{"id":31351,"date":"2020-07-21T16:33:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-21T13:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/why-some-species-thrive-after-catastrophe-rules-for-making-the-most-of-an-apocalypse\/"},"modified":"2020-07-21T16:33:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-21T13:33:00","slug":"why-some-species-thrive-after-catastrophe-rules-for-making-the-most-of-an-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/why-some-species-thrive-after-catastrophe-rules-for-making-the-most-of-an-apocalypse\/","title":{"rendered":"#Why some species thrive after catastrophe \u2013 rules for making the most of an apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Why some species thrive after catastrophe \u2013 rules for making the most of an apocalypse<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid struck the Earth. The world was plunged into darkness, killing the dinosaurs and over 90% of all species alive. Today, every living thing descends from the handful of surviving species. But not all survivors thrived.<\/p>\n
\n <\/section>\n

Some groups\u2014birds and placental mammals, butterflies and ants, sunflowers, grasses\u2014diversified, taking advantage of the devastation. Some, like crocodiles and turtles, didn’t. And still others, like multituberculate mammals and champsosaurus, survived the asteroid but went extinct in the aftermath. <\/p>\n

Why the difference? Surprisingly, what separated winners and losers wasn’t how hard extinction hit them. Rather, winners had qualities that made them adaptable and competitive after the extinction: they were fast-growing, mobile, cooperative and clever.
\nSome groups were completely eliminated: dinosaurs, pterosaurs, plesiosaurs and ammonites. Obviously, they couldn’t take part in a recovery. But among survivors, the groups that won out tended to be those hit hard by extinction.
\nCrocodilians, turtles and sharks were spared the brunt of the extinction, but aren’t especially diverse now. Meanwhile, groups that dominate today were devastated. Snakes and lizards saw over 80% extinction. Mammals were hit harder, suffering 90% extinction. Perhaps three bird species survived, suggesting extinction rates of 99.9% or more.
\nThese groups were winners only in a relative sense\u201499.9% extinction is terrible, but beats 100% extinction among tyrannosaurs. But while these animals initially suffered, they thrived when the dust literally settled. Four things gave them an edge.<\/p>\n

Metabolism<\/b>
\nFirst, winners had high metabolisms. Metabolic rate is how fast biological processes happ<\/a>en\u2014meaning chemical reactions letting organisms grow, move, digest and reproduce.
\nHigher metabolism requires more food. This was initially a liability for warm-blooded birds and mammals during the impact winter, when plants couldn’t photosynthesise food. But afterwards, being able to eat, grow and breed fast let birds and mammals rapidly increase their numbers, compete effectively, and colonise new habitats. Fast-growing flowering plants, especially grasses, flourished at the expense of slower-growing species.
\nEven within these groups, we see high metabolism providing an edge. Among mammals, placental mammals, with their higher metabolisms, outcompeted marsupials. Passerines, the most diverse group of birds, also have higher metabolic rates than other birds. <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Why<\/img>
\n Sharks, great survivors, weren\u2019t great innovators. Credit: Wikipedia
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Mobility<\/b>
\nSecond, mobility promotes adaptability. Flight let birds, bats, butterflies and ants colonise new habitats, then diversify. Mammals, being highly mobile, quickly invade new habitats\u2014think rabbits in Australia, or deer in New Zealand\u2014in a way that turtles don’t.
\nFlowering plants also evolved tricks\u2014fruits, parachutes, burs, floating husks\u2014to let wind, water or animals carry their seeds. It’s harder to displace competitors once they’re established, so being first into a new habitat provides a massive competitive advantage.
\nCooperation<\/b>
\nThird, winners tend to cooperate. Lions and wolves form prides and packs to take down prey and defend territory, elephants and zebras use herds for defence. Birds flock to find food and evade predators.
\nAnts and mound-building termites assemble vast family groups, outcompeting solitary insects. Birds, mammals and social<\/a> insects also cooperate with relatives by feeding and caring for offspring, preserving their genes more efficiently.
\nMeanwhile, some species cooperate with other species. Leafcutter ants and termites form alliances with fungi, cultivating them in return for food. Flowering plants give away nectar and fruit to animals, which then pollinate flowers and spread their seeds. By cooperating, these species compete more effectively, so cooperative animals like ants, elephants and orcas tend to play bigger roles in the ecosystem than solitary ones like alligators and turtles.
\nIntelligence<\/b>
\nBut maybe the most remarkable trend is the rise of intelligence. Mammals and birds have the largest brains of any animals. The largest-brained mammals, the placentals, have outcompeted marsupials and egg-laying monotremes. The most diverse birds, the passerines and parrots, are the brainiest.
\nAmong insects, the social insects\u2014ants, bees, termites\u2014have complex behaviours that emerge from interactions of unintelligent individuals. This phenomenon is known as swarm intelligence, and not coincidentally, these insects dominated ecosystems after the asteroid winter. <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Why<\/img>
\n Fast-growing sunflowers complete their lives in a summer. Credit: Wikipedia
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But intelligence doesn’t just make animals more competitive. It accelerates adaptation, because the first step in changing your DNA is changing your mind.
\nFor example, before mammals could evolve into whales, they first had to learn to swim and fish, only afterwards could natural selection create flippers and sonar. Before horses could evolve, their omnivorous ancestors switched to a vegan diet, then, natural selection favoured tall-crowned teeth and complex guts to break down tough plants. Behaviour leads; genes follow.
\nThe greater an animal’s behavioural flexibility, the more tricks it can learn, and so the greater its adaptive potential. Animals don’t consciously decide their evolutionary futures. But they do choose what to eat, how to forage or where to live.
\nWhale ancestors didn’t dream of becoming dolphins, but they did dream of catching fish, and they imagined new fishing grounds. Being able to learn from yesterday, process information in dreams tonight, imagine different outcomes tomorrow\u2014learning, memory processing, creativity\u2014increase the number of potential evolutionary futures.
\nNo accident<\/b>
\nThe continents were isolated in the early Cenozoic era just after the asteroid hit. Yet remarkably similar ecosystems dominated by mammals and birds evolved independently in South America, Africa, Australia and the Eurasian-North American supercontinent. That implies these groups’ dominance wasn’t an accident.
\nWhat’s striking is that these trends weren’t new\u2014dinosaurs show similar patterns. Dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period had higher growth rates than their ancient Triassic ancestors. They were more mobile, some were fast runners, others \u2013 birds \u2013 flew.
\nThe brains of these later dinosaurs were larger than earlier counterparts. T. rex<\/i> was faster, smarter and had a faster metabolism than its forebears. Many \u2013 ceratopsians, duckbills, avimimids \u2013 show herding behaviours unknown from earlier dinosaurs.
\nDuring the asteroid winter, the rules briefly changed. Warm-blooded, fast-moving, cooperative, intelligent birds, mammals and dinosaurs fared poorly against turtles and alligators. Dinosaurs vanished. Afterwards, these trends reasserted themselves.
\nEvolution may offer us some lessons here. Be quick. Move to find new opportunities. Work with others. Try new things. But above all, change\u2014adapt.
\nThese are almost always good strategies, but especially when you’re down, trying for a comeback.<\/p>\n

\n<\/hr>\n
\n<\/hr>\n

\n This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.\"The<\/img><\/p>\n

\n Citation<\/strong>:
\n Why some species thrive after catastrophe \u2013 rules for making the most of an apocalypse (2020, July 21)
\n retrieved 21 July 2020
\n from https:\/\/phys.org\/news<\/a>\/2020-07-species-catastrophe-apocalypse.html<\/p>\n

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\n part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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“#Why some species thrive after catastrophe \u2013 rules for making the most of an apocalypse” Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid struck the Earth. The world was plunged into darkness, killing the dinosaurs and over 90% of all species alive. Today, every living thing descends from the handful of surviving species. But not all survivors…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[10628,41855],"class_list":["post-31351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sciencee","tag-ecology","tag-why-some-species-thrive-after-catastrophe-rules-for-making-the-most-of-an-apocalypse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}