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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!
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.
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
Disclaimer: I have a Ph.D. in chemistry but am not a marine environmental researcher.
What is happening is a massive die-off of many highly adapted species, which, directly or indirectly, depended on oceanic dissolved oxygen being higher, pH being slightly alkaline, and toxin levels being lower.
A big culprit here is phosphate and nitrate fertilizer runoff; read the series for all the details.
Re-evolution may take as long as the first time; don't hold your breath!
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
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.).
Dude, don't anthropomorphize nature. She doesn't like it when you do that.
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.
Evolution is neither good nor bad, it is a description of what happens. It's kind of like calling gravity or relativity good or bad. There also is no such thing as "de-evolution." Evolution is the change of allele frequencies within a population over time due to differential reproductive success. If this results in a "simpler" form of organism or the extinction of the species all together, it's still evolution. Of the five great extinctions to hit the earth, none of them caused any "de-evolution," they just killed off a good portion of extant species and left a lot a niches open for the survivors to exploit. We might be at the begining of the next great extinction event (though I doubt it'll get to that point, as I think we'll clean up our act before it happens).