Given that we support megafauna today, could you explain why? Legitimately asking, since I don't see a reason they couldn't adapt just as well.
Given that we support megafauna today, could you explain why? Legitimately asking, since I don't see a reason they couldn't adapt just as well.
Because evolution is slow and the climate change is going fast.
Evolution of small things like algae and the krill which feed on it and feed the whale is quite fast. Single celled organisms reproduce on the scale of 20 minutes and hold immense amounts of genetic diversity in their populations to facilitate the success of a better adapted line almost immediately. Additionally, they are adept at horizontal gene transfer from other well-adapted organisms.
This would be great news if the whale literally only required krill to survive, but complex megafauna have complex needs, so the ability of krill and other small creatures to evolve is largely irrelevant in a discussion regarding the ability of megafauna to survive. This is especially true if you read TFA and see that the whales already adapt to eat different things as necessary.
Humpbacks have a highly specialized feeding mechanism. They only prey on krill and small fish.
The food chain really is sun -> algae -> krill (and sometimes small fish) -> humpback whale
In recent years we’ve learned that humpbacks are generalist feeders with a wide variety of feeding strategies adapted to different kinds of prey.
Humpbacks will switch between Krill (their staple in many regions) and small schooling fish (herring, sand lance, anchovies, etc.).
But they don’t eat large fish, squid regularly, or anything like seals - so they’re not “generalists” in the broad, anything-goes sense.
They’re still constrained by their baleen filter-feeding system, which limits them to tiny prey
That's just one view of the stack and isn't a systems view. Other things support and interact with those other things.
Algae are the bottom of the ocean food chain. Everything interacts with it. But algae's happy to grow in a bowl of water left in the sun.
Lots of things eat krill and small fish. They're near the bottom of the foodchain too. In addition to algae, krill are opportunistic omnivores who often consume detritus. But their primary diet is algae. Small fish tend to be pretty similar.
It's not that other things don't interact with algae or krill or small fish, it's that those groups are the foundation bedrock of the ocean ecology. And single celled organisms like algae are tough as nails in aggregate. Couldn't kill them all if we tried. Pool owners will be familiar with the struggle.
>but complex megafauna have complex needs
Like what? Emotional support dolphin?
Evolution has been found to be happening 2-4 times faster than the rate earlier thought: https://news-archive.exeter.ac.uk/2022/may/articles/fuelofev...
We would need 1000x faster, so that doesn’t really change anything.
It could easily become this fast or even faster, if we would just stop worrying so much about "playing god" and focus instead on getting good at this job. We don't have much time for this either, as AI is on the trajectory to take over that mantle in the next decade or three, whether we like it or not.
But seriously, we may not have much choice. Natural evolution stopped being able to adapt to environmental changes after it created us; genetic engineering is essentially the only way to make biology adaptable enough again.
The next question is which traits to do you choose and the next question is which traits are better, because choices will imply ordering, and then you open a big can of worms that last time killed millions of people. So maybe there's other ways to avoid doom that didn't create doom last time we went down the path.
Unpopular opinion for obvious reasons, but probably the only realistic one apart from just witnessing one extinction after another. Pollution and climate change aint going anywhere until we elevate whole world to the level of say western Europe.
But since we humans are pretty arrogant with our wisdom and lack long term patience, I can see many ways where well-intended meddling can end up in catastrophe overall.