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> If you reach a point where one organism developed enough mechanisms to resist simple predators and that their advanced predators die out, I think it would be
by DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
> If you reach a point where one organism developed enough mechanisms to resist simple predators and that their advanced predators die out, I think it would be impossible for evolution to get out of that dead end.
If all the predators died out, then those defense mechanisms would become wasteful, and organisms that didn't have those defense mechanisms would be more efficient. That would open the door to the development of new predators. The situation you're describing is not a true equilibrium, in other words.
- Iv 7y agoTrue, but in such case, defense mechanisms don't just disappear from the gene pool, they just get deactivated. The second time they are going to be much faster to re-evolve, making the disappearance of the second appearance of predators even faster.
- DiogenesKynikos 7y agoThe predators will never disappear in the first place. The fewer predators there are, the more wasteful defense mechanisms are, and therefore the more disfavored they are by natural selection. The more predators there are, the more defense mechanisms are favored. The equilibrium is neither zero defenses nor 100% effective defenses against predation. It's somewhere in-between. The predators get to evolve too, by the way. There's no 100% effective defense against all forms of predation.