store for rare species? Looking backward and examining evolution’s fingerprints may provide some clues. The renowned ecologist Gordon Orians has noted that natural selection, as an evolutionary process, lacks foresight. It can’t look ahead to help a species best adapt to a threat to its future survival, be it next year or several centuries or millennia hence. Thus, all the current traits and behavioral responses we see in such species as the maned wolf, the giant anteater, the rhinoceroses, and the Kirtland’s warbler—all protagonists in this story—were shaped in their predecessors’ environments. Yet some of those traits, even if selected for other reasons, may enhance persistence when a species becomes rare or, if it has always been rare, faces even more dramatic threats to its survival. Phrased another way, at least some species that have always been rare may possess traits that will allow them to hang on in the face of changing circumstances. In each chapter I examine such traits to assess whether such a repertoire, however unintended, enhances adaptation to life in the Anthropocene.
    If the search for rarity and an understanding of its origins holds evolutionary interest and conservation importance, it also has a strong allure of its own. The truth is as simple as it is universal: we are seduced by rarity and novelty. Scientists live with this affliction, shared with art collectors, car buffs, and wine connoisseurs, many of whom are willing to pay exorbitant prices to add the rarest of items to their collections. The allure of the rare is what motivates many of us to raise a pair of