If it is true that Nature does not need man, man certainly needs Nature. Maintaining biodiversity is crucial to our well-being and survival. The free ecosystem services that the environment guarantees us (such as plant pollination, soil stability, refraction of sunlight by ice, to name just a few) cannot be replaced by artificial plants. Today we are heading towards the sixth mass extinction and the main cause is man: it is the meteorite that destroys the diversity and abundance of living species and the ecosystems they inhabit. Charles Darwin, the great father of evolutionary theory, was among the first thinkers to accept the reality of extinction as a fundamental feature of the history of life on Earth, a nontrivial consideration in an era dominated by creationist and essentialist conceptions of life (according to which living things are immutable). (Francesco Suman)