well... i stand corrected.

What will that lead to though? Suppose its a different question

It might have been the same paper, or one published around the same time, that suggested humans are evolving faster now than at any time in our history.

I read that too, but my vague and possibly wrong memory of it was that 'now' isn't really defined as so recent (as in, now in evolutionary terms is more than just the past 100 years).

How is the speed of evolution measured?

"An ecosystem is a biological system consisting of all the living organisms or biotic components in a particular area and the nonliving or abiotic component with which the organisms interact, such as air, mineral soil, water and sunlight. Key processes in ecosystems include the capture of light energy and carbon through photosynthesis, the transfer of carbon and energy through food webs, and the release of nutrients and carbon through decomposition. Biodiversity affects ecosystem functioning, as do the processes of disturbance and succession. Ecosystems provide a variety of goods and services upon which people depend; the principles of ecosystem management suggest that rather than managing individual species, natural resources should be managed at the level of the ecosystem."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem

A balanced ecosytem is therefore one which is functioning in a state of equilibrium and any change is likely to have a negative impact which in turn could result in a collapse of the system. This would obviously not only effect the organisms that are directly linked to the system but also humans.

No one is saying that, in today's modern world it would be impossible to do.

"Noun 1. natural order - the physical universe considered as an orderly system subject to natural (not human or supernatural) laws"

As I'm sure you know, humans are not part of any food chain (besides being consumers) and do not give anything back to "nature". If you took away human beings from the planet then everything would carry on as normal, if you did the same with plankton, for example, then it would be a very different story.

You can not compare dinosaurs to human beings.

If ecosystems across the world collapse then we, as a species, are f****d, to put it bluntly.

I like base pairs pairs generation, or base pairs per year. But you could come up with other units like maybe species per million years say if comparing evolution on Earth and Europa!

The definition of fitness has not changed however the criteria for determining traits that indicate fitness does change on a species by species and habitat by habitat level. For instance a world wide craze on having bald dogs might make long haired dogs less fit. Altering the habitation for an endangered species of frog might make the targeted frogs more fit relative to competing species. Hence what it means to be fittest would have changed in the frogs habitat due to human intervention. (Maybe adding more tasty flies, or removing animals that like tasty frogs or are better than frogs at catching tasty flies.)

Yeh ok. I thought my other points were stronger anyway.

I don't know. The projection given is for ~400 years into the future. Evolution is a slow process.

And now, for the speed of human evolution talk: http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...uman-evolution

"**** sapiens sapiens has spread across the globe and increased vastly in numbers over the past 50,000 years or so—from an estimated five million in 9000 B.C. to roughly 6.5 billion today. More people means more opportunity for mutations to creep into the basic human genome and new research confirms that in the past 10,000 years a host of changes to everything from digestion to bones has been taking place."

"We found very many human genes undergoing selection ... Most are very recent, so much so that the rate of human evolution over the past few thousand years is far greater than it has been over the past few million years."

"Roughly 10,000 years ago, humanity made the transition from living off the land to actively raising crops and domesticated animals. Because this concentrated populations, diseases such as malaria, smallpox and tuberculosis, among others, became more virulent. At the same time, the new agriculturally based diet offered its own challenges—including iron deficiency from lack of meat, cavities and, ultimately, shorter stature due to poor nutrition"

"they started to get new alleles [alternative gene forms] that helped them digest the food more efficiently."

The word unnatural in this context creates fallacious thought processes imo, but what people mean when they say it is basically what humans are doing is out of the realm of biological normality.

You do realise some animals under the right circumstances will starve themselves by killing of their food source via over consumption, right?


If nothing changes(which probably will, how substantial idk), the equilibrium point of our ways opposes environmental challenges onto species that is too great for the vast majority of them successfully adapt to, meaning biodiversity will reduce significantly.

There's lots of animals that are adapting well, not even the domesticated ones. There's an abundance of rather plump looking pigeons in my city.

Arguing whether biodiversity is good or not is a pointless endeavor as "good" itself is has not be defined and is unclear. Perhaps it's good to appreciate the other species, perhaps it's good to maximize human well-being, perhaps anesthetics is good.

I'm not reproducing with everyone I'm not selected for D:

You're confusing macro-evolution with evolution I think, there's also micro-evolution that will still occur.

Just look at traits that where selected for 200 years ago. Self help books from the past give a indication of what characteristics were prized, and they are vastly different from todays. In the past they were revolved around traits that maximized one's ability to get along with everyone in their tribe, to offend no one and gain respect within, whereas now more high risk strategies are prized because there's less to lose if one pisses someone off, as there's always another person to have a shot at. So traits like being humble was more selected for than it is today, and charismatic is more selected for than it was in the past.

You have either misquoted me or have seriously misunderstood what I am saying.

Well as long as we have vast numbers of vermin living on the planet then what's the worry?! In all seriousness though, the vast majority of animals can't adapt as well as animals such as rats and pigeons.

This is a really misinformed/uninformed post. There is NO consensus that the ecosystem is the appropriate level of management. In fact, conservation biology is identical to "population biology." If one were to attend an Ecological Society of America meeting, fewer than half would agree with the statement “natural resources should be managed at the level of the ecosystem.” This is one of the shortcomings of relying on Wikipedia.

The notion of "equilibrium" in ecological systems fell by the wayside at least 25 years ago. Populations, communities, and ecosystems are dynamic, and practitioners embrace variability. For more information, see Stuart Pimm’s book “The Balance of Nature?” Or, search pick up an intro ecology text and read the chapter on disturbance.

Fitness is always a function of the environment. Fitness itself is a trait independent of any criterion related to it.


http://www.slate.com/articles/health...g_fatter_.html


If you can't provide at least three reasons why this should be so, you don't have much to contribute to this discussion.

I'm not getting levelled by someone who made up a gimmick account in the hope of winding people up.

Neither, I'm nit picking. I should probably add that I am too very concerned, and frankly quite pissed off, at what is happening to the ecosystems, a idea of a concrete world scares me much indeed; but I think it's important to put a leash on your emotions when discussing abstract concepts, otherwise you'll probably be more likely to fall to some bias and come across as looking quite foolish.

I disapprove of your discrimination against the pigeons. Many a time have they brought joy to my soul, particularly when they dance in the fountains

Really? Interesting. It doesn't make sense to me but; wouldn't it be dynamic to the point that the equilibrium is basically moving all the time?

He seems legit to me

How is my post a level? I'm simply pointing out the shortcomings in your point of view.

-How do we define what equilibrium is?
-Is there a role for how a system strays from equilibrium, or doesn't? (i.e., is "resistance" or "resilience" more important to maintain? How do we do THAT?)
-Compared to what state historically?
-What metric should be used?
-What level of organization is most important?
-Do the answers to these questions change as a function of human needs? Ability to "save" a system? Something else?

These are important questions, and your statements so far haven't added much insight.

There's modeling equilibria, which do exist, in competition and predation models. How this translated into the real world is debatable. In practice (i.e. the real world), I think practitioners view things as domains/basins of attraction (for lack of a better phrase). I have seen discussion of dynamic equilibria, but I am not sure how this is modeled.

Survival.

You seem to think that evolution has a plan. Maybe something good in mind. It doesn't. Stuff that survives and procreates, survives and procreates. Stuff that doesn't, doesn't. There is no particular goal or trend or endpoint other than "what works."

If tomorrow, some incurrable and widespread virus happens upon us that is only transmittable 5' above the ground then we will "evolve" to be short people who aren't roofers.

If an asteroid strikes, then the paranoid bunker people will survive. We will "evolve" into a bunch of gun toting armaggedon survival experts.

If nothing particular happens and we keep making more of us, then we will become more diverse and more likely to survive some future catastrophic event.

This is utterly correct. Obviously, being farmable and/or cute is a decent strategy.

It makes me a bit sad that your comment wasn't the end of the thread.

We can't. We are natural.

"Being attractive to humans" is a fit trait.


Yeah they did.

lol, of course it does.

To help counterbalance some of the blatant ignorance being shouted from the mountain tops a few salient facts need stated or reinforced:



The end-Permian mass extinction event ranks as the most devastating to terrestrial faunas in the history of the Earth.

Marking the end of the great Palaeozoic era, it saw to the death of about 95% of marine species and 70% of land families. This is the most extensive extinction event ever, the closest that metazoans have come to being exterminated in the 600 million years since they first evolved in the Cambrian radiation.



Link: http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Palaeof.../PALIntro.html


A lesson in Taxonomy:

Link: http://www.tigerhomes.org/animal/cur...axonomy-pc.cfm

A less in Taxonomy: Quicky---

Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Family (Sub-Family)
Genus
Species (SubSpecies)

To see and observe a human SubSpecies in action click here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/13...-god-theology/



A Lepus Capensis with a plan:

As can be seen in this somewhat simple graph the number of taxonomic familes infesting the planet just keeps going up and up over time. The few downturns never seem to last. And in my opinion we need a good housecleaning to cull down the number now in existence to make room for those families that deserve to survive and replicate. The rest don't matter. That's always been my plan.

-Zeno

Zeno-
Can you make an argument as to why the relevant level of taxonomy should be at the family level, and not at the genus or order level?

What is your point of view, vis a vis that graph, of number of families rising more a function of effort and sophistication of detection rather than true diversification?

(Since I don't think there are any practicing paleobiologists itt.)

That is by far the coolest hare I've ever seen ^^

That is a pretty cheap shot, I posted a definition of an ecosystem from wikipedia, doing so doesn't mean I rely upon that alone.

Ok, but surely there has to be some of form of stability within the system. The great barrier reef, for example, is not constantly undergoing drastic change is it?


I fail to see why this is the case, however I am clearly debating with someone who knows far more about the subject than I. Which is obviously never a good thing.

I should have said "many", the word "majority" was an overstatement on my part

Care to explain?

"Extinction is a natural process, but it is occurring at an unnaturally rapid rate as a consequence of human activities."

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../405234a0.html

It's an old journal but obviously many of the points are still valid.

In term's of "Youarewrong..." trolling, it seemed strange that someone would create a brand new account with that name for the purpose of arguing with people.

"Disturbance" and "drastic change" aren't the same thing. Coral reefs are indeed subject to disturbance. See
this paper





I was suggesting (in an unfortunately trolly way) that there are common characteristics explaining the pattern you proposed.

Natural selection is natural selection, and whether humans are affecting environmental regimes or not doesn't change that fact. The processes are still in place.

That article says a lot, but really has limited supporting data. Note that Chapin takes a very ecosystem-oriented point of view. In 2000, the biodiversity debate was still in its infancy. There is still a TON not understood about "the importance of species." We still don't understand a lot (at an empirical level) about each of the areas they discuss. Which is not to say that humans aren't dramatically changing the biotic composition of the planet. Google "homogocene" for more info.

ALL of them were natural. None of them were unnatural. If a salmon population gets hunted to extinction by bears, is this 'unnatural?' Surely not, right? But if its by humans, it is? Because....humans wear shoes?
Its almost a nonsense phrase to say that extinction is occurring "unnaturally." I'm not even sure what exactly that means. I'm quite sure you couldnt define what 'unnatural' means in any rigorous sense, Justice Potter.