[sillycross]

Very interesting article. The discussion on the three models and their own deficiencies are quite interesting.

Niche assembly: every survival must have its own unique edge of advantage. I guess I'm most convinced by this. The counter-argument is "how can every specie has its unique edge?", but it could also be that we have not yet discovered it.

Natural drift: if everyone is equally fit and the system is large enough, then they can all survive (for a long time). But how come is everyone equally fit? The response is "since everyone survived (as we observe), everyone must be equally fit".. Honestly I'm not convinced by this logic.

Social distancing: trees practice social distancing to defend enemies, so diversity comes in. If tree-killing pests are all staying on one tree and kill its offsprings around it (but cannot kill the original tree since it's too large), then this theory seems plausible. I have no idea if this is true in the forests though..

[igorkraw]

The first two points answer each other: within each niche, there will be exactly 1 dominant species or N species which are at a local nash equlibrium or some species in the process of dying out "hoping" that things change. But they are free to drift around in dimensions that doesn't hurt them in their niche and if they find a way to create a new niche for themselves, there is high pressure to exploit it because "hey, it's free real estate" i.e. they no longer have to compete in the niche they were previously locked into.

People don't get that evolution selects for one thing only: continuation of your branch of the process. No other measuring stick. Genes, cells, multicells etc. just exist and some are better at continuing to exist, and they do that by finding niches for themselves. Once everyone found one, they are all equally fit. But we still have cultural narratives of humans at the "pinnacle of evolution" as if there is a big (abrahamic...) judge in the sky ranking species linearly. So we struggle really appreciating the trippy "goal" of evolution