Survival of the fittest doesn't mean "fit" like this:
It means "fit" like THIS:
Or in other words, an organism's survival is dependent on how "fit" it is for its environment.
In the right environment, anything can be an advantage. Being strong or smart can be a detriment—a big brain and big muscles take up a lot of energy to sustain.
Furthermore, competition between two species doesn't always (or even usually) drive one of the species to extinction. Competition drives adaptation.
If there are two species of seed-eating birds that rely on the same resources to survive, it doesn't mean one of them will go extinct. It often means that they will both evolve more specific preferences in seeds they like to eat, and when, and where, so they don't have to compete anymore.
This is how you get species that occupy hyperspecific niches where they only eat the leaves of one single plant, or something.
We are discovering more and more that the classic view of nature as made of individual organisms competing for their own interests is misleading.
70-90% of all land plants form symbiotic relationships with fungi that live on their roots. In many cases, the fungal hyphae literally penetrate inside the plant cells to exchange nutrients and resources with them.
The mycorrhizal network, as it is called, links every tree in a forest. Basically every tree is linked to multiple species of fungi, and many fungi link to many species of tree. The mycorrhizal network allows nutrients and chemical signals to move between trees. Using their connection to the network, some trees can survive in completely dry soil by linking to fungi that get water by breaking down ROCKS.
And this symbiosis is OLD. It's so old, that the earliest fossils of land plants, from 400 million years ago, are attached to seemingly identical fungi to the ones that form symbiosis with plants now.
Suzanne Simard, one of the main researchers of mycorrhizal networks, coined the term "Mother Tree" to refer to the very old trees that support young trees via the mycorrhizal network. She picked this anthropomorphic language intentionally—to challenge our understanding of trees. They communicate. They sense and respond to their environment. They engage in behaviors. And yes, one of those behaviors appears to be parental care.
You think of yourself as an individual, but you could not survive without the teeming multitudes of microbes that live in and on you. Your cells contain mitochondria that have their own DNA, relics of a time when they were their own individual organisms.
Lichens, as you probably know, are a symbiosis between at least two organisms, a fungus, an alga, and sometimes microbes of other types (I forget which). They are their own distinct organism made of multiple very different organisms working together.
It is becoming more and more helpful to view forests as enormous super-organisms with collective interests and a high level of coordination.
The fact is that trees thrive around other trees. Most tree species seriously suffer alone. It is ideal for most trees to live as part of a forest.
The very nature of a forest is far more cooperative and interconnected than the old models can do justice to. A deciduous forest redistributes a HUGE amount of nutrients every year when leaves fall to the ground. Every tree feeds the other trees. Nothing is wasted. Arguably, trees regularly engage in matriphagy. Soft, crumbly decomposing wood is an ideal substrate for sprouting young trees. When I'm in the forest and need to sample some mycelium-rich dirt, I find a large dead tree and dig right around its base. When a tree dies, the mycelium flourish right around the base of the tree; decomposers break the old tree down into rich, fertile soil.
Landscaping and lawn care forums and websites cause me pain, because the average person is so eager to wildly overwater, overfertilize, and generally over-manage their backyard in the mistaken belief that "too much competition with other plants" is the problem with every plant.
Very barren, empty environments (like overmanaged lawns) are very extreme. The term "Extremophile" is subjective and relative to human preferences, but I can make a pretty good case that dandelions, crabgrass and other plants that flourish as lawn weeds are extremophiles.
The fluctuations in temperature and moisture, extreme soil compaction, and absence of a healthy mycelium network in the soil in a manicured lawn makes conditions incredibly harsh. Most plants cannot handle being blasted from leaf to root with sunlight all day with 0 shade from other plants, and growing in soil with no other plant roots. Most plants cannot thrive without the shelter, nutrients, and cooperation that a community of plants provides.
Forests create fertile, stable environments that allow for a huge diversity of plants to grow. Every participant in the ecosystem is critical to the survival of the others. Ecosystems are so, so, so much more interconnected than popular science usually portrays.
areudirty
janainaart
jbbartram-illu
origamiaround
dededos
2087
