Study links biodiversity and language loss

[Atheist-Lite]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18020636

Study links biodiversity and language loss

The decline of linguistic and cultural diversity is linked to the loss of biodiversity, a study has suggested.

The authors said that 70% of the world's languages were found within the planet's biodiversity hotspots.

Data showed that as these important environmental areas were degraded over time, cultures and languages in the area were also being lost.

The results of the study have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"Biologists estimate annual loss of species at 1,000 times or more greater than historic rates, and linguists predict that 50-90% of the world's languages will disappear by the end of the century," the researchers wrote.

Lead author Larry Gorenflo from Penn State University, in the US, said previous studies had identified a geographical connection between the two, but did not offer the level of detail required.

Dr Gorenflo told BBC News that the limitation to the data was that either the languages were listed by country or there was a dot on the map to indicate the location.

"But what you did not know was if the area extended two kilometres or 200 kilometres, so you really did not get a sense of the extent of the language," he explained.

"We used improved language data to really get a more solid sense of how languages and biodiversity co-occurred and an understanding of how geographically extensive the language was."

He said the study achieved this by also looking at smaller areas with high biodiversity, such as national parks or other protected habitats.

"When we did that, not only did we get a sense of co-occurrence at a regional scale, but we also got a sense that co-occurrence was found at a much finer scale," he said.

(continued)

[Svartalf]

meaning that biodiversity is tied with fertile, life favorable environments in isolated locales that pose problems with circulation and communication with other places? Who would have guessed that language diversity and speciation would be both tied with environments where life can thrive in isolation from other environments, thus encouraging differenciation from what goes in wide range areas?

[Eriku]

Yeah, I reckon this makes a big deal of a correlation which isn't all that. It's clearly rather a matter of us bettering our infrastructure and whatnot at the expense of biodiversity, which enables us to converge to a larger degree.

It's something which makes perfect sense under the memetic evolutionary perspective.

[Svartalf]

memetic uh? you lost me there... I guess I'll have to make a post it to look that up tonight or tomorrow.

[Hermit]

meaning that biodiversity is tied with fertile, life favorable environments in isolated locales that pose problems with circulation and communication with other places? Who would have guessed that language diversity and speciation would be both tied with environments where life can thrive in isolation from other environments, thus encouraging differenciation from what goes in wide range areas?

You nailed that one.

[Eriku]

memetic uh? you lost me there... I guess I'll have to make a post it to look that up tonight or tomorrow.

Surely you've come across the term "meme"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzGjEkp772s

It basically posits evolution as a driver of evolution outside of genetics, within the realm of ideas and whatnot.

[Svartalf]

I sure never stumbled across its use in evolutionary theory... and I must admit that I'm not too clear about memes in general...