Ecology

549 readers

17 users here now

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Millions of years for plants to recover from global warming (www.sciencedaily.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You're very much on point.

An aside: have you heard of the Gleason rivet hypothesis?

This is it: it takes about 8 spp to hold up an ecosystem. Because we don't know what those spp. Are, we want to maintain biodiversity, similar to how we want to have all the rivets on a plane.

Now I think Gleason was a bit off. I think there are spp that can move in and fill the function of dominant spp if they leave. Look at how coyotes fill in the niche of extripated wolves in Yellowstone - they got bigger, started hunting in packs. however you most certainly want to keep everything you have, in terms of BD

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

I hadn't heard of that, but it makes sense that there would be some minimal number, which would certainly be fuzzy and vary depending on environment and species groups. A basic but good example of how more numbers creates stability is the old rabbit and fox simulator. You could get variables that had regular cycles, but it was very easy to spiral out of control. Having more things and interdependence would dampen these changes.