The whole concept of a "dominant species" is also a bit ridiculous and probably shouldn't be bought into whole cloth. If what we mean by "dominant species" is 'the most radiatively expansive single species before allopatric speciation takes over..", then pick any one of the many many invasive we've spread around the planet. Our intelligence has allowed for a massive and basically instantaneous geologic layer globally, but it's not something that can be handed off in the way that a vasculature did for land plants or the ability to decompose cellulose and lignin did for fungi.. unless we want it to be.

If you really want intelligence to make it's mark on the earth we need a way to move it from our species into other species, because we're not long for this world. Move the genes specific to human nervous tissue and neurons into bees, ants, termites, any formian creature. That'll get this party started.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think there's a solid argument to be made for ants as the world's dominant species. There are even supercolonies that span multiple continents. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3352483/

They will likely continue to thrive in the post-human global environment. Their success does not rely on human development (like, say, rats), nor are they severely threatened by human development (like...well, most things).

[–] TropicalDingdong 5 points 2 days ago

Was talking about this earlier with the s.o., we've both got pretty substantial biology training (phds, ms, bs etc). We both agreed that "dominant species" is a bit of a term looking for a definition, as in, it's not something extending from biology or ecology but rather something being imposed upon them. We were between nostoc and rhizobium, with fungi capable of digesting lignin in third place, for the most "world dominating" species, in the sense that those species, through their biology, have carved the planet into a place much more suited for themselves.

It strikes me that humans aren't even really doing that, but rather, we're selecting for an environment less suitable to our own survival. So I don't know that humans would even rank for dominance over the environment because we really don't have any sense of control over the matter, whereas, some other species clearly do.