Re: species and ecosystems

Hi Kraig,

> In the plant world it is not the strongest.but those species that are more
> interelated with the entire ecosystem.
> In times of hardship those on top are the first to go.

I wonder if anyone has thought about studying evolution of ecosystems.

It seems to me that it is a kind of artifician division to say evolution
has to happen at an individual level.

If a group of animals and plants together makes a balnaced ecosystem
tben the whole group as a whole may spread out
to cover larger areas - then go into patches, and those patches
then diversify into more ecosystems. I don't see why not and
it would accord with the rest of evolutionary ideas.

While, if you had another group that had a few highly successful individual
species in it, but ones thaat existed only by reducing the diversity
of the ecosystem, then maybe it wouldn't be able to spread so easily
because at the edges it would get outcompeted by better ecosystems
around it that were more species rich, so could cope with more
situations more readily.

Idea here in simplest form, maybe you have a particular plant, and
some animals that have evolved do live off just that plant, and
nearby anohter plant with another set of animals, and maybe the
two plants can live in the same conditions, but the animals
can only eat their own plants. Maybe then one of the plants
is tended by its animals in some sense while the other
isn't and its animals just eat as much of it as they can
until there is none left and they go into a population
decline, then into cycles of boom and bust kind of thing
as many animals do do.

Then the one with the more caring animals will be more
likely to spread into the area of the other one
whenever there is a bit of a gap caused by over eating
in the neighbouring ecosystem. Something like that -
I'm sure you could do a model of it. Probably someone has,
maybe this is all old hat in the field.

Then it isn't the fitness of the animals or plants that
is relevant here, but the fitness of the ecosystem of the
two of them together. Simple situation but now imagine
extended to thousands of species of plants, insects,
microorganisms all forming a patch of forest that
spreads in the same way.

Perhaps a bioligist could study that in a rain forest where the ecosystem
often comes in very small patches I gatehr.

Astronomers also talk about the evolution of universes too
as a possible idea some explore. That comes from teh idea
that black holes may lead to the birth of universes in space times
with all the dimensions at right angles to our ones, so
I've been reading. So universes could evolve to be particularly
good at making black holes.

Robert

Excellent points Robert!

Robert Walker wrote:

> Hi Kraig,
>
> > In the plant world it is not the strongest.but those species that are more
> > interelated with the entire ecosystem.
> > In times of hardship those on top are the first to go.
>
> I wonder if anyone has thought about studying evolution of ecosystems.
>
> It seems to me that it is a kind of artifician division to say evolution
> has to happen at an individual level.
>
> If a group of animals and plants together makes a balnaced ecosystem
> tben the whole group as a whole may spread out
> to cover larger areas - then go into patches, and those patches
> then diversify into more ecosystems. I don't see why not and
> it would accord with the rest of evolutionary ideas.
>
> While, if you had another group that had a few highly successful individual
> species in it, but ones thaat existed only by reducing the diversity
> of the ecosystem, then maybe it wouldn't be able to spread so easily
> because at the edges it would get outcompeted by better ecosystems
> around it that were more species rich, so could cope with more
> situations more readily.
>
> Idea here in simplest form, maybe you have a particular plant, and
> some animals that have evolved do live off just that plant, and
> nearby anohter plant with another set of animals, and maybe the
> two plants can live in the same conditions, but the animals
> can only eat their own plants. Maybe then one of the plants
> is tended by its animals in some sense while the other
> isn't and its animals just eat as much of it as they can
> until there is none left and they go into a population
> decline, then into cycles of boom and bust kind of thing
> as many animals do do.
>
> Then the one with the more caring animals will be more
> likely to spread into the area of the other one
> whenever there is a bit of a gap caused by over eating
> in the neighbouring ecosystem. Something like that -
> I'm sure you could do a model of it. Probably someone has,
> maybe this is all old hat in the field.
>
> Then it isn't the fitness of the animals or plants that
> is relevant here, but the fitness of the ecosystem of the
> two of them together. Simple situation but now imagine
> extended to thousands of species of plants, insects,
> microorganisms all forming a patch of forest that
> spreads in the same way.
>
> Perhaps a bioligist could study that in a rain forest where the ecosystem
> often comes in very small patches I gatehr.
>
> Astronomers also talk about the evolution of universes too
> as a possible idea some explore. That comes from teh idea
> that black holes may lead to the birth of universes in space times
> with all the dimensions at right angles to our ones, so
> I've been reading. So universes could evolve to be particularly
> good at making black holes.
>
> Robert
>
>
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-- -Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU 88.9 FM WED 8-9PM PST

Hi Robert,

> I wonder if anyone has thought about studying evolution of
> ecosystems.

In fact they have. Stuart Kauffman and his colleagues at the
Sante Fe Institute started work on this in the 80's, and
Kauffman's tome on the topic is now a standard in this growing
field. I don't know if the particular scenarios you describe
have been modeled, but one of the central questions of the
field is, 'do ecosystems tend to get more complex with time,
and if so, why, and what does it mean?'. One of the most
fundamental results in the field are the so called "No Free
Lunch" theorems, which state that for an agent trying to move
to the highest point on a fitness landscape but with only a
local view of it, no single search algorithm outperforms a
random walk, on average over all possible landscapes.

-Carl