Species and Niches

[Jochen Fromm]

> [..] adaptation to a fixed environment is a
> gross oversimplification.  The fitness surface on which a species
> evolves is actually deformed by the presence of the species itself, not
> to mention all the other organisms who might be hanging around the
> neighborhood.  And as a species evolves, so too does the deformation it
> gives to its own fitness surface and the fitness surfaces of other
> organisms in its environment.
>

As Russell says, niches in fact do not exist independently
of the species in an ecosystem. Adaptation to a fixed environment
is not an oversimplification, it is more an approximation
for short time scales. Of course the fitness surface
on which a species evolves is altered and deformed by
the presence of the species itself. As Nowak and
Sigmund say in (*) "Evolutionary Dynamics of Biological Games"
Although the environment selects the adaptations,
these adaptations can shape the environment."
It is similar to Einstein's General Relativity:
Mass curves space-time landscape, and space times
determines the motion of mass. Species and nices
co-evolve together, and they influence each other.

(*)
Evolutionary Dynamics of Biological Games
Martin A. Nowak and Karl Sigmund
Science 303 (2004) 793-799
http://www.ped.fas.harvard.edu/pdf_files/Science04.pdf

[Carl Tollander-2]

  >Adaptation to a fixed environment
  >is not an oversimplification, it is more an approximation
  >for short time scales.

Which one are you suggesting has the shorter time scale?

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]On
Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004 12:37 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] Species and Niches


> [..] adaptation to a fixed environment is a
> gross oversimplification.  The fitness surface on which a species
> evolves is actually deformed by the presence of the species itself, not
> to mention all the other organisms who might be hanging around the
> neighborhood.  And as a species evolves, so too does the deformation it
> gives to its own fitness surface and the fitness surfaces of other
> organisms in its environment.
>

As Russell says, niches in fact do not exist independently
of the species in an ecosystem. Adaptation to a fixed environment
is not an oversimplification, it is more an approximation
for short time scales. Of course the fitness surface
on which a species evolves is altered and deformed by
the presence of the species itself. As Nowak and
Sigmund say in (*) "Evolutionary Dynamics of Biological Games"
Although the environment selects the adaptations,
these adaptations can shape the environment."
It is similar to Einstein's General Relativity:
Mass curves space-time landscape, and space times
determines the motion of mass. Species and nices
co-evolve together, and they influence each other.

(*)
Evolutionary Dynamics of Biological Games
Martin A. Nowak and Karl Sigmund
Science 303 (2004) 793-799
http://www.ped.fas.harvard.edu/pdf_files/Science04.pdf


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[David Eric Smith]

Hi all worried about Niches etc,

Oddly enough, at least most of the people who come out sounding so
unreasonable in these various articles aren't all that unreasonable in
a reasonable conversation.  They object to having something they all
recognize billed as somebody's new invention, or they object to having
something they all recognize ignored in the canons of population
genetics.  Within this category, there are a zillion things that can
be included: development as the thing that interposes between the unit
of inheritence (the genome) and the unit of selection (the
individual), the feedbacks of environment on development itself, any
number of issues in coevolution or niches, long-range correlations
induced by ecological structures and flows, etc.  They are all in this
category because we don't understand any of them very well.

What gets lost in all this rhetoric is exactly what technical
improvement somebody makes on formalizing any one of these.  Surely
most of Niche Construction (the book) by weight has to do with citing
examples that are familiar to biologists and even lay people (like
physicists).  That is all the stuff that has to go in a book that
people wouldn't bother with in a technical conversation unless it
seemed necessary, because they would take for granted that the
listener carries all this.  In a book you have to plough through it
even though you know it isn't new, to bring the audience into the
scene you had in mind.

The new point they have made is that the Niche and the Gene are two
things that can be inherited, for which the rules of inheritence
differ, and for which they can be formalized in some cases, so you
have committed to specific dynamical models, as opposed to just being
descriptive.  Prior to now, there have been a few fully mathematized
population genetic models, typically very simple variations on
one-gene, one-trait maps, in which Mendelian inheritence (haploid or
diploid) and Darwinian selection create a specific algorithm for the
evolution of probability distributions.  It seems like the place
Feldman et al have gained a pawn on the problem is expanding this to
include models of inherited environments within a similarly specific
framework, to see how that alters the evolution of the distributions.
It doesn't begin to cover hardly any of what any interested person in
the woods would wonder about the forces shaping population structure
and change, but it attempts to find a corner of this problem simple
enough that it can be formalized with relatively conservative
extensions from the population models about which people have
developed some intuition.

For that, we can decide whether this particular small advance is
useful to what we want to do or not.  I vascillate from one day of the
week to the next between thinking it is interesting and thinking not.
Most of the ecologists I talk to seem to think it represents a
necessary break in the habits of the field that will, over time,
induce people to start asking a wider set of reasonable questions.

Eric

[Tim Densmore]

Hi folks --

First I want to thank everyone who helped me track down chiropractors.  
I meant to do this a while ago, but it kept falling through the cracks
-- but thanks a lot, it really helped.

Second -- another request.  Does anyone know a welder in the area that
they would recommend for doing small, odd jobs?  I'm looking at a few
sets of plans for building a barbecue out of 55 gallon drums, and need
help with cutting and welding the drums together.

Thanks,

Tim Densmore

[Parks, Raymond]

Tim Densmore wrote:

> Hi folks --
>
> First I want to thank everyone who helped me track down chiropractors.  
> I meant to do this a while ago, but it kept falling through the cracks
> -- but thanks a lot, it really helped.
>
> Second -- another request.  Does anyone know a welder in the area that
> they would recommend for doing small, odd jobs?  I'm looking at a few
> sets of plans for building a barbecue out of 55 gallon drums, and need
> help with cutting and welding the drums together.

   I have two friends living at my house that have a gas welder/cutter
and arc-welder and experience using them.  If you want, I can ask them
if they would be willing to do a small job.  They are currently building
cabinets (out of wood) for someone, but that job should be over soon.

--
Ray Parks                   [hidden email]
IDART Project Lead          Voice:505-844-4024
IORTA Department            Fax:[phone]
http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288

[Tim Densmore]

That would be very cool -- I'd be more than happy to pay the going rate.

Thanks,

Tim Densmore


On Jun 15, 2004, at 3:57 PM, rcparks wrote:

> Tim Densmore wrote:
>
>> Hi folks --
>> First I want to thank everyone who helped me track down
>> chiropractors.  I meant to do this a while ago, but it kept falling
>> through the cracks -- but thanks a lot, it really helped.
>> Second -- another request.  Does anyone know a welder in the area
>> that they would recommend for doing small, odd jobs?  I'm looking at
>> a few sets of plans for building a barbecue out of 55 gallon drums,
>> and need help with cutting and welding the drums together.
>
>   I have two friends living at my house that have a gas welder/cutter
> and arc-welder and experience using them.  If you want, I can ask them
> if they would be willing to do a small job.  They are currently
> building cabinets (out of wood) for someone, but that job should be
> over soon.
>
> --
> Ray Parks                   [hidden email]
> IDART Project Lead          Voice:505-844-4024
> IORTA Department            Fax:[phone]
> http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.friam.org