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Comment by zhivota

11 hours ago

I had always assumed this, and my idea of nature bouncing back was more on the millions of years time scale as evolution would result in the refilling of empty ecological niches.

All that said I still think we should just extinct disease carrying mosquitoes.

There are differing views on evolution, between slow and gradual and punctual equilibrium( a sudden breakthrough that triggers a biological arms race), this article is looking more at the very short term and saying if a species goes extinct another species does not immediately or fully occupy the space...which I guess needs to be stated but I would think that it was already understood...

The article is more focused on oceanic and coastal diversity but I agree about the mosquitoes.

Yeah the news for me here is that people thought nature could "bounce back" on a human timescale. Any human lifespan is just the blink of an eye to nature

Nature is not harmonious, it is in constant flux. Saying it can bounce back implies there some state of equilibrium for it to bounce back to. I guess there's no reason why it can't bounce forward.

  • Right, we know deserts weren't always deserts, systems collapse.

    • The earth isn't split up into separate "ecosystems" split by continent and land mass you realise? It's one big system that isn't even sealed off from outer space. And in terms of a truly barren planet, the Sahara is teeming with life

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Yes, we often see the history of earth's ecosystem through a geological timescale... human scale is almost light speed by comparison.