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Is there an evolutionary advantage to death?

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Is there an evolutionary advantage to death?
Arkady
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Posted 10/10/09 - 06:17 AM:
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#41
wuliheron wrote:
"Being able to adapt" is self-referential, while "serving" doesn't reference anything. Here is a definition of the root word:

I will lay out a series of statements. Please indicate agree/disagree:

1) Microorganisms (and more "primitive" animals such as insects) have very short generation times relative to larger, more complex organisms.

2) Microorganisms occupy an extremely wide range of environments as compared to more complex animals.

3) Microorganisms (and, again, more "primitive" animals) adjust very much more quickly to environmental variables than more complex animals. (For example, the substance nylon was invented c. 1940. Since that time, there are bacteria which have already evolved enzymes to digest and eat nylon. This is a complex adaptation occurring in the space of a few decades, unheard of in the "higher" animals. Likewise, the insecticide DDT has been around for only a few decades, yet mosquitoes have already begun to evolve resistance to it)
"Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."
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Arkady
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Posted 10/10/09 - 06:41 AM:
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#42
psychotick wrote:
To return to the topic, for many species there is an evolutionary advantage to the parental generation dying off early after they've completed their spawning duties, but at present I suspect its the other way around for humans. There's an evolutionary advantage for parental generations to survive longer, especially now that we've started guiding our own evolution.

It seems that the selective advantage (if any) of parental generations dying off to clear the way for their offspring would be strongest in those species which:

1) Occupy the same geographic area as their offspring. In other words, they don't just disperse their progeny far and wide and abandon them. (Evolving in areas of high population density would further increase the selective pressure.)

2) Evolved in relatively harsh environments, which are relatively scarce in resources.

Of course, as another poster pointed out, most organisms perish well before the end of their natural life span, so this discussion may be largely moot.
"Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."
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wuliheron
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Posted 10/11/09 - 03:33 AM:
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#43
Arkady wrote:

I will lay out a series of statements. Please indicate agree/disagree:

1) Microorganisms (and more "primitive" animals such as insects) have very short generation times relative to larger, more complex organisms.

2) Microorganisms occupy an extremely wide range of environments as compared to more complex animals.

3) Microorganisms (and, again, more "primitive" animals) adjust very much more quickly to environmental variables than more complex animals. (For example, the substance nylon was invented c. 1940. Since that time, there are bacteria which have already evolved enzymes to digest and eat nylon. This is a complex adaptation occurring in the space of a few decades, unheard of in the "higher" animals. Likewise, the insecticide DDT has been around for only a few decades, yet mosquitoes have already begun to evolve resistance to it)



Oh, I agree whole heartedly with everything except for the part about this being "...a complex adaptation occuring in the space of a few decades, unheard of in the 'higher' animals."

Environmental pressures cause every species to either adapt or go extinct. This includes more complex animals as well any number of insects and microorganisms and these pressures can change the species overnight. Considering that there are an estimated 10 quintillion insects in the world and trillions of microorganisms on a single human being I'm not so sure you'd call them all that great at adapting if you seriously thought about how many failures they have.

Once again with emphasis: Words only have demonstrable meaning according to their function in a given context.
Arkady
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Posted 10/11/09 - 05:07 AM:
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#44
wuliheron wrote:
Oh, I agree whole heartedly with everything except for the part about this being "...a complex adaptation occuring in the space of a few decades, unheard of in the 'higher' animals."

Environmental pressures cause every species to either adapt or go extinct. This includes more complex animals as well any number of insects and microorganisms and these pressures can change the species overnight. Considering that there are an estimated 10 quintillion insects in the world and trillions of microorganisms on a single human being I'm not so sure you'd call them all that great at adapting if you seriously thought about how many failures they have.

Once again with emphasis: Words only have demonstrable meaning according to their function in a given context.


What failures? If there are indeed "quintillions" of insects in the world, does that not make them more successful than vertebrates (including humans)? Please, tell me some of these abject "failures" as you call them and explain how that makes them less adaptive. Please also give an example of a complex species which has changed "overnight" due to environmental pressures. Since you are more "serious" than I in thinking on this topic, this should not be a problem for you.

Edited by Arkady on 10/11/09 - 05:23 PM
"Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."
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wuliheron
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Posted 10/11/09 - 09:53 PM:
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#45
The failures as in how many species of insects and microorganisms became extinct.

You assertion is a reductionist view of evolution, which is fine, but it is certainly not applicable to every situation. Nor is it the only reductionist view of the topic that is demonstrable, self-consistent, and non-trivial. I could just as easily argue that people are the most adaptive species ever because we can change any known environment to suit our needs and desires. It is just a question of choosing your criteria and context for what you mean by "adaptive". Thus you can decide that shere numbers are more important, or shere weight, or metabolism, or complexity, or whatever.
123savethewhales
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Posted 10/12/09 - 12:15 AM:
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Why shouldn't the products of the human brain be consider part of adaptation? The human brain is biological after all. If fish can burrow, bird can build nest, and we can put on a space suit, why do only our behaviors not count? Isn't human innovations part of our evolutionary trait?

I think it's not so much that human, or other larger animals isn't adaptive. It's just that we care more about the death count if 99.99% of us (or some larger animals) die in a catastrophic event, while if 99.99% of microbes die from a given antibiotic all we care about are those microbes that are still alive.
Keep it simple.
Arkady
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Posted 10/13/09 - 05:03 PM:
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#47
wuliheron wrote:
The failures as in how many species of insects and microorganisms became extinct.

Please, then give me some numbers here. Have a greater proportion of insects and microbes gone extinct relative to invertebrates throughout evolutionary history? Even if that were true (which I doubt it is), why is "fewer species having gone extinct" a better criterion for adaptiveness than diversity of environments occupied or number of extant species?

wuliheron wrote:
You assertion is a reductionist view of evolution, which is fine, but it is certainly not applicable to every situation. Nor is it the only reductionist view of the topic that is demonstrable, self-consistent, and non-trivial. I could just as easily argue that people are the most adaptive species ever because we can change any known environment to suit our needs and desires. It is just a question of choosing your criteria and context for what you mean by "adaptive". Thus you can decide that shere numbers are more important, or shere weight, or metabolism, or complexity, or whatever.

Ahh, reductionism: the term used to criticize an argument one doesn't like without advancing a single substantive point to refute that argument. I'm glad you agree reductionism is "fine", as the entirety of scientific research is carried out using reductionism.

Clearly, we have reached an impasse: I believe the vast diversity of environments occupied, speed of adaptation and number of extant members constitutes a greater adaptiveness of the "primitive" animals. If you wish to define it some other way: fine. But: human ingenuity is not a biological adaptation. The human brain is an adaptation: technological, cultural, and artistic innovations and the like are not adaptations in the evolutionary sense.

123savethewhales wrote:
Why shouldn't the products of the human brain be consider part of adaptation? The human brain is biological after all. If fish can burrow, bird can build nest, and we can put on a space suit, why do only our behaviors not count? Isn't human innovations part of our evolutionary trait?

Please see above.
"Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."
-T.H. Huxley
Hamandcheese
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Posted 10/13/09 - 06:02 PM:
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The human brain is capable of adapting, of course. But in this thread the discussion is of evolutionary adaptation which is quite different. A human might use his brain to adapt to city life, having left the country. Evolutionary adaptation is about the rate of genetic drift. Short life organisms have greater adaptation because a short generation equals more mutations in a shorter amount of time for nature to select. Flus adapt to vaccines each season. Humans do not adapt against the flu.

Sickle Cell is a case where something like that happened in African populations to resist Malaria, but it must have been a long and reticent evolution as even in its most advanced mutation, is horribly mangled.
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123savethewhales
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Posted 10/14/09 - 02:03 PM:
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#49
I won't fight your definition of evolutionary trait. Fighting for what a word should mean objectively is rather pointless in a philosophical sense. This is just my interpretation of it.

If we are to take out brain as part of adaptation, we would need to take out things like eating, walking, and every other behaviors requiring the brain. Likewise if you included the physical brain, we would have to include all the behaviors that comes out of it, including human reasoning. We don't just get that out of nowhere, the 6 layers of neo cortex is required for humans to behave like humans.

To put it short, evolution never evolve behavioral traits, only physical parts that are responsible for those traits. There are no planning in evolution. If a physical part happens to come with other side functions that work, then it get pass on.

All in all, nobody disagrees that single cell organism can shuffle their genes around faster than larger animals.
Keep it simple.
Arkady
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Posted 10/14/09 - 04:50 PM:
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123savethewhales wrote:
I won't fight your definition of evolutionary trait. Fighting for what a word should mean objectively is rather pointless in a philosophical sense. This is just my interpretation of it.

Perhaps...but it's still important to clarify terms, wouldn't you agree?

123savethewhales wrote:
If we are to take out brain as part of adaptation, we would need to take out things like eating, walking, and every other behaviors requiring the brain. Likewise if you included the physical brain, we would have to include all the behaviors that comes out of it, including human reasoning. We don't just get that out of nowhere, the 6 layers of neo cortex is required for humans to behave like humans.

I am most definitely NOT "taking out the brain" as an adaptation. I'm merely saying that just because the brain is an adaptation, it doesn't follow that everything the brain allows us to do is an adaptation.

123savethewhales wrote:
To put it short, evolution never evolve behavioral traits, only physical parts that are responsible for those traits.

Sorry, this is just dead wrong. Evolution most definitely does evolve behavioral traits. In fact, the behavior is the most selectable aspect because it's the most "visible" to natural selection. Of course any behavior has a neurological substrate underlying it, but it is the behavior itself which is selected for.

123savethewhales wrote:
There are no planning in evolution. If a physical part happens to come with other side functions that work, then it get pass on.

Yes...I agree there is no "planning" (in the sense of foresight) in evolution. I have never subscribed to such a notion.
"Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."
-T.H. Huxley
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