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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.
They tell us that
We got our tails.
Evolving down
To little snails.
I say it's all
Just wind in sails.
Were we once men?
We were DE-VO!
This is just like the American political scene.
Who'da thunk it?
The opposite of progress is congress
Yeah, that process worked great for Windows Vista...
Can't wait...
My ZooLoo
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
Evolution is not directional, so the ocean cannot de-evolve.
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.
I'm not a biologist, but why is this de-evolution? Evolution is just organism's adapting to their environment over many generations through natural selection. There have been plenty of times when simpler organism's triumphed when more complex ones failed. Take the dinosaurs for instance. Simple things like cockroaches and small rodents survived while the much larger and more complicated dinosaurs died out. Types of bacteria have been around basically forever (as far as life on the Earth is concerned).
Really, (again, I'm not a biologist) it seems like simpler organisms are generally the things that make it through massive changes in the enviornment, because the more complicated animals are too-adapted to the current condiditions and can't evolve fast enough (too long of lifespans maybe?). The exception to this might be animals (humans) that are smart enough to either adapt their enviornment to them (for better or worse), or use tools to protect themselves from that change.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
We humans are drastically changing the environment. In this century we will see mass extinction. We will also see mass adaptations and new speciation. The hardiest and most successful new species may turn out to be the bacteria and engineered organisms and ultimately nanotechnological devices that can break down and reprocess our industrial waste. Who is to say all of this isn't natural? We're 100% natural, we evolved here and we're part of this system. Whatever we do, it's natural by definition.
The question is, what do we place value upon keeping around? The polar bears, the coral reefs, the rain forests? Polar bears are cute. Have you ever walked through a forest? I'd like for my kids to be able to go diving someday...
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Whatever the cause, over-hunting, over fishing, toxic waste, global warming, it means something to us in terms of food. People talk about environmental changes in terms that don't mean quite so much as food. If it affects our food supplies, then it really affects us.
As far as "de-evolution" is concerned, it'll take another 500 million+ years before anything "new" comes about if ever. But what it does mean is that we will likely starve to death before we see whatever comes next.
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!
Does anyone have any good recipies for jellyfish and algae?
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
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?
I'm from Williamsport, PA. At one time, that small, now drug-ridden city was called the "Lumber Capital of the World", and had the highest level of millionaires per-capita in the entire world. Unfortunately, demand for lumber rose a little faster than the trees did, and now is not the same. In 6th or 7th grade, we went out to a nature preserve (that the power plant owns - I believe the government made them due it due to all the coal pollution). He explained to us why there were so many evergeen trees in the area and not much in the way of deciduous forest. The explanation seemed pretty logical to me - Once everything in the forest was killed off by the lumberjacks, it pretty well fucked up the ecosystem. But life isn't so easily put off. First, the lesser photosynthetic life returns, ferns, small plants, etc. and so on up until you finally get pine trees, and then deciduous trees. Animal life takes just as long to return. I never saw an elk until I was probably 16 or so (I'm 20 now.), and now they actually auction off a few elk tags a year.
Once we figure out how to stop destroying our oceans, the balance will correct itself, but it will take many, many years. I kinda wonder how long until my hometown returns to it's former affluent ways (ha.).
1. Highly developed or complex.
I would say not so much a mistake.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
"Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked."
How that is de-evolution?
It's not de-evolution. In this case, the less complex organisms work best in that environment. So, really, it's survival of the most-fit. Wait... I've heard that somewhere before...
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Caulerpa taxifolia seems to be a good candidate for taking over the worlds seas and oceans.
o ad/ew_caulerpa.en.pdf
Originally a genetically modified strain was found that survived well in aquariums in Germany, and this strain was accidently released by the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, it quickly spread and seems to be impossible to destroy effectively. As it is asexual technically it is the same plant, there is no known predator apart from one slug I think. It is currently spreading like wildfire and nobody really knows what to do. It easily spreads via ships ballast tanks, and the plant is toxic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caulerpa_taxifolia
http://www.grid.unep.ch/product/publication/downl
A real disaster in the making..
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.
It's a beautiful world we live in
A sweet romantic place
Beautiful people everywhere
The way they show they care
Makes me want to say
It's a beautiful world
For you
It's a wonderful time to be here
It's nice to be alive
Wonderful people everywhere
The way they comb their hair
Makes me want to say
It's a wonderful place
For you
Hey
Tell me what I say
Boy 'n' girl with the new clothes on
You can shake it to me all night long
Hey hey
It's not for me
On a rather more serious note, it's already happening. In the Baltic sea, for example, one third of the organisms and plants living down at the bottom have already died. The cod is more or less extinct there. The rest of it will probably die soon too. The world is dying, and it may be too late to do anything about it.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Lake Erie was pretty much dead in the 1970s. Agricultural runoff and phosphate based cleaning products in sewage had acted as fertilizer for the algae. The algae took all the oxygen out of the water and the fish had died off. We changed a couple of laws and banned a couple of chemicals and fish returned to Lake Erie. If we had the will, we could do the same for the oceans. We have managed to ban ozone depleating chemicals for instance. Of course, we still have to solve the problem of various European nations (Spain comes to mind) completely stripping all the fish from wherever their fleet goes.
The solution is just a matter of international political will.
Dude, don't anthropomorphize nature. She doesn't like it when you do that.
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!
Now, you can't compare "complexity" to chromosome counts, but I'd suggest that there's some rather complex little critters out there.
I'm sorry, I just had to point this sentence out:
With a tug on the trip-rope, the bulging sack unleashed its massive load.
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
The new, better toxic oceans will simply be a tought playing field for our watery bretheren. The competition will be fierce, but in the end the seas will be populated by new fish. Better fish. New, better races of ATOMIC SUPERFISH THAT I SHALL BEND TO MY WILL AND RULE THE WORLD! Ha ha ha ha! Despair, ye mortals, and weep! Oh, Discordia!
Imagine! Goldfish that shoot lasers from their eyes! Tuna that can bite through adamantium! Shrimp that can do your taxes! Coelacanths that can write bug free code! Oh, the mind wobbles. More toxins! DUMP MORE TOXINS, DAMMIT!
. . . 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.
uhh the earth is only 5000 years old. /flamebait!
The strain in question wasn't genetically modified, at least not deliberately. According to the links you gave, it was exposed to tank chemicals and lighting, and that exposure appears to have caused it to mutate and gain increase ability to survive in cold water -- it's naturally found only in the tropics.
Also, it's not 'impossible to destroy effectively'. The PDF you linked to describes several methods that have been found effective, but only for relatively small infestations, like those that have been found in the United States and Australia. Introduction of the animals that eat taxifolia in its natural locations would probably clean up big infestations, but the effects of further alien introductions are nearly impossible to predict. So far it's spreading like wildfire only around the Mediterranean, but other temperate waters have to be watched for infestations (warmer waters aren't at risk, because they already have taxifola and its predators, and colder waters aren't at risk, because even this strain of taxifolia can't stand that much cold).
So, it's a cause for concern around the temperate waters of the world, but only a potential disaster in the Mediterranean area. It's similar to the Zebra Mussel, which is causing significant harm to the freshwater lakes and rivers of North America and Sweden.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Haven't you ever seen a cat lady?
She feeds them by the dozen or worse. She provides blankets, selecting perfectly unwrinkled ones in soothing colors to ensure the cats will be happy. She pays to have shelters built.
Even the less-crazy people are totally enslaved by crop plants. We built elaborate irrigation systems, protect the plants from disease, spread the seeds around the world...
Specilization for a certain environment will cause an organism to be successful as long as that environment is static. But once an environment changes, specilization becomes a very bad (=extention) thing.
There have been several mass extinction in the history of Earth. In each, the majority of species went extinct. Some of the coolest, most complex creatures can be found in the fossil record, but they died out when the environment changed.
I think humans are unique in that our increasing complexity (manifested in our brains) will cause us to survive the next mass extinction while all the other complex species die out. This is speculation, of course, but it may be just us, microbes, and plants some day.
Alternatively, we may become so powerful that we will be able to stop all future mass extinctions. That's a fantastic thought, but our current carbon-regulating attempts are the first attempt at such a feat. Building something like a giant, polarized sun-shield may be required eventually, though.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I do; how about "Fascists"?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
The text is misleading in the way it defines the word "evolution". It equates "more evolved" with "complex", and "less evolved" with "simple". This isn't correct. "Evolution", at least in biology, which is the topic here, is a concept almost synonym to "adaptation". Any life form able to survive in a given habitat is as much "evolved" as any other life form that is also able to survive in that habitat. The amount of cells it's composed of has no meaning to this. If algae are able to survive in the new oceans, and other complex life forms aren't, the that algae is by definition more "evolved" than those complex organisms. We, humans, are as much "evolved" as the bacteria that live inside us and as the amoeba that float in the air around us. And this same amoeba is more "evolved" than a Tiranossaurus Rex, because it is alive, and the TRex is dead. That's all there is to it.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Hi my name is Al Gore...
Don't forget your part to help stem over-population by not having too many kids!
Really, I find it hard to respect an environmentalist who has four children. They may be energy-savvy, but I doubt they are *twice* as efficient as the Bush children. Plain and simple, we have way too many people, even if we all install fluorescent lighting and buy hybrids. If we don't stabilize and eventually decrease the population, nothing will save us.
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.
"...I think humans are unique in that our increasing complexity (manifested in our brains) will cause us to survive the next mass extinction..."
Whether or not we survive the *current* mass extinction has nothing to do with our uniqueness. It only has to do with our ability to endure and reproduce in the resultant environment.
Our scientific, industrial, and social developments are a part of evolution - not inspite of it or a replacement for it. As a result, humans are not exempt from extinction.
-CF
they?
you're.. not.. human?
SETI would be interested to know!
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
"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.
Am I the only one who picked up on this???
FTFA:
For many years, it was assumed that the oceans were too vast for humanity to damage in any lasting way. "Man marks the Earth with ruin," wrote the 19th century poet Lord Byron. "His control stops with the shore."
The presumption, then, was that because our "control" stops at the shore, our "mark" stops at the shore? How silly. Far more likely: the old guy figured this out way back when, wrote EXACTLY what he meant, and this goof read the line poorly.
We are only immortal for a limited time - Rush, Dreamline
How does this grab you then?
"THIS is evolution?!"
"Survival of the fittest. Often the simplest organism is the strongest."
From the movie Evolution
I don't know how your flamey post got modded up to +4, since you apparently missed the point. In a crisis the most fit creatures will survive -- usually the simplest, as pointed out above -- and then they will evolve again into more complex organisms. You can easily call that a "biological reset" if you aren't anal-retentive because that's what it essentially is.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
>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
I understand how pollution could lead to these increases in bacteria etc. Is it possible that the increase in methane gas (as noted here http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2274439& page=1) could also be playing a role in what life is able to survive while others do not?