‘Survival of fittest’ is disputed


Science | 207246 hits | Aug 23 10:04 pm | Posted by: Hyack
4 Comment

It proposes that Charles Darwin may have been wrong when he argued that competition was the major driving force of evolution.

Comments

  1. by avatar Bacardi4206
    Tue Aug 24, 2010 1:08 pm
    Eh, I still believe darwin. You see a lot of animals that evolved to suit there envirement. I mean, all the animals in the artic have something that gives them a edge in that envirement. Something that can stand the cold.

    You see all other animals evolved to suit there needs. You see natural tree climbers that have tails that they use for balance, the list goes on.

    Key point being that every animal has many things that appear to be evolved based on surviving in there envirement. Some animals are better adapted at being predators and others adapting at hiding from them.

  2. by avatar andyt
    Tue Aug 24, 2010 3:28 pm
    At least the story ends with a note of sanity:

    However, Professor Stephen Stearns, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University, US, told BBC News he "found the patterns interesting, but the interpretation problematic".

    He explained: "To give one example, if the reptiles had not been competitively superior to the mammals during the Mesozoic (era), then why did the mammals only expand after the large reptiles went extinct at the end of the Mesozoic?"

    "And in general, what is the impetus to occupy new portions of ecological space if not to avoid competition with the species in the space already occupied?"

  3. by avatar Dragom
    Tue Aug 24, 2010 6:12 pm
    So the two examples of evolutionary "lucky breaks" are gaining the ability to fly and "surviving a mass extinction complete with famine, toxic gas and freezing temperatures because of small body size and warm blooded body".

    Thats not luck thats finding out you're holding a winning hand.

  4. by avatar KorbenDeck
    Tue Aug 24, 2010 6:35 pm
    I don't see how that disputes survival of the fittest.



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