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Survivor List
Topic Started: Sep 8 2014, 06:26 PM (431 Views)
citrakayah
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This is a general list. Some families and orders may be extinct that are not specifically listed here; if you have a question PM me, or post here.



Winners:


  • Introduced species did quite well. Cats, dogs, ferrets, goats, camels, all had been introduced to new environments, often with few competitors. Often they were introduced to islands, and the result was rapid speciation after we left.
  • With the extinction or decline of several species of large apex predators, mesopredators moved to fill the gap. Wolves and coyotes hybridized extensively in much of the United States of America. In Africa, lions went extinct, and the result was that jackal, fox, and small cat populations exploded and diversified. An arms race was on.
  • While cetaceans never went completely extinct, they did decline. Pinnepids took over some of their niches, though dolphins continued to dominate truly pelagic niches.
  • As with pinnepids, varanid lizards. Several species of monitor lizard adapted to a littorial existence quickly.
  • Macropods, of all things, actually invaded Hawaii, of all places. They did well there, maintaining a breeding population and gradually expanding outwards, into the rainforest and the hardened lava floes. They did, however, have to deal with an increase in competition in Australia, where camels put ecological pressure on them.
  • Of all the organisms that one would expect to suddenly colonize a new habitat, trees would be the last one. But colonize they did. Trees, descended from the mangroves, began to colonize deeper and deeper parts of the ocean. Mangrove seeds began to elongate, until they could root in nearly a meter of water. Even better adaptations would come soon enough.
  • Pigs did very well in Africa, where they took some of the niches left behind by large pachyderms.


Losers:

  • Panthera never entirely went extinct. In Africa, leopards survived, and fragmented jaguar populations managed to persist. But the tiger completely vanished, the lion went extinct, and snow leopards went extinct as well.
  • The roquals suffered heavy losses. Of all the species, only a few survived. We didn't render them extinct, not completely, but we reduced their numbers so much that they could not survive without our help.
  • Toothed whales also suffered a decline, enough of one that pinnipeds started encroaching on some of the niches they had formerly controlled.
  • Large pachyderms nearly went extinct. All Asian rhinoceroses went extinct, as did all elephants but the African bush. The Southern white rhinoceros survived in a few parts of its range.
  • Frog biodiversity declined by 50% in some parts of the world as they were ravaged by chytrid fungus. They were hardly going to go extinct as an order, but it would be a long time before they returned to their former glory.
  • While tree ferns and cycads didn't go extinct, locally many species vanished, the result of overcollecting.
Edited by citrakayah, Sep 8 2014, 06:30 PM.
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FaceholeJenkins
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Roquals? I can't say i've heard of them
edit: nvm
Edited by FaceholeJenkins, May 28 2015, 01:14 PM.
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Martin
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Please don't necropost. This thread is over a year old and the project is clearly dead. Besides, you could have easily just googled the word rorqual.
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