I'm writing this
post in the note app on my phone; it's the first time I do something
like this, but I literally won't have time to do it any other way. I
have been to a TEDx conference (if you are not familiar with TED, I
strongly recommend you to check up their website) in Bristol (I hope this link gets you to the recorded talks when/if they are published), which
spanned a cross the whole day. Now I have a short time on my three 30
minute bus journeys back home for dinner and then straight back to
university for a Public Speaking Society session, and finally back home
again.
This is unusually busy for me, which I'm sure makes half of you laugh, but it is true. I'm not saying it is because I have no pressure on me - that is only half-true - but because i tend to be good at spreading out the pressure over several days.
Anyway, this was not the point here at all, I'm sorry. Rather, I wanted to write about the theme of the TEDx talks: failure.
But since this is a paleoblog, I'll angle the topic to failure in evolution. Can something fail in evolution? How? What are the consequences?
Well, there is a really simple answer to those questions, which I think I can sum up in one sentence that probably won't even need further explanation: Evolution is all about adapting to change, so failure in evolution would be failure to adapt, and results in a decline in the population, or flat out extinction, depending on the degree of failure.
More interesting perhaps, is considering evolutionary reversals from this perspective. Evolutionary reversals are simply when a lineage adapts back to a more ancestral state. Brilliant examples are several land vertebrate groups returning to an aquatic life (see Eyes and the emergence of predators) whack their ancestors had evolved away from 100s of million years earlier.
When we humans face failure in something, we tend to either become devastated and back off, or learn and try again with a different approach. Could this be an analogy for evolutionary reversals?
Did the land colonisers realise that getting onto land was a mistake, and go back to the water? Did flightless birds such as ratites and penguins think of flight as a mistake?
Although that probably not is the case (otherwise we'd expect all vertebrates to revert to an aquatic lifestyle, or all birds to lose their ability to fly), it is still quite thought-provoking. And the same reason why only some lineages in the groups made these reversals may even teach us one way of looking at failure: "what works for you might not work for me" i.e. where you succeed, I might not, and that's is nothing odd; and, where I have difficulties, you might excel.
This is unusually busy for me, which I'm sure makes half of you laugh, but it is true. I'm not saying it is because I have no pressure on me - that is only half-true - but because i tend to be good at spreading out the pressure over several days.
Anyway, this was not the point here at all, I'm sorry. Rather, I wanted to write about the theme of the TEDx talks: failure.
But since this is a paleoblog, I'll angle the topic to failure in evolution. Can something fail in evolution? How? What are the consequences?
Well, there is a really simple answer to those questions, which I think I can sum up in one sentence that probably won't even need further explanation: Evolution is all about adapting to change, so failure in evolution would be failure to adapt, and results in a decline in the population, or flat out extinction, depending on the degree of failure.
More interesting perhaps, is considering evolutionary reversals from this perspective. Evolutionary reversals are simply when a lineage adapts back to a more ancestral state. Brilliant examples are several land vertebrate groups returning to an aquatic life (see Eyes and the emergence of predators) whack their ancestors had evolved away from 100s of million years earlier.
When we humans face failure in something, we tend to either become devastated and back off, or learn and try again with a different approach. Could this be an analogy for evolutionary reversals?
Did the land colonisers realise that getting onto land was a mistake, and go back to the water? Did flightless birds such as ratites and penguins think of flight as a mistake?
Although that probably not is the case (otherwise we'd expect all vertebrates to revert to an aquatic lifestyle, or all birds to lose their ability to fly), it is still quite thought-provoking. And the same reason why only some lineages in the groups made these reversals may even teach us one way of looking at failure: "what works for you might not work for me" i.e. where you succeed, I might not, and that's is nothing odd; and, where I have difficulties, you might excel.
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