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Posted on 08/24/2010 3:41:18 AM PDT by decimon
Charles Darwin may have been wrong when he argued that competition was the major driving force of evolution.
He imagined a world in which organisms battled for supremacy and only the fittest survived.
But new research identifies the availability of "living space", rather than competition, as being of key importance for evolution.
Findings question the old adage of "nature red in tooth and claw".
The study conducted by PhD student Sarda Sahney and colleagues at the University of Bristol is published in Biology Letters.
The research team used fossils to study evolutionary patterns over 400 million years of history.
Focusing on land animals - amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds - the scientists showed that the amount of biodiversity closely matched the availability of "living space" through time. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote
Competition did not play a big role in the overall pattern of evolution”
End Quote Professor Michael Benton Bristol University
Living space - more formally known as the "ecological niche concept" by biologists - refers to the particular requirements of an organism to thrive. It includes factors like the availability of food and a favourable habitat.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Room to grow ping.
Well, talk about a contradiction. Vying for living space is competition. What the he** do these people think Darwin meant when he said survival of the fittest? To say that food and habitat etc played a part in evolution but competition didn’t is just about the stupidest statement I have ever read from an evolutionists and I have read some dandies.
Read the end of the article. This sounds less like science and more like semantics.
Basically the “new theory” is a bit of a tautology dressed up as a “new idea”.
The concept of speciation-in-isolation was around from the very beginning. Remember the Beagle?
Hmmm, since “environment to thrive” includes areas NOT in frozen wastelands, we should celebrate global warming since it creates biodiversity.
Thank you;)
This brilliant hypotheses from folks sitting in cubicles - forgetting that their ancestors needed acreage for crops, livestock and a vantage point of protection from raiders.
No need for further evolution - we are at the apogee!!!!!!
Haven’t read the study, but I don’t think it’s a contradiction.
They are saying speciation tends to happen when resources are abundant and competition is minimal. The way I was taught it is the opposite—that intense competition spurs speciation.
It makes sense to me—when a new niche opens up, you suddenly have a range of adaptive changes to that niche.
In that case, we’re in bigger trouble than we thought. Thanks decimon. :’)
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This data could also mean thus: that lots of available space results AFTER an extinction event. The result being an uptick in the number of new species evolving to fill voids in an environment.
When the dinosaurs went extinct at the TK boundary, a wide open environment was the result. (Yes, I know it took a very, very long time for the environment to return somewhat to normalcy after being whacked by an asteroid.) But mammals were up to the challenge.
For those Christian Fundamentalists who don’t know, mammals were around from BEFORE the existance of the dinosaurs. There were lots of very big reptiles who made mammals lives difficult.
blah blah blah
I doubt they can even define “evolution” any more
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