Slashdot Mirror
The De-Evolution of the Ocean
An anonymous reader writes to mention an LA Times article entitled 'A Primeval Tide of Toxins.' The article looks at changing conditions in the world's oceans, and the resulting explosion in the growth of algae, jellyfish, and other primitive lifeforms. From the article: "In many places -- the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fjords of Norway -- some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked. Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago. Jeremy B.C. Jackson, a marine ecologist and paleontologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, says we are witnessing 'the rise of slime.'" The article is parting of a just-beginning series on our changing world called Altered Oceans.
Why is this devolution? It is simply selection pressure: the higher life forms are pressured into extinction, and the jellyfish and algae go back to evolving: one taxonomy branch is pruned so that another may try. That IS evolution (well, a big hoerkin' chunk of it).
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
It's funny when people claim that things are evolving into "higher" or "lower" forms, as if people are the obvious pinnacle of the process.
What's happening is that the rate of change in the environment is faster than many species can keep up. When you have 10,000 individuals in a population and they breed every 5 years, they can only "absorb" so much change. When you have a species that has billions of individuals and reproduce every 20 minutes, they can take massive environmental change and thrive in it.
The genetic diversity in the bigger population is vast and there's bound to be some individuals with higher tolerance of whatever the change is, be it increased temperatures, environmental toxins, or loss of food supplies. If one individual has the gene that boosts survival, it can propagate through the species very rapidly due to short lifespans.
Think of the human species as the biological equivalent as a comet hitting the earth and you've got it about right.
Well, what happens is that more sensitive organisms are being killed (not sure "reverting back" is a normal term to use here), because they're more sensitive to specific conditions and food, while more primitive stuff isn't as much. But yes, evolution may take things in different ways, but keep in mind that a million years is a quite short timeframe in an evolutionary perspective, and that these conditions would also need to remain, for things to happen. I'm not even sure humanity will be around to affect the environment much by then. And by then evolution would perhaps even have made us different too.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Of course it is reasonable. Of course it is cause and effect. The question is whether we want to keep causing these effects. I for one would rather not leave the world to mold and cockroaches, even if they are superior in the darwinist sense of adapting to environmental devastation. Let's think deeply about this for a moment... 1) pollution is bad for complex, "highly-evolved" organisms; 2) people are such organisms; 3) you and I are people; 4) do you get it yet?
More highly evolved forms of life are, almost by definition, more specialized and thus will suffer more in the face of rapid (on an evolutionary scale) change as they cannot adapt as well. Simpler life forms have less to go wrong. This isn't de-evolution, it is re-evolution... rewind to the point where the species works and then start the evolutionary process again.
Today's topic is pollution, not global warming (which has been proven to be caused by man - an issue only disputed by people already exposed as paid oil industry shills).
And yes, you are totally out to lunch: we need to stop those chemicals from seeping into our oceans first, before anything else. In case you haven't noticed, organisms are feeding off that stuff and turning into health hazards.
I mean, unless you just like a life without ever seeing a dolphin, eating a shrimp or what not.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
This is assuming that this damage to the oceans can continue indefinitely. A massive extinction of marine animals would make its way up the food chain. Land life would eventually be affected, both by the stuff we're already doing and by the extinction of their marine food. Eventually, it will affect humans. We'd start dying off too, leading to basically a collapse of civilization. It would return us to the stone age. With civilization gone, the damage to the oceans will stop.
It's very hard to kill all humans. Even now we don't have enough nukes and chemical weapons to kill every single person on Earth. You can probably get 99%, but that still leaves 62,000,000...
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
. . . but if you rewind the VCR of evolution and let it play again, the show won't be the same.
It could tens of thousands of years for all the niches to re-fill. And because ecological niches are defined in large part by what life is already around, the new species that arise won't be the same as the ones we are used too and benefit from.
We could end up with an ocean without fish worth eating. They could be bony or greasy or, like a lot of fish species, poisonous.
And the human survivors living in the depleted, impoverished ecosystems we leave behind will utterly despise us for our careless, irresponsible, wasteful ways.
How come this pseudo-scientific babble was modded +5 interesting? Sure, the concept of life on a planet carrying out a "biological reset" might be a great concept for a science fantasy TV series like Star Trek, but it has no place in any kind of discussion of what might actually be happening on Earth right now. This kind of teleologico-evolutionary raving is no better than the kind of nonsense spouted by Creationists and is a nice example of how many people blindly subscribe to evolutionary theory as a kind of religion without having the faintest clue of what it's actually about. Of course it's not surprising that some people hold such views, but it is mildly shocking that such views get modded to the highest level of interest on /.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Evolution can't "run in reverse." Evolution doesn't have a goal or a direction. Natural selection says that whatever organism is best adapted to a particular environment/nice will reproduce more. It doesn't say that that organism must be more "advanced" or complex than the ones that were in the niche before. Less complex organisms are better able to adapt to the changes happening in these particular environments. Maybe they'll get some new adaptations eventually that lead to their becoming more complex. Maybe not. Maybe the environment will change again to favor the more complex creatures. Maybe not. But it's certainly not running "in reverse."
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Redesign, re-randomization... same thing.
When my four-year-old gets ahold of fingerpaint and showcases her "talent" on a piece of construction paper, I see it as randomization. She sees it as a masterpiece. Who's right?
The answer: We both are. It just depends on your point of view.
Just because it can't be explained doesn't mean it isn't true. Science fits into reality... not the other way around.
This is merely survival of the fittest, one of the basic tenets of evolution. When something gets kicked out of their niche, this means evolution works as designed.
If the species that got kicked out of it's niche is one you loved more than the victor, oh well, my advise is ... adapt or die.
Evolution is what it is...
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
"Design" implies purpose. I only meant to point out that some folks are perfectly happy with the idea that stuff can happen without purpose. In my experience stuff happens, on purpose, and otherwise. To me, the suggestion of a "biological reset" is nothing more than a continuation of the random selection, more commonly known as "Evolution". (There is no such thing as "de-evolution" - it is all "survival of the fittest". If simpler organisms survive better... that IS evolution, by definition.)
Anyhow, it may appear that even lower organisms have a "purpose", which is to begat more of the same. But that begs the question of why they would want to do that - the scientific answer, of course, is the whole point, to wit; They do it because if they didn't, they wouldn't be here now.
Now, your critical judgment of your child's artistic talent IS a judgment call. While there may be some deep ingrained sense of esthetics that make some art more pleasing than others, in modern terms, Art is whatever they decide is Art. As a parent, of course you may see it as "random", but you will say it is great! (Being one of them, in this case.) In any event, it was not random, your four year old certainly tried to do something on purpose, even if it was no more than "paint this paper" (although, I am sure some random spots did appear on the floor and various items of clothing which were not intentional.)
As far as your sig, Just because it can't be explained doesn't mean it isn't true. Science fits into reality... not the other way around. - don't forget this:
Just because it is true, doesn't mean many will not believe. Science gets closer and closer to the truth of reality whether you believe or not.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
>Really, I find it hard to respect an environmentalist who has four children.
And I find it hard to respect an evolutionary biologist who does not have at least three kids.
The whole "too many people" thing is really stupid - we're nowhere near the carrying capacity of the earth, let alone the solar system, and particularly nowhere near the carrying capacity for people who are smart about finding effective ways to use resources. Which really means engineers more than "environmentalists", but ecologists and field biologists are certainly needed too.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry