Beta diversity does not compensate for gamma diversity

Corydalis and polygonatum are beautiful plants. Less conspicuous, there are snail-eating ground beetles, and along the path a slightly creepy-looking cobra lily. Everything now living on Kakuda-yama has changed through long evolution and still survived. In a continuous natural environment, specialized organisms bloom and walk in their own ways and live together by making room for one another.

It is natural that people also vary. In fragmented urban environments those differences become stress or grounds for exclusion. I will not argue the rights and wrongs here. But in the time of continuing evolution this feels deeply wrong for a living thing, and at least it is a disadvantage for evolution.

Our laboratory thinks about the sources of survival and evolution, and studies brain disease, disability, and aging. More than this would not be understood if I wrote it here now. The rest can wait until the surrounding environment is ready to receive it, or until someone other than me in this lab takes up that research.