News Article: Reptiles = Losers of evolution?

The problem is that they're assuming that diversifying rapidly is better than not doing so. It DOES say 'losers' after all. Obviously the crocodilians are not losers, so their assumption that rapid diversification is better than slow diversification is inaccurate.

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

The problem is that they're assuming that diversifying rapidly is better than not doing so. It DOES say 'losers' after all. Obviously the crocodilians are not losers, so their assumption that rapid diversification is better than slow diversification is inaccurate.

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Yeah it says losers cause compared to birds and mammals they are losers. Sure they have been around for a long time but the point is for something that has been around for so long how come we mammals have a chance at all. Why is it that Reptiles are not a much bigger player. Why don't we see a species of alligator that can survive in New York. Birds and Mammals fill niches when they can, reptiles don't nearly as frequently. Not to say that they don't at all. There are snakes in the ocean and snakes in the extreme north but the diversity pales in comparison to other animals.

I too take offense to the term "loser" though. I like to think that reptiles are just playing a different game. A game that they are doing very very well at. The article is pretty clearly defining better as rapid diversification. If you don't think rapid diversification is better then we can argue about that but the article has a point and I think it makes it well, and that is that for how amazing reptiles are they sure suck at diversifying.

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

The problem is that they're assuming that diversifying rapidly is better than not doing so. It DOES say 'losers' after all. Obviously the crocodilians are not losers, so their assumption that rapid diversification is better than slow diversification is inaccurate.

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sure.

The researchers are basing winning and losing on diversification. In that respect, crocs lose. Badly. They're not dissing them or saying that the group sucks; they mention how unique they are.

Quote from the article (referring to the tuatara, but also the crocodillians I would suspect):
"In species richness, these are losers, but in another sense, this highlights how unique they are."

One could make a case that failure to diversify isn't the best strategy should some rapid change occur (e.g., climate), but I don't want to get into that...

If anyone cares to read the manuscript, it can be found here.

They are saying they are losers because they have not changed much over the course of time such as birds and mammals, but in my book, that is BA since they were well equipped to live and kill on literally day one. Sure they were bigger back then, because there prey were bigger back then, now that there prey is much smaller, they need to get smaller so they won't kill off all their prey because they are hungry. Remember, from the start of the world and in present time, 99% of all animals that ever existed have gone extinct. That remaining 1% percent were sharks,crocodilians, and some other things not much of us care about:).

if they are losers or evolution then why have they not needed to change?
they limit their food intake and they are never overpopulate.
mammals do all of the overpopulation and have to migrate and change or starve

For the sake of the research, the game is diversification. In that sense, crocodillians lose. They haven't diversified very much. These researchers aren't saying that crocs have a bad evolutionary strategy (they mustn't because they're still around); they admit that the design has worked for that group and that it's pretty interesting. I think people have grasped the wrong part of this article.

That said, I personally think that the ability to diversify and invade new habitats/take advantage of different conditions is pretty dang nifty. :)

Good job scientists, you never let us down.

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Originally Posted by omnibus2

Good job scientists, you never let us down.

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did you even read the entire paper? or the responses here?

those great scientist have made you life way easier!