Forget Person Of The Year, Debate The Most Important Species

If you thought the season for debates and voting had ended, think again! Some folks over in the UK -- specifically, the EarthWatch institute -- are debating which is the most important species in the world!

They've narrowed it down to five candidates, which one person here in the HuffPost office has already astutely pointed out are not actually species. Regardless, we're willing to arbitrarily vote on which is the most important to the world among bats, bees, fungi, plankton or primates.

Read summaries of scientists' cases for each of the most important species, then vote below:

Fungi

'It keeps the trees alive, recycles waste and helps us'
Professor Lynne Boddy of the Cardiff School of Biosciences

Bees
'Bees are irreplaceable. Their loss will be catastrophic'
Dr George McGavin of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History

Plankton
'Plankton are the base of the whole food web'
Professor David Thomas of the School of Ocean Sciences, University of Bangor

Bats
'Bats provide a number of these essential services'
Dr Kate Jones of the Zoological Society of London

Primates
'Primate habitats provide ecosystem services we all depend upon'
Ian Redmond, chief consultant of the great apes survival project

Quick Poll

Which is the most important to the world?

Bats

Bees

Fungi

Plankton

Primates

Comments

[redapes]

Can we get a little love for the orangutans???? These gentle, beautiful creatures are being pushed to the brink of extinction by deforestation and the expansion of palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia. Without our intervention, they have no chance of surviving in the wild. Find out more at the Orangutan Outreach website: http://redapes.org

[rivrgrrl]

The answer is all of the above plus every other living thing connected to through the web of Life.

It took the Earth billions of years to evolve into the harmony of existence that it currently is (was). And while some species may survive longer than others without the support of the interconnected web, it is only a matter of time before nothing could exist as it has evolved to.

Humans keep changing the environment to suit them and only them, destroying or displacing what was originally there. They occasionally attempt to restore what has been changed but it is never the same again.

We humans could probably adapt to almost any environment we create, but what about the rest of the natural world.

I'm always puzzled by the religious out there; they claim to believe so strongly that their god created this paradise for them yet they actively work on a daily basis to destroy it through acts of ignorance or apathy. And then they turn around and want that same strong statement of faith to be viewed as their standing of credibility and righteousness. And why is that, usually? Because they mistakenly believe that humans are the most important species on the planet.

Gaia beware.

[darthdarcy]

Dolphins they've been trying to warn us about the end of the planet but must soon depart..