Flickr: Creative Commons by Carl Feldman

On Thursday, November 20th at the Royal Geographical Society in London, in a debate sponsored by Earthwatch Institute, titled Irreplaceable: The World's Most Invaluable Species, five scientists will make their cases for which species if extinct would have the greatest impact on our planet. The list of animals and plants include: primates, bats, bees, fungi and plankton.

The five scientists are:  

• Professor Lynne Boddy from Cardiff School of Biosciences will attempt to make the cast for fungi. She has argued that fungi are important because “it keeps the trees alive, recycles waste and helps us.”
• Dr George McGavin of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History believes that bees are important because “bees are irreplaceable. Their loss will be catastrophic.”
• Professor David Thomas of the School of Ocean Sciences, University of Bangor says that plankton are the “base of the whole food web.”
• Dr Kate Jones of the Zoological Society of London is a stronger believer in the power of bats and has said “bats provide a number of these essential services.”
• Ian Redmond, chief consultant of the great apes survival project will remind us not to forget the primates because “primate habitats provide ecosystem services we all depend upon.”