Aren't the terms 'something going extinct' and 'inability to adapt' essentially same. They are symmetrically causal to one another. It has inability to adapt, hence it went extinct; it went extinct hence we say it didn't have the ability to adapt. What new unit of knowledge do we gain by saying something like the OP's title?
In short, the 'ability to adopt' is itself measured in terms of whether 'something is extinct or not'
They mention that the ape was mainly restricted to forests - wouldn't a metabolically-imposed habitat restriction limit the species' exposure to ex situ adaptations?
Which is to say, we gain insight into how metabolism, specialization and extinction play together. Although, perhaps this is what you meant by correlating extinction and inability to adapt?
"The demise of the giant ape Gigantopithecus has been the focus of recent study, where researchers have reached the conclusion that the presumably largest apes in geological history died due to their insufficient adaptability. Analyses of fossil tooth enamel show that the primates were restricted to forested habitats."
So, the forest turned into savannah faster than they could adapt. Similar things happened and happens to zillions of species.
Interesting adjunct of the Red Queen hypothesis: species survival probabilities are largely constant over time, or conversely, species don't get better at surviving simply by surviving longer.
"Leigh Van Valen proposed the hypothesis to explain the "Law of Extinction",[1] showing that in many populations the probability of extinction does not depend on the lifetime of this population, instead being constant over millions of years for a given population."
This strikes me as fascinating, and makes me wonder about where similar rules do or don't apply (e.g., business, organisational, or national longevity, hardware failure rates, etc.).
Very interesting. I'm hardly a bio/ecologist but I think that I have some links you may find pertinent:
* The Lindy effect [0] is a theory of the life expectancy of non-perishable things that posits for a certain class of nonperishables, like a technology or an idea, every additional day may imply a longer (remaining) life expectancy:[1] the mortality rate decreases with time. This contrasts with living creatures and mechanical things, which instead follow a bathtub curve, where every additional day in its life translates into a shorter additional life expectancy (though longer overall life expectancy, due to surviving this far): after childhood, the mortality rate increases with time.
* Correlations, Risk and Crisis: From Physiology to Finance [1] - "in crisis, typically, even before obvious symptoms of crisis appear, correlation increases, and, at the same time, variance (and volatility) increases too."
* Liebig's Law [2] - growth is constrained by the minimum resource, not the total of resources
* Metabolic theory of ecology [3] - the metabolic rate of an organism governs observed ecological patterns
Most primates are adapted to very specific environments and diets and because of that are quite vulnerable to change. There are only two species of primates that are known to thrive when their environments are completely changed, the so called "weed apes". These are humans and rhesus which both form social structures that enable adaptation.
[+] [-] sravfeyn|10 years ago|reply
Aren't the terms 'something going extinct' and 'inability to adapt' essentially same. They are symmetrically causal to one another. It has inability to adapt, hence it went extinct; it went extinct hence we say it didn't have the ability to adapt. What new unit of knowledge do we gain by saying something like the OP's title?
In short, the 'ability to adopt' is itself measured in terms of whether 'something is extinct or not'
[+] [-] pizza|10 years ago|reply
Which is to say, we gain insight into how metabolism, specialization and extinction play together. Although, perhaps this is what you meant by correlating extinction and inability to adapt?
[+] [-] Someone|10 years ago|reply
"The demise of the giant ape Gigantopithecus has been the focus of recent study, where researchers have reached the conclusion that the presumably largest apes in geological history died due to their insufficient adaptability. Analyses of fossil tooth enamel show that the primates were restricted to forested habitats."
So, the forest turned into savannah faster than they could adapt. Similar things happened and happens to zillions of species.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|10 years ago|reply
"Leigh Van Valen proposed the hypothesis to explain the "Law of Extinction",[1] showing that in many populations the probability of extinction does not depend on the lifetime of this population, instead being constant over millions of years for a given population."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_queen_hypothesis
This strikes me as fascinating, and makes me wonder about where similar rules do or don't apply (e.g., business, organisational, or national longevity, hardware failure rates, etc.).
[+] [-] pizza|10 years ago|reply
* The Lindy effect [0] is a theory of the life expectancy of non-perishable things that posits for a certain class of nonperishables, like a technology or an idea, every additional day may imply a longer (remaining) life expectancy:[1] the mortality rate decreases with time. This contrasts with living creatures and mechanical things, which instead follow a bathtub curve, where every additional day in its life translates into a shorter additional life expectancy (though longer overall life expectancy, due to surviving this far): after childhood, the mortality rate increases with time.
* Correlations, Risk and Crisis: From Physiology to Finance [1] - "in crisis, typically, even before obvious symptoms of crisis appear, correlation increases, and, at the same time, variance (and volatility) increases too."
* Liebig's Law [2] - growth is constrained by the minimum resource, not the total of resources
* Metabolic theory of ecology [3] - the metabolic rate of an organism governs observed ecological patterns
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
[1] http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.0129
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebig%27s_law_of_the_minimum
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_theory_of_ecology
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