I’m a poet and author in the brainstorming stage of putting together a poetry / prose anthology on extinction. Unfortunately, my only qualification for this project is my love of nature and existential anxiety of seeing the world burn, and I have no idea where to start.
So I wanted to come to you all to ask and pick your brain:
If you came across an anthology about extinction, what sort of topics and themes would you expect to be included?
Any species of animals you’d wish to read about? Perhaps one that doesn’t get talked about enough? What would get you to pick up the book?
Any thoughts and ideas would be a huge help, and you’ll definitely get a shoutout once the project is completed!
I’ve been studying mollusks for years now and only just came across this statistic. I think these extinctions are mostly land snails (particularly Pacific islands after rosy wolf snail introductions) and freshwater mussels (particularly in the Southeastern US from habitat degradation). Both these groups are pretty well known among malacologists and have robust conservation programs (at least for invertebrates) but I don’t know how much the average person knows about them.
On another note, I would also like to see success stories of recoveries from near extinction. It can be easy to get lost in the doom and gloom, but I think there is also a lot to be hopeful for (dire wolf does not count…).
Cool project!
I think a section with once-thought-extinct-but-rediscovered animals could be nice, some hope among the sorrow.
Another one I’d read is how alpine communities are suffering because of climate change, and how they go up until they find the peak and can’t go any higher.
This sounds really cool! I will readily read anything related to extinct Hawai’ian bird species and really anything about extinct species in Hawai’i in general. I don’t know how many poems you intend on making, but I think a poem on each of the Hawai’ian islands could be cool (including islands like Laysan a.k.a. Kauō), since they’ve all suffered from a large loss of biodiversity, in both plants and animals.
I also agree with what thomaseverest and oksanaetal have said and think it would be cool to highlight some of the conservation successes in the world as a reminder that there is still hope.
I don’t know the source of this statistic, so please correct me if I’m wrong, but I suspect this impressive statistic comes about because of inherent bias in the data used. I would guess that what is actually meant is that 40% of documented extinctions in the last 400 years are non-marine mollusks. And this (again I’m guessing) is largely due to the fact that non-marine mollusks leave behind copious shells that can be IDed to species even if the species was extinct before it was described scientifically. And those shells have so many amazing details that it is easy to find traits upon which species delineations can be hung. So I’d guess that the great majority of extinctions in the last 500 years have been organisms humans will never know existed. If we were able to split nematodes into species as easily as mollusks, and they left behind as many clearly identifiable remains, we might be saying that the vast majority of animals going extinct in the last 500 years were nematodes. The same might be said of mites.
For me, the topics and themes I’d expect to see included are different than the ones I’d wish to see included. There are certain facts, examples, and views about extinction that tend to be covered whenever the topic comes up, and I’d expect to see those. I’d wish to see something that diverges from that path.
Which leads to this part of your question:
There are far too many that don’t get talked about much! A few examples:
The extinction of parasites and commensals that lived on other species (imagine the variety of things that lived on and in dinosaurs).
The parallels between biological extinctions and linguistic and cultural extinctions.
How little we know about the chemical ecology, behavior, vocalizations, senses, etc. of long-extinct species and our tendency to assume they didn’t have interesting traits in these areas despite the ubiquity of interesting traits in modern species.
The timescales on which biodiversity recovers after major extinction events.
The fact that many children are more familiar with certain long extinct species than those alive now.
The ongoing effort to drive Guinea Worm to extinction.
The misunderstanding, hype, and fraud around resurrecting extinct species.
Just to clarify: by “putting together an anthology” do you mean collecting work by other writers on the topic, or a collection of your own (yet-to-be-written) texts? I ask because I understand “anthology” in the former sense and I would refer to the latter as a “collection”. but sometimes I see people using anthology for both. It makes a difference how to respond to your post depending on whether the challenge is to find existing texts or topics for writing your own.
The inner heartbreak when scientists see the organisms they love disappear, while the public doesn’t care or is ignorant, the inner rage at selfish corporations and politicians; but not being able to speak up because they have to practice censorship in order to be able to work at all.