
Computer Scientists Find Mass Extinctions Can Accelerate Evolution - r721
http://news.utexas.edu/2015/08/12/mass-extinctions-can-accelerate-evolution
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hyperion2010
This has been know for a long time. The rate of evolution depends heavily on
the number of open niches (one might argue that it depends _entirely_ on the
number of open niches). Mass extinctions lead to the opening and
reconfiguration of a vast number of niches into which existing species will
rapidly radiate since a huge number of body plans that were not previously
viable now have no competition.

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agumonkey
Am I misguided to see war as a twisted cross-pollinisation / evolutionary push
?

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hyperion2010
I would argue that war and conflict/territoriality of all kinds (including
predator/prey relationships) requires more agency than adaptive radiation.
Adaptive radiation takes place over thousands of generations whereas
war/conflict take place over a single generation.

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technotony
Given humans are currently causing the 'Sixth' of these major mass extinctions
this is relevant. My own view is that there's about to be a massive increase
in biodiversity driven by synthetic biology and that this is going to lead to
an acceleration in evolution - specifically our newly developed ability to
enable horizontal gene transfer between species means improvements nature
finds in one evolutionary branch can rapidly be applied to all evolutionary
branches.

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jessaustin
We can imagine a future in which everyone view this genetic craziness as
normal, and people feel sorry for us poor benighted fools who live just before
the end of the Age of Heredity. Of course, we can also imagine a future in
which the world is populated entirely by a ten-meter carpet of rapidly-
adjusting and constantly-warring bacteria.

~~~
bhewes
Reference Peter Watt's "Echopraxia" \-
[http://www.rifters.com/](http://www.rifters.com/)

~~~
jessaustin
Now I've read it. Great stuff! It will take some time before I work out how it
compares against _Blindsight_ , but [SPOILER!?] I was glad to find out that it
doesn't all end in bacteria.

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ChrisNorstrom
Death in general speeds up evolution. Generally the shorter the lifespan, the
higher the reproduction rate, and the faster the evolution. Evolution takes
place almost exclusively through reproduction and death (anyone not dead can
reproduce, anyone dead who hasn't reproduced is a genetic failure, reproducing
passes on their genes/characteristics/instincts to the next group). With an
extinction where many species die, organisms that were already highly
reproductive have a greater chance of one of their offspring living. So the
characteristics of a strong desire to reproduce are passed on to survivors.
Survivors who haven't died likely have lower lifespans due to difficult times,
which psycologically encourages organisms to procreate. This is observed in
humans in almost every country. As lifespans go up, fertility goes down.
There's no need to reproduce if you're not dying soon.

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rdlecler1
Prior to an extinction event you may be in some kind of equilibrium state
where no agents are expressing phenotype a of sufficient novelty to provide a
major selective advantage. Once you remove species this creates a vacuum for
new phenotypes.

This also makes me think about how new technologies may disrupt the status quo
leading to rapid technological evolution as we are seeing now, and in the dot-
com

An interesting idea here is that government regulations have the ability to
shift the selective landscape away from it's current equilibrium state and
drive more technological evolution.

~~~
miscellaneous
Creating new government regulations or the removal of old government
regulations?

I would posit that progress in an industry gets 'stuck' due to large companies
using their resources/influence to encourage regulation that hinder
competition. It then takes very significant advancements in technology to
create businesses that are so different that they can compete with incumbents
in ways that have not been preemptively regulated.

In fact I would suggest that regulation is the opposite of an 'extinction
event'. Regulation is not a random shock and it inherently targets smaller
industries/organizations. For instance, "too big to fail" is an example of
regulation _preventing_ a mass extinction event. Without "too big to fail",
many of the least innovative companies (large banks, GM, etc.) would have gone
bankrupt and there would be drastically more progress in these industries.

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OMFGscience
Computer scientists rediscover punctuated equilibrium?

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jds375
An interesting thought-experiment to accompany this. Suppose that you are
writing a program to create the best creature through evolution. One potential
way of writing the program is to simply let evolution do its work and have the
creatures evolve overtime. The other way is to write the program to simulate
mass extinction every few thousand/million generations.

This article would suggest that purposely programming in mass extinctions
would help speed up the evolution process. This seems counterintuitive given
the amount of genetic diversity that a mass extinction would cause.

Perhaps the researchers should try doing this and see if the results fall in
line with their own.

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aschampion
This is exactly what they did?

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ramgorur
link to the article:
[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0132886)

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ChuckMcM
So global warming is a GOOD thing, let the next sentient species figure out
how to live durably on the planet :-). It is an interesting challenge to
propagate the sum of our knowledge through a global extinction event,
something durable enough to survive, and yet with a means of each level
unlocking the next level.

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danieltillett
The speed of evolution is proportional the population size. What extinction
can do is open up new niches (environments) that new species can move into and
undergo rapid adaption to the new niche. Evolution chugs away unseen and it is
only when a new niche opens up does the adaption process become visible.

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louithethrid
This could have some suprising outcomes - who would have thought that plastic
could learn to rot ?

That green plants could haverst power from cables by induction?

If evolution speeds up, the fox rampaging through your garbage, might plant
some ambrosia in your backyard to do so undisturbed.

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animefan
If you believe in a platonic ideal of evolution, then maybe this means
something to you. Otherwise this would be better titled "Computer Scientists
Find Simulated Mass Extinctions Can Accelerate Simulated Evolution".

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esaym
Agreed, the title should be changed. I clicked thinking there was actual
factual data here, not a computer program.

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insulanian
Yeah, major refactoring of the world sounds good, unless you end up in the
obsolete part.

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graycat
Of course: Can get that headline from a simple Markov process argument.

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always_frgttn
Glad to see there are GNOME3 user doing real science job out there

