We don't even know what species are out there, for the most part, particularly when you get down to the microbes and very small invertebrates. They make up the mass of the organisms around us, including the soil we depend on, the soil of cornfields as well as hardwood forests. We haven't taken ecology to the point where we can even make a crude prediction of what's going to happen when we've reduced the living world down to a certain level.

[T]he true natural sciences lock together in theory and evidence to form the ineradicable technical base of modern civilization. The pseudosciences satisfy personal psychological needs... but lack the ideas or the means to contribute to the technical base.

The laws of biology are written in the language of diversity.

[The natural world cleans water, pollinates plants and provides pharmaceuticals, among many other gifts.] Thirty trillion dollars worth of services, scot-free to humanity, every year.

There doesn't seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.

This is the assembly of life that took a billion years to evolve. It has eaten the storms - folded them into its genes - and created the world that created us. It holds the world steady.

Ants are the dominant insects of the world, and they've had a great impact on habitats almost all over the land surface of the world for more than 50-million years.