A physician, Lewis Thomas, answered this question. In Lives of a Cell, he wrote, "The most beautiful object I have ever seen in a photograph is the planet Earth seen from the distance of the moon, hanging there in space, obviously alive. Although it seems at first glance to be made up of innumerable separate species, on closer examination each species is interdependently connected to all others. To put it another way, it is an organism." The importance of biodiversity, intuited from the photograph of our planet, is that its loss may impact our own survival.
Text
and images used by permission are the sole property of their respective
authors or other copyright holders, as indicated, and may not be reproduced
without permission unless they are in the public domain. All other text
and images copyright © 1999-2001 by the credited authors listed
on the index
page. Send
questions/comments to josephd@ecology.org