"Devils Hole pupfish has much to teach scientists about adaptation to adverse conditions. It has adapted to survive in very warm water with very low oxygen content.

Envision each living thing on Earth, including humans, as being a thread in a piece of cloth. Each time a species goes extinct, a thread is removed and the fabric is weakened. As more threads disappear, one-by-one, the strands separate and fall away. Eventually, the original piece of cloth falls apart and disappears.

All living things are part of a complex, often delicately balanced network called the biosphere. The earth’s biosphere, in turn, is composed of countless ecosystems, which include plants and animals and their physical environments. No one knows how the extinction of organisms will affect the other members of its ecosystem, but the removal of a single species can set off a chain reaction affecting many others. Only time will tell."