With the spread of species around the world that become invasive pests due to no natural predators in their new niches, why does it not seem to lead to a rapid expansion of newly evolved predators, or species that use those to their advantage?
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DA BEN DAN yanggui zi COAT
ANSWERS: 3
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Because evolution is completely random... Statistically driven, rather than driven by the need to evolve
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Evolution is a very slow process an cannot happen rapidly enough to handle invasive species. What you are talking about is adaptation. And in some cases, adaptations do occur. One example of this is the nutria rat released in Louisiana in 1927. They are now a part of our ecosystem and many natural predators rely on them for their food. They still do some damage, but for the most part, they are kept in check through natural predation.
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Da ben dan, you are correct that bacteria and viruses can reproduce rapidly, therefore mutate rapidly. It is the continual mutations that develop immunity to anti-biotics that keep the pharmaceutical labs busy developing new ones. Some have suggested that we may be losing the race. But higher organisms simply do not evolve or adapt that rapidly. Tremendous mistakes were made in the past when species from one continent were carried to another by human immigration. Also, when key predators were eliminated from the "chain" arbitrarily by humans because they were "inconvenient". A biological ecosystem is a very delicate thing. We remove links in the "chain" with potentially grave results.
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