medium · GRE Verbal
Passage: Coral reefs are frequently described as the rainforests of the sea, a metaphor prized for conveying their biodiversity. The comparison, however, misleads on a crucial point. Rainforests accumulate their richness atop deep, nutrient-laden soils; reefs, by contrast, flourish in tropical waters so nutrient-poor that they are sometimes called marine deserts. The reef's productivity arises not from ambient abundance but from an internal economy: symbiotic algae housed within coral tissue recycle scarce nutrients with extraordinary efficiency, and little escapes the system. To liken reefs to rainforests is therefore to obscure what is most remarkable about them—that such profusion is wrung from such scarcity. The author's primary purpose is to:
- Argue that coral reefs are more biologically diverse than rainforests
- Qualify a popular metaphor by identifying a fundamental disanalogy it conceals
- Recommend that scientists abandon all metaphors when describing ecosystems
- Explain in detail the chemical mechanism by which symbiotic algae photosynthesize
- Establish that extremely nutrient-poor waters cannot support significant marine life forms
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