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What Would Go Extinct?
Topic Started: Nov 3 2016, 12:31 PM (3,425 Views)
Yiqi15
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CaledonianWarrior96
Apr 25 2017, 11:05 AM
What kind of animals would we expect to become apex predators in Australia if species like the dingo die out?
I'd say probably saltwater crocodiles or feral cats.
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Rodlox
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CaledonianWarrior96
Apr 25 2017, 11:05 AM
What kind of animals would we expect to become apex predators in Australia if species like the dingo die out?
quolls, cats, rabbits, maybe roos or wombats re-enter the carnivory
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CaledonianWarrior96
Apr 15 2017, 02:39 PM
I've heard that human headlice could die out without humans to parasitise if we died out as well. I suppose if their biology was specific to suit humans as a host and transferring to another species would be difficult then they should become extinct
Also they would need to compete with head lice already adapted to other species of mammal, which I find highly unlikely.
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CaledonianWarrior96
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How good are beetles adapting to new habitats? I'm looking at the hercules beetle but I'm not sure how well that would thrive without rainforests
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IIGSY
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CaledonianWarrior96
Jul 6 2017, 08:20 AM
How good are beetles adapting to new habitats? I'm looking at the hercules beetle but I'm not sure how well that would thrive without rainforests
Beetles are among the best at doing that.
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As for the Hercules beetle specifically, I'm not to sure. As long as there is sufficient amounts of fruit, I think they should be fine.
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kusanagi
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I read that few if any land animals weighing over 20kg will survive making coyotes and small deer among the largest survivors around. Though all the same I can't imagine this rule being concrete because not all habitats are equally disturbed by man. In the sea the plankton crisis and acidification will resemble the marine extinctions at the end of the Permian. Bivalves were poorly hit then compared to other groups of marine invertebrates for example. Animals with short or absent stages of their life cycle spent in the plankton did better. Inshore fishes survived and the largest marine vertebrates to persist are thought to have been inshore sharks around 1m in length. Domesticaed animals might not fare well without humans to care for them so the least modified of domesticates such as house cats and dingo-like dogs will be most likely to leave descendants.
Edited by kusanagi, Jul 20 2017, 11:46 AM.
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LittleLazyLass
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It's not as simple and arbitrary as "stuff above this weight dies and under this weight lives". Once again, I think that if the K-Pg was a spec scenario Didelphodon and Icthyornis would've been some of the most successful animals in the Cenozoic.
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kusanagi
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Jul 20 2017, 11:50 AM
It's not as simple and arbitrary as "stuff above this weight dies and under this weight lives". Once again, I think that if the K-Pg was a spec scenario Didelphodon and Icthyornis would've been some of the most successful animals in the Cenozoic.
I did say habitat matters but so does the size of an organism and its population, and indeed its genetic diversity. Something to know is megafaunal predators died out in Ice Age refugia the size of Iberia so should humans disappear without technically taking out the largest mammals first, they're all dead clades walking anyway. Most of the animals easily adapting to anthropogenic habitats are small and include such unlikely survivors as angwantibos on cultivated African land. In Peru I have seen what are technically urban hoatzins in Tambopata. But for large animals the fronteirs are smaller, as a simple biotech could open up a habitat such as tundra for the usual kinds of modification, degradation and exploitation by man. There were in the past ideas of terraforming deserts to irrigate them for human use and with demands made for farming land I could imagine the idea brought back in the future. Without deserts, taigas and tundra where will the large vertebrates survive?
Edited by kusanagi, Jul 20 2017, 12:20 PM.
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LittleLazyLass
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Yes, the animals that survive will be small, but most small animals won't survive. Look at things like bird or mammal diversity before and after the K-Pg.
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kusanagi
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And among those most likely to be hit by the twilight of man, contra Dixon, are the ordinary mice and rats - the specialised co-evolved forms most dependent upon man, that is. House mice died out when man left St Kilda. Murids more generally maybe not. Cloud rats are already analogs of primates and bulldog rats became pseudo-otters once on Sahul, and god knows what Cricetid grasshopper mice might become, but for now even other rodents like the squirrels and cavies will generally keep most of the myomorphs in check. Even the rabbits might not have it so easy given how the australian rabbit population, and the introduced carnivores that depended upon it, suffered a setback by way of disease outbreak and the lagomorphs as a group have been in decline since the Tertiary. Man will likely have no mercy on species he considers to be pests as his biotech advances, and only charismatic megafauna are 100% safe from becoming collateral damage. Recently the hookworm was annihilated but it does less damage than the rabbit, the brown rat or the house mouse. Getting man and his livestock out the way does not merely open up a blank slate.

As for the K-T boundary, I think people overestimate the extinction based on the sampling and overestimate its importance for placentals based on dodgy molecular clocks. Quite a few archaic mammal lines did get through (taeniodonts are non-placental eutherians for example) and probably the major supra-ordinal lineages of placentals were all already present at the boundary. To draw a paralell between the Anthropocene crisis and the K-T event would necessitate an understang of why (for example) metatherians were harmed so badly compared to eutherians. No one to my knowledge has explained why that I may draw close paralells between extinction events. The P-T marine extinctions are a closer analog but still only in part as there were actually two extinction events in close proximity and only one of those resembles that predicted imminent.
Edited by kusanagi, Jul 20 2017, 01:34 PM.
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IIGSY
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kusanagi
Jul 20 2017, 01:22 PM
And among those most likely to be hit by the twilight of man, contra Dixon, are the ordinary mice and rats - the specialised co-evolved forms most dependent upon man, that is. House mice died out when man left St Kilda. Murids more generally maybe not. Cloud rats are already analogs of primates and bulldog rats became pseudo-otters once on Sahul, and god knows what Cricetid grasshopper mice might become, but for now even other rodents like the squirrels and cavies will generally keep most of the myomorphs in check. Even the rabbits might not have it so easy given how the australian rabbit population, and the introduced carnivores that depended upon it, suffered a setback by way of disease outbreak and the lagomorphs as a group have been in decline since the Tertiary. Man will likely have no mercy on species he considers to be pests as his biotech advances, and only charismatic megafauna are 100% safe from becoming collateral damage. Recently the hookworm was annihilated but it does less damage than the rabbit, the brown rat or the house mouse. Getting man and his livestock out the way does not merely open up a blank slate.

As for the K-T boundary, I think people overestimate the extinction based on the sampling and overestimate its importance for placentals based on dodgy molecular clocks. Quite a few archaic mammal lines did get through (taeniodonts are non-placental eutherians for example) and probably the major supra-ordinal lineages of placentals were all already present at the boundary. To draw a paralell between the Anthropocene crisis and the K-T event would necessitate an understang of why (for example) metatherians were harmed so badly compared to eutherians. No one to my knowledge has explained why that I may draw close paralells between extinction events. The P-T marine extinctions are a closer analog but still only in part as there were actually two extinction events in close proximity and only one of those resembles that predicted imminent.
Woah. You've been commenting a lot, but you really know whats up. I have a question for you.

Do you think any major arthropod groups are going to become extinct any time soon? I already mentioned small insect groups like grylloblatodea, but I want your input.
Projects
Punga: A terraformed world with no vertebrates
Last one crawling: The last arthropod

ARTH-6810: A world without vertebrates (It's ded, but you can still read I guess)

Potential ideas-
Swamp world: A world covered in lakes, with the largest being caspian sized.
Nematozoic: After a mass extinction of ultimate proportions, a single species of nematode is the only surviving animal.
Tri-devonian: A devonian like ecosystem with holocene species on three different continents.

Quotes


Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups


In honor of the greatest clade of all time


More pictures


Other cool things


All African countries can fit into Brazil
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kusanagi
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Insect Illuminati Get Shrekt
Jul 20 2017, 05:26 PM
kusanagi
Jul 20 2017, 01:22 PM
And among those most likely to be hit by the twilight of man, contra Dixon, are the ordinary mice and rats - the specialised co-evolved forms most dependent upon man, that is. House mice died out when man left St Kilda. Murids more generally maybe not. Cloud rats are already analogs of primates and bulldog rats became pseudo-otters once on Sahul, and god knows what Cricetid grasshopper mice might become, but for now even other rodents like the squirrels and cavies will generally keep most of the myomorphs in check. Even the rabbits might not have it so easy given how the australian rabbit population, and the introduced carnivores that depended upon it, suffered a setback by way of disease outbreak and the lagomorphs as a group have been in decline since the Tertiary. Man will likely have no mercy on species he considers to be pests as his biotech advances, and only charismatic megafauna are 100% safe from becoming collateral damage. Recently the hookworm was annihilated but it does less damage than the rabbit, the brown rat or the house mouse. Getting man and his livestock out the way does not merely open up a blank slate.

As for the K-T boundary, I think people overestimate the extinction based on the sampling and overestimate its importance for placentals based on dodgy molecular clocks. Quite a few archaic mammal lines did get through (taeniodonts are non-placental eutherians for example) and probably the major supra-ordinal lineages of placentals were all already present at the boundary. To draw a paralell between the Anthropocene crisis and the K-T event would necessitate an understang of why (for example) metatherians were harmed so badly compared to eutherians. No one to my knowledge has explained why that I may draw close paralells between extinction events. The P-T marine extinctions are a closer analog but still only in part as there were actually two extinction events in close proximity and only one of those resembles that predicted imminent.
Woah. You've been commenting a lot, but you really know whats up. I have a question for you.

Do you think any major arthropod groups are going to become extinct any time soon? I already mentioned small insect groups like grylloblatodea, but I want your input.
Well, no. All the major groups of arthropod are well established but what do yu mean by a major group? Presumbiably very speciose, or a higher level taxon/clade? Like most people with an interest in zoology I recognise the major clades of arthropod and within insecta and so on, but not in great detail. The big hitter will be the plankton crisis at sea, so any animals with a long planktonic stage will be hit hard and marginalised after that if not wiped out. Marine arthropods with a short or absent planktonic stage such as limulids ought to have a much higher chance of survival. :)
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