It could literally just be time and luck. We started mass production (cloning) of cavendish bananas around the the 1900s, and REALLY started mass production (c

It could literally just be time and luck. We started mass production (cloning) of cavendish bananas around the the 1900s, and REALLY started mass production (cloning) in the 1950s, we only started seeing strains of banana blight effect it in the last few decades. Obviously there are all sorts of differences between these cases, but it's probably worth thinking about a bit. Oh, also it looks like most animals capable of parthenogenesis can also under go sexual reproduction, helping them hedge against certain types of threats. Also remember that we're looking at animal population on human generation timescales. One might say that a species with a population of millions being wiped out to a population of thousands (that are fungal resistant) over a time scale of 60 years as a 'disaster'. It in our life time it probably is, cause our activities would probably completely fuck over whatever is left. But in the absense of our activity, those thousands or so could still form a viable population and if they still have a good ecological niche to occupy, could easily within a few hundred/thousand years regain their original population. And we'd be all completely blind to that, cause that's not how we tend to think.