Evolutionary Losers

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Running head: EVOLUTIONARY LOSERS

Evolutionary Losers

Stanley Kenton Marks

HUM300, Strayer University

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I thought to win or lose at evolution would mean if you survive you're a winner and if you become extinct you're a loser. If that is true then every species alive today is a winner and all species found or not yet found in fossils that no longer live on the earth today are the losers. I was wrong.

The University of California at Los Angeles Science Daily finds evolutions winners and losers based on diversity. The winners are groups of lineages that are rich in varieties of species namely mammals, birds and fish. The losers are a few species, crocodiles, alligators, and the New Zealand tuatara that have not really diversified for over 200 million years. Michael Alfaro assistant professor of ecology and evolution biology, the lead author of the research who was quoted throughout also said:

Why these evolutionary losers are still around is a very hard thing to explain. They have been drawing inside straights for hundreds of millions of years. It's a real mystery to biologists how there can be any tuataras, given their low rate of speciation. They must have something working for them that allowed them to persist. In species richness, these are losers, but in another sense, this highlights how unique they are. There are incredibly disparate patterns of species richness.

I spent several hours searching to find the meaning of 'drawing inside straights'. Now I know it is a poker term referring to the chances of getting a straight when you are missing one or two cards in the middle of a possible straight. The chances of drawing those missing cards are so slight that you are taught to never take that chance.

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What professor Alfaro is saying is that these 'losers' have been winning at the evolutionary poker game far too long for normal probabilities. We should find out how they've cheated both extinction and diversification. Understanding this could be helpful in prolonging other species.

I keep thinking that these reptiles are actually winners because they are still eating and procreating, but they were not testing which group of species has survived the longest. Remember, we are only concerned with the diversity, the richness of species.

Googling Alfaros name, I came across his email and decided to ask him directly what his motivation was in doing this particular study. I was surprised to get his response the next day. He