Are there intrinsic limits on diversity, and how does the human presence or “intervention” factor in?
It’s not clear that there are intrinsic limits on diversity, although there may be limits on the diversity of individual types of organisms. If we look, for example, at animals that live in the ocean, fairly sedentary and passive animals reached a peak diversity about four hundred million years ago. Whereas other animals with more active physiologies have diversified almost linearly over that past four hundred million years. The overall diversity of animals in the ocean is much higher today than it was in the past, but only certain components of the animals have expanded. I don’t think there’s an intrinsic limit on diversity. Diversity acts as a flywheel because the way organisms interact with each other creates new opportunities. As long as we have this system, where evolution on one branch of the tree begets a response on another branch of the tree, I don’t see a world that tops out on diversity. But then again, that’s a world without human intervention. In a world with humans as a p
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