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> Life on Earth has had billions of years and expanded to fill so many niches, but they're nearly all damp niches. Nothing has ever really managed to really thr

> Life on Earth has had billions of years and expanded to fill so many niches, but they're nearly all damp niches. Nothing has ever really managed to really thrive in deserts. By definition, the desert "niche" IS filled. It has as much life as it can support. That doesn't mean wall-to-wall forest; you wouldn't expect to find that covering a field of barely weathered granite, either. All life on Earth uses water to transport chemicals and ions across its cells. Period. It's one immutable requirement of life on Earth. I wonder if there's some general mathematical description one could form of the biomass per acre versus water content of the "surface soil". The oceans provide the extreme, but even then there are "biodeserts" far from land where there are insufficient nutrients (organic chemicals, probably) to keep even algae going.

some_random 1y ago
How do you know that that "It has as much life as it can support"? What would an unfilled niche look like?
- serf 1y ago
  an unfilled niche would have the known properties of life with resources so bounding that there isn't a strict need for competition for survival. (a brand new uncovered dish of agar media) a populated biome has an active +- exchange of resources between participants that facilitates the need for competition due to resource bounds. (the rain forest, most of the biological world) a sterile biome has no known properties of life, and no known participants. The participants that are there struggle to exist or are in some form of stasis to survive the condition. (a brand-new sealed blood vacuum vial.) as for 'as much as it can support', i'm unaware of how to determine an optimal maxima for biological growth independent of species or environment. Maybe some exotic sphere-packing type idea might work with a reward function for 'resources' ? I don't know.
  - some_random 1y ago
    Thank you, and I knew all that time studying spherical cows would come in handy one day!
BobbyJo 1y ago
I think you missed the point of parent's comment. > All life on Earth uses water to transport chemicals and ions across its cells. Period. It's one immutable requirement of life on Earth. They were pondering this. With billions of years of evolution, life has found no way around this, and that's interesting. That's all they were saying.

some_random 1y ago

How do you know that that "It has as much life as it can support"? What would an unfilled niche look like?

serf 1y ago
an unfilled niche would have the known properties of life with resources so bounding that there isn't a strict need for competition for survival. (a brand new uncovered dish of agar media) a populated biome has an active +- exchange of resources between participants that facilitates the need for competition due to resource bounds. (the rain forest, most of the biological world) a sterile biome has no known properties of life, and no known participants. The participants that are there struggle to exist or are in some form of stasis to survive the condition. (a brand-new sealed blood vacuum vial.) as for 'as much as it can support', i'm unaware of how to determine an optimal maxima for biological growth independent of species or environment. Maybe some exotic sphere-packing type idea might work with a reward function for 'resources' ? I don't know.
- some_random 1y ago
  Thank you, and I knew all that time studying spherical cows would come in handy one day!

BobbyJo 1y ago

I think you missed the point of parent's comment. > All life on Earth uses water to transport chemicals and ions across its cells. Period. It's one immutable requirement of life on Earth. They were pondering this. With billions of years of evolution, life has found no way around this, and that's interesting. That's all they were saying.