<Perception Management -- CERA and IHS Energy The Oil Drum Due Diligence: A reader's response to Khosla>
<DrumBeat: August 12, 2006 DrumBeat DrumBeat: August 14, 2006>

180 comments on DrumBeat: August 13, 2006

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Show without comments | PDF version

Leanan on August 13, 2006 - 9:32am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Another interesting bit from this issue: an estimate  of how much energy it takes to evolve a new species.  Turns out, life ain't cheap.  It's actually incredibly expensive.

Drew Allen, an ecologist at UC Santa Barbara, worked out how much energy it takes to generate a new species.

The answer: a staggering 10^23 joules, more energy than is released by all the fossil fuels burned on Earth in a year.

...He found that although the amount of energy required is constant, new species form more quickly near the equator because heat speeds up both metabolism and the rate of genetic mutations.  

Even Darwin noticed that biodiversity is more plentiful in the tropics.  "But the idea that temperature affects speciation rates through its effects on molecular-level processes is brand new," Allen says.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
odograph on August 13, 2006 - 9:50am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I may have to get to the library for that, sounds interesting.   FWIW, I remember that African Chchlids are sometimes put forward for the "reocrd" in speciation, but at 15K years or so it's not exactly fast on a human timescale.

"Interestingly, Lake Victoria dried up approximately 12,00-15,000 years ago (before becoming a lake again), suggesting that the rate of speciation in Lake Victoria cichlids is the fastest ever reported for vertebrates."

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Cichlidae.html

Thanks for the great load of articles Leanan.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
FossilFool on August 13, 2006 - 10:03am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That's not good. I read a book about agriculture and such. We need to change the varieties of crops every five years to keep up with developing resistances of pests and other such things. That won't be good when the farmers don't have that.
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Engineer-Poet on August 13, 2006 - 10:30am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
10^23 joules is about what Earth receives from the Sun in 16 hours.
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
ET on August 13, 2006 - 1:27pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Diamond discusses the issue of more species at the equator. I forget whether it was in 'Guns Germs & Steel' or 'Collapse' but doesn't posit any root causes. I really am suspicious of this energy calculation though. Energy necessary to form a new species??? How the hell can that be measured? Bacteria can form a new species in a few hours. I don't think this can be either accurate to any degree or useful except in a 'golly, gee whiz' kind of way.
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Robert Rapier on August 13, 2006 - 4:52pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Energy necessary to form a new species??? How the hell can that be measured? Bacteria can form a new species in a few hours.

Yeah, I thought the same thing. The nylon-digesting bacteria resulted from a frame-shift mutation. That was just a normal division process that got screwed up. All it takes is one division in some cases, as you say, to form a new species.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
ET on August 14, 2006 - 12:10pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Actually, gene-swapping or 'horizontal-gene-transfer' is ubiquitous among bacteria so it doesn't take mutations at all for them to form new 'species' however one defines a species among bacteria. Good evidence exists that HGT occurs somewhat higher up the evolutionary ladder as well.
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Apuleius on August 13, 2006 - 11:09pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The definition of species is dependent on context. For sexually reproducing organisms 'species' is much more easily defined, and the pace of speciation is worth studying. Speciation in bacteria is a more subjective matter.
Comments can no longer be added to this story.

180 comments on DrumBeat: August 13, 2006

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Show without comments | PDF version