Comment by echelon
1 day ago
> There's no easy way out anyway.
Evolution always finds new nooks and crannies of state space to explore.
1 day ago
> There's no easy way out anyway.
Evolution always finds new nooks and crannies of state space to explore.
Not always, species go extinct all the time. Evolution can get stuck in local optima. Consider the whiptail lizard, which has lost the ability to reproduce sexually. Will they be able to adapt to future changes of the environment? Maybe, but the chips are stacked against them.
Wow what an interesting animal, haven't heard about it before.
> the chips are stacked against them.
Wikipedia says: "This reproductive method enables the asexual desert grassland whiptail lizard to have a genetic diversity previously thought to have been unique to sexually reproductive species."
Doesn't look to bad?
No one said that those nooks are not deadly. But evolution will explore them just in case.
Evolution doesn’t explore anything, mutations are random, selection pressure causes beneficial traits to become more common overtime.
4 replies →
Yes, but maybe not from one specific lineage. E.g., extinction really is the end of the line for some species.