Seeing further: the story of science & the Royal Society — 12 STEVE JONES

1. 1. The total number of species on Earth is unknown; almost two million have been described, but the total may be up to twenty times greater, depending on how 'species' is defined.
2. 2. Darwin's writings introduced a tension between directed change (natural selection) and accident, a debate that remains unresolved in evolutionary biology.
3. 3. The term 'biodiversity' was coined in the 1960s and popularized in 1988, and is now almost always accompanied by the qualifier 'threatened'.
4. 4. The 'neutral model' of ecology assumes all species are functionally equivalent and that abundance is driven by random fluctuations, challenging traditional views of community structure.
5. 5. Historical accidents, such as continental drift and ice ages, have shaped modern biodiversity patterns more than current climate or food availability.
6. 6. Ecological systems can exhibit sudden, unpredictable collapses due to small disturbances, as seen in the Black Sea shift from fish to jellyfish after overfishing.