Alex Wild“What is the function of Species X?” Is a question I hear often from non-biologists.
But it’s hard to answer. Species don’t exist to serve a function. They exist because they can. Everything is just trying to find a way to be.
Maxilo OveritSpeciation as job application. Go.
rsp@aka_quant_noir @alexwild While species do not exist to serve a function, they do in fact serve functions. Question: is there a word similar to function that would be more appropriate? Humans serve the function of providing a niche for follicle mites and human lice and hundreds of kinds of bacteria, viruses, ect. I wouldn't say that species have a "purpose* in the sense of fulfilling a supreme being's plan--but in the sense that other species depend on other species.
@rspfau @aka_quant_noir I like to think of ecological gravity in a multi-dimensional space, where a particular organism affects the trajectory of other organisms. That's not their purpose, but it's their result, and if it's stable enough over time then other things adjust to it.
@alexwild @aka_quant_noir So the *result* of a species' existence is to be a component of other species' niches. In the same way that evolution has no purpose but it has a result.