>>11442342>many people refer to organisms by their "role" in an ecosystemhow would that be the same idea as ‘life looks complicated, seems like someone made it’?
when people speak of a role in a biosphere, I believe they use that term because it’s more intuitive for human society. Let me give you an example:
For a long time oxygen was toxic for life, and as photosynthetic organisms started booming, a lot of species died. At the same time a huge niche opened up for species that could tolerate it, or even better, use it for energy. It’s not like some bacteria said “a’ight, I’m gonna use oxygen now, that looks like an opportunity”, rather oxygen resistant life just gained a huge advantage in the form of a lot of uncontended space. And since oxygen is rather unstable/reacts exenthalpic a lot of the time + was around abundantly, it’s no wonder that any lifeforms who could use that in some way due to random mutations had an advantage despited possibly higher complexity.
