The Next Species: The Future of Evolution in the Aftermath of Man (39 page)

developed in the last one hundred years
: “Los Angeles County, California: Quick Facts from the UA Census Bureau,”
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06037.html
.

world’s population growth
: Robert Kunzig, “Seven Billion: Special Series,”
National Geographic
, January 2011.

India’s population growth
: Kenneth R.Weiss, “Beyond 7 Billion, Part 1: The Biggest Generation,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 22, 2012.

China’s one-child policy
: Kenneth R.Weiss, “Beyond 7 Billion, Part 4: The China Effect,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 22, 2012.

The Population Bomb
: Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, “The Population Bomb Revisited,”
The Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development
1, no. 3 (2009), Population-Bomb-Revisted-Paul-20096-5.pdf.

5
 WARNING SIGN I: THE SOIL

This land was transformed into grasslands
: Jan Zalasiewicz,
The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks?
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008), 86.

Lawes, entrepreneur and agricultural scientist
: Rothamsted Research, “Rothamsted Research: Where Knowledge Grows,”
Science Strategy
, 2012–17,
www.rothamsted.ac.uk
.

reduction of biodiversity
: Weisman,
The World Without Us
, 192–94.

“sample archive”
: Ibid., 194–202.

tending plants was easier than hunting game
: Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending,
The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution
(New York: Basic Books, 2009), 67–71.

While we were nomadic
: Author interview with Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus of the American Museum of Natural History, April 18, 2012.

sample archive
: Weisman,
The World Without Us
, 194–202.

That afternoon, out in the fields
: Justin Gillis, “Norman Borlaug, Plant Scientist Who Fought Famine, Dies at 95,”
New York Times
, September 13, 2009.

20:20 Wheat
: “Rothamsted Research,”
Science Strategy
, 2012–17,
www.rothamsted.ac.uk
.

Jonathan Lynch
:
http://plantscience.psu.edu/directory/jpl4
;
http://plantscience.psu.edu/research/labs/roots/about
; author interview with Jonathan Lynch, August 2011.

Susan McCouch
:
http://vivo.cornell.edu/display/individual138
; author interview with Susan McCouch, August 2011.

potential of
terra preta
: Michael Tennesen, “Black Gold of the Amazon: Fertile, charred soil created by pre-Columbian peoples sustained late settlements in the rain forest,”
Discover Magazine
28, no. 4 (April 2007), 46–52.

Amazonian soils
: Manuel Arroyo-Kalin, “Slash-burn-and-churn,”
Quaternary International
249 (August 18, 2011), 4–18.

to the Calhoun Experimental Forest
: Daniel Richter, et al., “Evolution of Soil, Ecosystem, and Critical Zone Research at the USDA FS Calhoun Experimental Forest,” in
USDA Forest Service Experimental Forests and Ranges: Research for the Long Term
(New York: Springer, 2014).

where the soil had been excavated
: Daniel Richter and Dan H. Yaalon, “The Changing Model of Soil, Revisited,”
Soil Science Society of America Journal
76, no. 3 (May 2012), 766–78.

West-central Florida produces much of the US phosphorus
: Michael Tennesen, “Phosphorus Fields: Phosphorus and nitrogen fertilizers drive modern agriculture, but they are also poisoning the planet,”
Discover
, December 2009, 55–59.

Gaseous emissions of nitrogen can drift with the wind
: Michael Tennesen, “Sour Showers: Acid Rain Returns—This Time It Is Caused by Nitrogen Emissions,”
Scientific American
303, no. 3 (June 21, 2010), 23–24.

sample from the year 1963
: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, “Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,”
www.jfklibrary.org
.

green roofs
: Stuart R. Gaffin, Cynthia Rosenzweig, and Angela Y. Y. Kong, “Adapting to climate change through urban green infrastructure,”
Nature Climate Change
2, no. 704 (2012).

author of
The Vertical Farm
: Dickson Despommier,
The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century
(New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2010), 3–11.

cattle-rearing
: UN News Centre, “Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars, UN report warns,” November 29, 2006.

soils are critical components of the earth’s biosphere
: Ronald Almundson, “Protecting Endangered Soils,”
Geotimes
43, no. 3 (March 1998).

43 percent of earth’s land to agricultural production
: Author interview with Anthony Barnosky, March 2, 2012.

murder of 800,000 Rwandans
: Robert Kunzig, “Seven Billion: Special Series,”
National Geographic
, January 2011, 62.

6
 WARNING SIGN II: OUR BODIES

the story of Mr. Yu. G.
: Richard Preston,
The Hot Zone
(New York: Random House, 1994), 72–77; WHO Study Team, “Ebola haemorrhagic fever in Sudan, 1976,”
Bulletin of the World Health Organization
55, no. 2 (1978), 247–70,
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2395561/
.

It then went through the hospital
: R. C. Baron, et al., “Ebola virus disease in southern Sudan: hospital dissemination and intrafamilial spread,”
Bulletin of the World Health Organization
61 (1983), 997–1003,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2536233/
.

Some scientists believe
: Preston,
Hot Zone
, 49; Joshua Hammer, “The Hunt for Ebola,”
Smithsonian.com
, November 2012.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-hunt-for-ebola-81684905/?all&no-ist
.

60 percent of all infectious diseases
: Augustin Estrada-Pena, et al., “Effects of Environmental change on zoonotic disease risk: an ecological primer,”
Trends in Parasitology
30 (April 2014), 205–14.

severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)
: “Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS),” PubMed Health,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0004460/
.

the effects of the disease are spread out and diluted
: Richard S. Ostfeld, “Are predators good for your health? Evaluating evidence for top-down regulation of zoonotic disease reservoirs,”
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
2, no. 1 (2004), 13–20.

drive out or kill the bats
: Author interviews with Richard Ostfeld, 2011–14.

increased the presence of infectious disease
: Cochran and Harpending,
The 10,000 Year Explosion
, 159–67.

people in close proximity for disease to spread
: Ibid., 155–59.

immunity to malaria can come at great cost
: Carolyn Sayre, “What You Need to Know About Sickle Cell Disease,”
New York Times
, June 29, 2011.

According to the World Health Organization
: WHO, “Malaria: Fact Sheet No. 94,”
Media Centre
, December 2013,
http://www.who.int/mediacentre
.

fewer domesticated animals
: Chengfeng Qin and Ede Qin, “Review of Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching,”
Virology Journal
4 (April 2007), 38; video interview,
Birdflubook.com
.

Francisco de Orellana
: Charles Mann,
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
(New York: Knopf, 2005), 315–21.

“Wherever the European has trod”
: Cochran and Harpending,
The 10,000 Year Explosion
, 167–69.

With these potential killers held at bay
: The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, “The History of Vaccines: Yellow Fever,” 2014,
www.historyofvaccines.org
.

Powassan virus encephalitis
: Lori Quillen, “Black-legged Ticks Linked to Encephalitis in New York State,” Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, July 15, 2013,
http://rhinebeck.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/black-legged-ticks-linked-to-encephalitis-in-new-york-state/
.

Small mammals are much better at handing off infections
: Jesse Brunner, Shannon Duerr, Felicia Keesing, Mary Killilea, Holly Vuong, and Richard S. Ostfeld, “An experimental test of competition among mice, chipmunks, and squirrels in deciduous forest fragments,”
PLOS One
, June 18, 2013.

fragmented forests increase disease
: Ibid.

Antibiotic resistance
: Robert S. Lawrence, “The Rise of Antibiotic Resistance: Consequences of FDA’s Inaction,”
The Atlantic
, January 23, 2012.

antimicrobial chemicals used in personal-care products
: John Cronin, “Antibacterial soaps don’t work, are bad for humans & the environment,”
EarthDesk
, December 19, 2013,
http://earthdesk.blogs.pace.edu/2013/12/19/antibacterial-soaps-dont-work/
.

Common afflictions like gonorrhea
: WHO, “Urgent action needed to prevent the spread of untreatable gonorrhoea,”
Media Centre
, June 6, 2012,
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2012/gonorrhoea_20120606/en/
.

currently resurging is tuberculosis
: Mayo Clinic, “Tuberculosis,” January 26, 2011,
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/tuberculosis/DS00372
.

These chronic diseases have overtaken infectious diseases
: Lawrence, “The Rise of Antibiotic Resistance.”

“Some microorganisms are resistant to nearly everything”
: “WHO Director-General addresses an expert advisory group on antimicrobial resistance,” Geneva, Switzerland, September 19, 2013,
http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2013/stag_amr_20130919/en/
.

7
 WARNING SIGN III: SQUID AND SPERM WHALES

Santa Rosalía fishermen pursue Humboldt squid
: Michael Tennesen, “Humboldt Squid: Masters of Their Universe,”
Wildlife Conservation Magazine
, February 2009.

low-oxygen zones in the water, a result of climate change
: Lothar Stramma, “Expanding Oxygen-Minimum Zones in the Tropical Oceans,”
Science
320, no. 5876 (May 2, 2008), 655–58.

Gilly wonders what the long-term effects
: Author interview with William Gilly, February 28, 2012.

oxygen minimum zones that reached almost 0 percent
: Lothar Stramma, “Ocean oxygen minimum expansion and their biological impacts,”
Deep Sea Research
Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers
57, no. 4 (April 2010), 587–95.

Northern California’s hake fishery
: F. Chan, et al., “Emergence of Anoxia in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystems,”
Science
319, no. 5865 (February 15, 2008), 920.

“White Shark Café”
: Michael Tennesen, “Science Sleuths: The White Shark Café,”
National Wildlife
, July/August 2011.

a measurable decrease in oxygen
: Lothar Stramma, Sunke Schmidtko, Lisa A. Levin, and Gregory C. Johnson, “Mismatch between observed and modeled trends in dissolved upper-ocean oxygen over the last 50 yr,”
Biogeosciences
57, no. 4 (April 2010), 587–95.

Oxygen deprivation was a major source of extinction
: Kenneth R. Weiss, “Oxygen-poor ocean zones are growing,”
Los Angeles Times
, May 2, 2008,
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-deadzone2-2008may02-story.html
.

the world’s drama in their rearview mirror
: John Steinbeck and Edward Ricketts,
The Log from the Sea of Cortez
(New York: Viking Press, 1951), 4.

trolled a couple of lines off the back of their boat
: Ibid., 76.

The squid must have migrated
: Raphael D. Sagarin, “Remembering the Gulf: changes in the marine communities of the
Sea of Cortez
since the Steinbeck and Ricketts expedition of 1940,”
Frontiers in Ecology
(2008),
http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/070067
.

Humboldt squid are also famously cannibalistic
: Unai Markaida, William F. Gilly, César A. Salinas-Zavala, Rigoberto Rosas-Luis, and J. Ashley T. Booth, “Food and Feeding of Jumbo Squid
Dosidicus Gigas
in the Central Gulf of California during 2005–2007,”
California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations Reports
49 (2008).

encountered “huge” conches and whelks
: Sagarin, “Remembering the Gulf.”

a greatly changed community of open-ocean fish
: William Gilly, “Searching for the Spirits of the
Sea of Cortez
,”
Steinbeck Studies
15, no. 2 (Fall 2004), 5–14.

when he got to San Pedro Mártir Island
: Ibid.

low-oxygen water from off the North Pacific
: Chan, et al., “Emergence of Anoxia in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystems.”