Evolutionary Suicide

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Evolutionary Suicide (literally: "evolutionary suicide") is a sub-hypothesis of the theory of evolution , which states that the evolutionary adaptation of an individualcan leadto the extinction of the entire population .

The term evolutionary suicide has not yet found widespread use in the German-language specialist literature. In the Anglo-Saxon literature, the term Darwinian extinction is used ("Darwinian extinction").

theory

Most of the species that have lived on earth so far are now extinct. According to estimates, this is around 500 million animal species so far - that's over 99.9%. The usual explanatory model for this is that these species have not sufficiently adapted to changed conditions in their habitat. The Evolutionary Suicide is an alternative explanatory model for the extinction of the species.

The theory assumes that animals and plants have evolved to only transfer their own genes to the next generations as successfully as possible, and not to ensure the survival of their own species. The evolutionary advantage of a single individual and their offspring could then, under certain circumstances, lead to the extinction of a population or even the entire species.

An example of evolutionary suicide would be an individual who has acquired the evolutionary advantage of being able to use seedlings of a particular plant species as food. However, when it is consumed, it destroys the reproduction and fruiting of the food base of its fellow species, causing them and it to die out.

Problem of proof

There is as yet no rigorous scientific evidence that any animal species became extinct through evolutionary suicide. In various studies, however, a correlation between certain newly acquired skills and an increased risk of population extinction has been demonstrated. As now classic example of a possible future evolutionary suicide is cod used. In this species, the intensive fishing of large specimens ( selection pressure ) has meant that the animals mature earlier and reach a smaller size. This adaptation is a reaction to the threat of rapid extinction of the species. However, the adaptation leads to a reduced number of offspring per individual, which ultimately brings the population itself closer to the risk of extinction.

Brontotherium hatcheri from the Brontotheriidae familymay have becomeextinctdue to Evolutionary Suicide

Observing evolutionary suicide in nature is extremely difficult because it is fundamentally very difficult to observe anything from extinct populations. JBS Haldane noted in his most famous book The Causes of Evolution in 1932 that there were a number of species in the earth's history, for example with extreme horns or spines, which apparently marked the beginning of extinction in these. Haldane wrote: "It seems probable that in some of the cases the species literally sank under the weight of its own armaments." (Eng .: "It seems likely that in some cases these species literally perished from the weight of their own armor.") For example, this is discussed as a possible cause of their extinction in the Brontotheriidae , an extinct family of North American mammals . The Brontotheriidae lived 55 million years ago and may have died out because of their armament and clumsy bodies. But it is also possible that the Brontotheriidae were in an "evolutionary dead end" and could no longer adapt to drastically changed living conditions.

In contrast, evolutionary suicide can easily be represented in mathematical models.

A scientifically reproducible experiment, which can be used as evidence for the evolutionary suicide or for a tragedy of the commons , comes from microbiology . The aerobic delta proteobacterium Myxococcus xanthus forms colonies in which the individual individuals can cooperatively develop fruiting bodies when there is a lack of food. From these fruiting bodies, individuals are in turn released as spores in order to be able to establish new colonies. Artificially selected strains (so-called cheaters , dt. "Swindlers") are able to produce a higher number of spores than the wild type of the bacterium. However, the cheaters are unable to form colonies. The strains of the cheaters invade the strains of the wild type due to a higher relative fitness . When they spread, the cheaters reduce the overall population density due to the lack of colony formation, which considerably increases the risk of extinction of both the wild type and the cheaters .

literature

Reference books

Technical article

  • EH Morrow, C. Fricke: Sexual selection and the risk of extinction in mammals. In: Proc Biol Sci. 271, 2004, pp. 2395-2401. PMID 15556893 .
  • M. Gyllenberg et al .: Evolutionary suicide and evolution of dispersal in structured metapopulations. 2000 ( iiasa.ac.at PDF).

Web links

  • Mats Gyllenberg: Evolutionary Suicide. ercim-news.org (July 29, 2012)
  • Ulf Dieckmann: Introduction to Adaptive Dynamics Theory. Presentation: folk.uib.no (PDF; 1.60 MB; July 29, 2012. Evolutionary Suicide : Part B: 1)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ R. Stindl: Is telomere erosion a mechanism of species extinction? In: J Exp Zoolog B Mol Dev Evol. 302, March 15, 2004, pp. 111-120. doi: 10.1002 / now or 20006 PMID 15054855 .
  2. ↑ a b c K. Parvinen: Evolutionary suicide. In: Acta Biotheor. 53, 2005, pp. 241-264. PMID 16329010 (Review).
  3. ↑ DJ Rankin et al. a .: Species-level selection reduces selfishness through competitive exclusion. In: J Evol Biol. 20, 2007, pp. 1459-1468. PMID 17584239
  4. ↑ C. Wedekind: Darwin and the nature conservation biology - An evolutionary view on the protection of species. In: focus. 19, 2009, pp. 14-15. ( biodiversity.ch PDF).
  5. ↑ EH Morrow & TE Pitcher: Sexual selection and the risk of extinction in birds. In: Proc Biol Sci. 270, 2003, pp. 1793-1799. PMID 12964981 .
  6. ↑ EM Olsen et al. a .: Maturation trends indicative of rapid evolution preceded the collapse of northern cod. In: Nature . 428, 2004, pp. 932-935. PMID 15118724 .
  7. ^ DO Conover & SB Munch: Sustaining fisheries yields over evolutionary time scales. In: Science . 297, 2002, pp. 94-96. PMID 12098697 .
  8. ↑ F. Courchamp et al. a .: Allee effects in ecology and conservation. Oxford University Press, 2008, ISBN 0-19-857030-9 , p. 156.
  9. ^ C. Webb: A complete classification of darwinian extinction in ecological interactions. In: American Naturalist. 161, 2003, pp. 181-205. PMID 12675367 .
  10. ↑ JBS Haldane: The Causes of Evolution. Princeton University Press (reprint from 1990), 1932, ISBN 0-691-02442-1 , p. 65.
  11. ↑ F. Dercole, S. Rinaldi: Analysis of Evolutionary Processes: The Adaptive Dynamics Approach and Its Applications. ( Memento of the original from February 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Princeton University Press, 2008, ISBN 0-691-12006-4 . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / press.princeton.edu
  12. ↑ M. Gyllenberg, K. Parvinen: Necessary and sufficient conditions for evolutionary suicide. In: Bull Math Biol. 63, 2001, pp. 981-993. PMID 11565412 .
  13. ^ DJ Rankin, K. Bargum, H. Kokko: The tragedy of the commons in evolutionary biology. In: Trends in Ecology and Evolution 22, 2007, pp. 643–651 socialgenes.org ( Memento of May 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 505 kB).
  14. ↑ F. Fiegna, GJ Velicer: Competitive fates of bacterial social parasites: persistence and self-induced extinction of Myxococcus xanthus cheaters. In: Proc Biol Sci. 270, 2003, pp. 1527-1534. PMID 12965020
  15. ^ D. Rankin, A. Lopez-Sepulcre: Can adaptation lead to extinction? In: OIKOS. 111, 2005, pp. 616–619 ( rankin.sk ( memento of September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) PDF).
  16. ↑ F. Courchamp et al. a .: Allee effects in ecology and conservation. Oxford University Press, 2008, ISBN 0-19-857030-9 , pp. 156-158 ( books.google.de ).
  17. ↑ M. LePage: Evolution myths: Evolution promotes the survival of species. In: New Scientist . April 16, 2008 ( newscientist.com ).