What you will learn in How much life there is, and what is happening to it

1. 1. How many species?

   The described count is a number somebody keeps. The total is an estimate, and the methods for making it disagree by more than an order of magnitude.

2. 2. Where diversity is

   More species towards the equator, fewer towards the poles — a pattern described for two centuries and still without a settled explanation.

3. 3. Area predicts species

   Fit the relationship to thirty real islands, then take habitat away and read off what the fit predicts.

4. 4. Why it is being lost

   Four causes, each with a mechanism — and a demonstration that cutting a habitat up costs species with nothing cleared at all.

5. 5. What conservation involves

   Three kinds of argument for protecting species, two places to do the protecting, and one classification scheme — sorted by the learner, ranked by nobody.