Adding higher life forms to a Terraformed Mars

Adding higher life forms to a Terraformed Mars. From the writer of The Terraformers’ Toolkit.
Once Mars’ surface has been warmed to temperatures close to or above freezing, the atmosphere has been supplemented by oxygen and nitrogen, and the dead regolith has begun to be changed into living soil, then advanced plants and animals can be considered for introduction.
Plants
Higher plants can survive down to −70 Celsius (-94 F), but for completion of their life cycles multicellular organisms have a limit of -2 Celsius (28 F).
Ensuring diversity and letting nature do most of the work are the key elements here, as is a species’ ability to reproduce rapidly. If all of these are in place, nature will have a better chance of establishing itself without constant human interference. Therefore, the first plants to be added could be wind-pollinated; for example, the invasive Vasey grass (Paspalum urvillei), which has wind-distributed pollen and seeds, which means the wind will do most of the work. The first flowering plant could be the invasive dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), which occurs from Argentina to Northern Europe, has wind-distributed seeds and can reproduce asexually. Asexuality is good for producing rapid growth, while sexuality is better at dealing with complex selection pressures in a biological environment. So a combination of the two is ideal. Another benefit of using dandelions is that they edible. So they could feed many animal species and although the strong flavour is not to everyone’s taste, we could eat them as well.
Being invasive makes species highly versatile and capable of adapting to new environments, so this is why they are more likely to prosper and be extremely useful in a new Martian ecosystem. In order to be categorised as invasive, they will have had to overcome geographic, environmental, reproductive and dispersal barriers on Earth. Genetic diversity is a further barrier that these species face, as if only a few individuals are introduced it would result in a slow adaptive preparation to the new environment (on Earth or Mars), after which they could become truly invasive. Such species tend be highly competitive, fast reproducers that can rapidly adapt to unfamiliar environments.
Insects
Insect pollinators could be added later when there is sufficient pollen and nectar for them. They could be selected based on their range and adaptability on Earth, so buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) might be a useful early introduction as they are highly adaptable and invasive in some countries. It might even be possible to just use invasive species as first stage introductions in an alien environment, but there is a risk that they may not provide the ecosystem services required of them. If terraformers focused solely on species categorised as invasive on Earth, they run the risk of developing what might be called a ‘Frankenstein Ecosystem’ as it would be like taking single pieces from many different jigsaw puzzles and trying to fit them all together. However invasive species could be used as pioneers to make the environment ready for other species. For example, dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) and buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) might work well together and allow other species to capitalise on their success.
Higher Animals
Other animals ranging from jays and squirrels to musk oxen and horses also assist in planting seeds and thereby spreading forests. However, their oxygen requirements are more like ours.
It’s also worth mentioning here that Mars is significantly further from the Sun than we are and therefore will be colder than Earth. Additionally, each degree of temperature rise will have an huge cost for the terraformers, so the environment is more likely to be like Alaska, Canada or Siberia, then Central Europe or the lower 48 US States.
A remaining problem with many animals is that they learn from their mothers rather than just instinct. This includes what to eat, where to find food, how to interact with each other and which species to fear. Assuming that the astronauts would not want to carry live animals like bears and elk on their long journey to Mars, it would be safer and better if the young animals could be grown from frozen embryos, and taught survival skills by robotic foster parents.
Ecosystems
Because of its geography Mars will have just one land mass and a single ocean, so it would be better to collect animals and plants which have evolved together in a similar geography.
The most similar ecosystem on Earth is that which surrounds the Arctic Ocean. In the long term the biggest problem for our future terraforming descendants will be that climate change may make some critical cold tolerant species extinct.
It up to us today to keep them alive in whatever ways we can so they can be useful to us when we need them. Bringing them back from extinction would be incredibly hard or impossible. So don’t hope to include Mammoth in Mars forests.

[@thekito4623]

a small investement into a new microphone would go a long way to make your channel more successful .... but it seems to me that either way if you just keep it up, you will probably grow big ... this video reminds me of isaac arthurs channel ^^ if you keep posting regularily im pretty sure youll grow big

[@charlesjoynson7758]

Thanks, I have got a good microphone, but the Camtasia app i'm using refuses to use it. I'll probably need to upgrade or do more research.

[@groggen2060]

maybe record the audio separately and then add it in?@@charlesjoynson7758