Consider Darwin’s
Finches. Which changed first? Their bodies?
Or their behavior? And why did
they change their behavior?
The idea of the survival of the fittest is a mistaken understanding
of the dynamics of evolution. It is not
those best adapted to an environment who win the game of life. It is the weak, the losers in the competition
for supremacy within their environment and within their species, who in the end
triumph. The fittest either come
eventually to die, clutching the residues of their spoils, or survive on as
prisoners, trapped inside the bounds of the field of their victory, hemmed in
by the descendants of those they once drove forth into hardship.
For when the strong drive out the weak, what happens to the
weak? In their home environment, the
weak may be well adapted, both physically and behaviorally, to exploit its
resources, and prosper. However, the
weak must also compete against those like them, but stronger, both for those
resources, and for the right to reproduce their kind. But since they are the weak, they are
outcompeted for food and reproductive rights by the strong.
In a crowded environment, the strong may physically drive them into the
margins. Even if the weak are not
directly confronted by those stronger than they are, they may still be faced
with starvation. Certainly, they face an
unpleasant choice. They may choose to
endure, and eventually die, perhaps without issue. However, they may also choose to depart, and
move out into the margins of their former environment.
The margins will not be as favorable to the weak as was the
center of the ecology that the strong still claim. The behaviors which served
them in that environment will no longer be adequate, and different behaviors will be demanded. To survive, the weak will be forced to adapt. (And some will be
prepared for this, because their old behaviors will have failed them, and they
will be ready to change.) In particular and in general, a greater variety of
behaviors will be demanded. Physically, they may be mal-adapted to their new
environment, and their new behaviors must first compensate for this. Different
food sources must be pursued. Different locations for food and even different
varieties of food must be sought, because those sources they once relied upon
will no longer be adequate, if they are available at all. None of the sources which they once depended
on will be available in sufficient quantity.
Meanwhile, their enemies may follow them. They may be forced to deal with new
predators, who may see them as a new opportunity for predation. They may be forced to deal with new hazards. And
their survival will depend on their ability to adapt their behavior in
response.
In the old environment, the strong of the species are in a
sense optimized, or will evolve to become so, both physically, and behaviorally. And when they do become optimized, the strongest will be the most fit to that
environment, and any individual who deviates, the carrier of any other random
mutation, will be inferior in its ability to compete, and thus selected
against. As long as their environment remains constant, so will the species,
and for these individuals, and their descendants, the process of evolution
effectively ceases. The only remaining
outlet for change, a domain of random drift, within which the external
pressures of selection are essentially absent, within which genetic alterations,
which still randomly occur, in no way change the functional relationship of the
species to its environment.
Those driven into the margins, however, are not optimized to
their new environment, either behaviorally, or physically. And because they are
suboptimal, and suboptimal possibly to a variety of different optima, both
physically and behaviorally, they may have choices. Their new environment may present them with a
selection of possible niches for them to move into, for them to both adapt to
and mould to their behavior. (Every time a species successfully colonizes a new
environment, it alters that environment, and thus the structure and
relationships of the niches occupied by the other species already occupying
that environment. and of course the species themselves.)
First they must alter
their behavior so that with their imperfectly adapted bodies they may best cope
with their new reality. If they succeed and survive, and have issue, they pass
these behaviors on to their descendants.
Physically, the descendants slowly evolve, as the shape of the new
environment potentiates net forces upon them. These
provide relative advantage to the random mutations which create the altered
structures that improve the ability of the species to cope and prosper, and
relative disadvantage to those which do not. (Note the earliest generations have the
greatest opportunity to change behavior, and adopt to different niches. Indeed, a random physical adaptation which is
inappropriate to the behavior adopted by the parent may lead the descendant to
alter its behavior, and thus branch into an alternate niche. This suggests that
branchings, rather than predominately binary, would tend to be clustered about
points of colonization, when the differing opportunities reachable to the species are
greatest in availability, number, and variety.)
The forces imposed upon the colonizing species would be of
two basic types, push and pull, pressures and opportunities. Singly, these would respectively tend to be
dispersive and attractive. However combinations
of opportunities could be dispersive, and arrays of sources of pressures
compressive. As a result of these
environmental forces, different combinations of vectors of radiation may result.
There is also the possibility that colonization happens into
an environment where no particular niche offers sufficient opportunity for the
new species to survive. No singular alteration of behaviors would enable survival,
but a combination of two or more groups
of new techniques must be adopted if the species is, say, to acquire enough food to
survive. The species may eventually come to physically adapt to one or another
niche and specialize. It then may come to exploit that niche with sufficient
efficiency to survive. Due to environmental forces, this may involve acquiring
physical strength, over subsequent generations, and the weak become
strong.
However, it may also be that specialization is not possible,
and the individual of the species must continue to exploit several niches in
order to survive. Since physical adaptation to one niche will likely compromise
its ability to exploit other niches, increase in the ability to exploit its
environment might then be primarily a result of an increase in the varieties of
behavior. Behavioral adaptation, especially
where an increase in the variety of behaviors is required, puts a premium on
intelligence. Of course, even the
simplest act of colonization requires more intelligence than is needed by an
optimally adapted species in its home environment.
In the adaptation to its environment, a species acquires
those qualities it needs, but in more than the quantities it needs. The ability to meet the bare minimum of
demands of the environment will not be sufficient. Survival requires more than efficiency: In
the distribution of coping abilities in its environment, the abilities of
individuals in all but the lower tail of that distribution must exceed the
demands of the environment. This
necessarily includes intelligence.
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