Imagine an omnipotent and mischievous entity wants to screw with humanity. Having gotten bored with eliminating porn and raising impassable borders in alternate realities, the entity turns its attention to our world. It pops into the archives of the National Academy of Sciences, gets a list of all currently recognized distinct biological species, and picks one – one OTHER than Homo sapiens, natch. Snapping its fingers, it causes that species to completely disappear.
The entity’s aim, of course, is to cause maximum chaos to humanity. What species does it choose, and why?
Of course bees come to mind, but you’re asking about one species, and I just don’t know enough about bees to write much about them. If every single bee disappears, we’re in trouble, but just one species? Beats me. Depends on the species, I guess.
I believe there are also essential bacteria in our gut or on our skin or otherwise in our system. Once again, though, I’m in over my head.
I also guess that something extremely plentiful and low on the food chain (plankton?) could cause a bad chain reaction.
I doubt that there is one (zoologically defined) species whose disappearance will wreak much havoc with the world as we know it.
For psychological effect on humans, though, I would nominate either Canis Canis or *Felix Felix *(one more Felix?) – that is, either all dogs or all house cats.
IANA expert, but I suggest that one speicies of insect won’t matter a bit. There are enough similar species that any newly vacated ecological niche will be small and rapidly filled.
For the OP, do you mean “…maximum chaos for humanity…” or what your title said, “…damage to Earth”? Those are two very different things.
In terms of human disruption, making all the cattle disappear would be good. No more beef. No more dairy. No more ice cream. Lots of ranches & infrastructure with nothing to do. Lots of farm acreage planted with cattle feed unsuitable for human consumption.
Naturally this’d matter more to places like the US or Argentina vs. India or Madagascar.
And that’d leave a few cattle-like critters around, oxen, buffaloe, etc., so we’d have the raw stock to begin a breeding program that’d have beef back on the shelf in a couple thousand years.
If you expand “species” to “category of plant/animal” (a loose term I just made up), Ithink you could probably do a lot of damage to the overall biosphere by killing off the oceanic plants. That’d trash the oxygen/carbon cycle a bunch & maybe trigger an event like when the cyanobacteria went wild Great Oxidation Event - Wikipedia.
if you broaden the definition of species enough to accept corn or rice (which are many different species), then any major grain or cereal that you wiped could cause some serious upheaval.
Not even that long… bison are domesticated now; you can get bison steaks, roasts, etc… at most local grocery stores.
I suspect that with the demise of all cattle, that bison would be the obvious replacement, especially considering they’re pretty similar in taste & texture.
(and, oxen are cattle; specifically they’re fully grown cattle that are trained as draft animals)
As for the OP, I’d guess that the loss of *saccharomyces cerevisiae * (beer/bread yeast) would cause a tremendous amount of disruption.
Imagine having no bread or bread-like products that use yeast, no beer, no wine, no whiskey, no vodka, or any other distilled products, as well as very little in the way of ethanol for cars, or other products.
I think that would be pretty significant, if not necessarily lethal.
Nope. Same reasons as you gave for losing cattle: too many different species that can fill the niche. There are several different species of beer yeasts. The loss of S. cerevisiae would knock the ale producers for a loop but it wouldn’t impact Anheuser-Busch in the least. The big lager brewers all use S. uvarum or S. carlsbergensis. Give them a month or so to get yeast production switched to the new species and we’re back in business.
I thought that Carlsbergensis & Saccharomyces were the same species, just mis-named back a long time ago… but then again, I’m no taxonomist, so I wouldn’t know for sure.
I have this suspicion that the OP species will be something toward the bottom of the food chain- a microbe or insect.
What about E. Coli? Isn’t it required in many animal’s guts for some digestive process?
I know I may be exceeding the OP’s limits, but the elimination of fungi would devastate the earth pretty quickly. Fungal organisms are responsible for most decay which creates/revitalises soil.
Whatever the answer is, it’s very small. The biggest it could be would be an insect, I believe. Say, what would happen to all the dead skin animals shed if there were no dust mites? Would be drown in out own waste?