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> recognizing the ecological importance of lampreys in their native waters and are stepping up efforts to help them recover After billions of years how many sp

> recognizing the ecological importance of lampreys in their native waters and are stepping up efforts to help them recover After billions of years how many species are not of ecological importance? Maybe some primates?

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coldtea 2y ago
Why would the years of life on earth (or evolution) matter for species alive today being of "ecological importance" or not? Ecological importance is more about the role they play, and whether it's essential or inessential, and if the former if it can be easily substituted by another species or mechanism.
- mandmandam 2y ago
  > Why would the years of life on earth (or evolution) matter for species alive today being of "ecological importance" or not? It matters because we're not that smart. A species deemed "inessential" to ecological importance might very well turn out to be critical for unforeseen, even unforeseeable reasons. Not just to the species itself, which you seem to discount despite their ancient pedigree, but even to us through second order effects. The amount of time a species has been around is a strong clue that they're fulfilling a role in the ecosystem. Nature doesn't really do 'superfluous'; everything connects. Not in a hippy dippy way, but in the realest way, and in ways beyond our comprehension. The classic examples when I was growing up of 'nature being wasteful' - the appendix and 'junk DNA' - have now been revised... Because we learned more. No one knew how wolves change rivers [0] until it was studied. In hindsight it's obvious and makes perfect sense, but we didn't deem wolves "essential" when we killed them all. 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W88Sact1kws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W88Sact1kws
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >It matters because we don't know so much. A species deemed "inessential" to ecological importance might very well turn out to be critical for unforeseen, even unforeseeable reasons Sure, but that's an argument for "evolution being so complex and long process, we don't know much about which species is essential or not". Not for the original claim "After billions of years how many species are not of ecological importance? Maybe some primates?" which seems to imply that all/most specific are of ecological importance just because they're old, except maybe some more recent ones like primates.
    - mandmandam 2y ago
      The two claims are basically saying the same thing. You can't deny one and not the other. Evolution has taken place over billions and billions of years in a system that's far beyond our comprehension in complexity. Evolving - or even not evolving - in this system over billions of years and surviving implies importance. I can't say it guarantees that a species is "essential", but that was never the argument.
- Propelloni 2y ago
  This implies that a certain ecological state is preferable to another one and maintaining this state requires some essential actor. This makes sense from an anthropocentric point of view but I doubt that evolutionary processes work that way.

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coldtea 2y ago

Why would the years of life on earth (or evolution) matter for species alive today being of "ecological importance" or not? Ecological importance is more about the role they play, and whether it's essential or inessential, and if the former if it can be easily substituted by another species or mechanism.

mandmandam 2y ago
> Why would the years of life on earth (or evolution) matter for species alive today being of "ecological importance" or not? It matters because we're not that smart. A species deemed "inessential" to ecological importance might very well turn out to be critical for unforeseen, even unforeseeable reasons. Not just to the species itself, which you seem to discount despite their ancient pedigree, but even to us through second order effects. The amount of time a species has been around is a strong clue that they're fulfilling a role in the ecosystem. Nature doesn't really do 'superfluous'; everything connects. Not in a hippy dippy way, but in the realest way, and in ways beyond our comprehension. The classic examples when I was growing up of 'nature being wasteful' - the appendix and 'junk DNA' - have now been revised... Because we learned more. No one knew how wolves change rivers [0] until it was studied. In hindsight it's obvious and makes perfect sense, but we didn't deem wolves "essential" when we killed them all. 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W88Sact1kws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W88Sact1kws
- coldtea 2y ago
  >It matters because we don't know so much. A species deemed "inessential" to ecological importance might very well turn out to be critical for unforeseen, even unforeseeable reasons Sure, but that's an argument for "evolution being so complex and long process, we don't know much about which species is essential or not". Not for the original claim "After billions of years how many species are not of ecological importance? Maybe some primates?" which seems to imply that all/most specific are of ecological importance just because they're old, except maybe some more recent ones like primates.
  - mandmandam 2y ago
    The two claims are basically saying the same thing. You can't deny one and not the other. Evolution has taken place over billions and billions of years in a system that's far beyond our comprehension in complexity. Evolving - or even not evolving - in this system over billions of years and surviving implies importance. I can't say it guarantees that a species is "essential", but that was never the argument.
Propelloni 2y ago
This implies that a certain ecological state is preferable to another one and maintaining this state requires some essential actor. This makes sense from an anthropocentric point of view but I doubt that evolutionary processes work that way.