Sunday, March 9, 2014
Natural Security - Week 3
One thing that this book brings up that I haven't thought much about is the idea that adaptations after a threat occurs not only affects a population or species, but also can affect other species and organisms that interact with that population because "all biological entities... are highly interconnected" (page 27). I thought it was interesting and thought-provoking thinking about how if the productive side of an ecosystem is destroyed, then the whole ecosystem is subject to collapse.
The topic of redundancy as a solution to eliminating threats is a bit confusing. Vermeij states that "function is maintained even as parts of the system are damaged" (page 31). I'm probably thinking of this in the wrong way, but I'm comparing redundancy with variation. And without variation, many mechanisms of evolution cannot take place. Also, his example of large body sizes doesn't make seem to help clarify the argument for me (page 34). Can someone explain this to me?
Overall I agree with his ideas about adaptability so far and how populations must be adaptive to survive and evolve and the rest of the proposed solutions against threats.
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Hey Rend,
ReplyDeleteI think I might be able to answer part of your question.
Yes, variation is definitely necessary for natural selection to act upon and for evolution to occur. However, think of redundancy as a back up plan and not as a loss in variation. Let's use a simple analogy: You know how Dr. Johnson had us form groups of 2 to transfer bacteria. She did that so that if one of the us could not come in that day to transfer the bacteria, then we wouldn't have to worry too much because we had a partner who was assigned the same function. So instead of our bacteria becoming useless (for our purposes) because we failed to perform our function, it remains useful because there was another agent with a redundant function who stepped in when we failed. This is what Vermeji means when (s)he writes that "function is preserved even if parts of the system are damaged".
So do you see how having an agent with a redundant function (group partners) serves as a barrier against a potential threat and helps ensure the success of our project?
Dr. Johnson also spoke about the benefit of redundancy when she explained the benefits of gene duplication.
Hope this didn't confuse you more,
Aparna :)
Good answer, Aparna!
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