/sci/ - Science & Math » Thread #12583329

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Anonymous Fri 15 Jan 03:24:55 2021 No.12583329 View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>12583350 >>12583711 >>12583727

Suppose every other class of complex multicellular animal other than insects were suddenly wiped from the earth.
How long would it take for one of em to evolve into current megafauna sizes? e.g. the size of deers and oxen.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 15 Jan 2021 03:30:50 No.12583350 Report

Quoted By: >>12583370 >>12583410

>>12583329
They wouldn't, they lack the respiratory system to grow to such sizes.
Carboniferous atmospheric O2 levels were high enough that 3 metre long millipedes and Dragonflies with 28" wingspans could develop but even then their body mass was still substantially lower than modern giants

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 15 Jan 2021 03:36:57 No.12583370 Report

Quoted By: >>12583391 >>12583498

>>12583350
It wouldn't happen easily, they're not preadapted for growing bigger, but at all? I think you're wrong. The selection pressure would be pretty intense, so with no competition for the larger animal niches and with the huge surplus of larger plants, it would eventually happen.
First they'd grow as big as they could manage without respiratory changes, then the biggest ones would start having airflow problems in life, and then evolution would work on that, as it always does.

Unless ants and bees and locusts outcompeted everything and it became a swarm-based ecology. That'd be a sight.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 15 Jan 2021 03:42:45 No.12583391 Report

Quoted By: >>12583403

>>12583370
Of the ~20 mass extinction events in the Earth's history only one has significantly affected insect species. They have had multiple opportunities to develop beyond their existing niches free from the competition of other Classes in ecological vacuums and it has never happened.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 15 Jan 2021 03:45:35 No.12583403 Report

Quoted By: >>12583423

>>12583391
There were 20 mass extinctions? I thought they were like 5

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 15 Jan 2021 03:49:14 No.12583410 Report

Quoted By:

>>12583350
The higher oxygen theory has been disputed in recent years from newer findings https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/atmospheric-oxygen-during-dinosaurs-time-much-lower-than-assumed-says-study-2-3641691.html
It's interesting stuff I went down a rabbit hole after that dinosaur thread the other day

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 15 Jan 2021 03:53:14 No.12583423 Report

Quoted By:

>>12583403
5-20 depending on the chosen definition. The Dresbachian and End-Botomian are not considered major extinction events despite having a higher percentage loss of species than 4 of the 5 "major extinction events"

Gary !3bEffhmerM

Gary !3bEffhmerM Fri 15 Jan 2021 04:27:59 No.12583498 Report

Quoted By: >>12583504

>>12583370
>Unless ants and bees and locusts outcompeted everything and it became a swarm-based ecology. That'd be a sight.

This.

Gary !3bEffhmerM

Gary !3bEffhmerM Fri 15 Jan 2021 04:30:14 No.12583504 Report

Quoted By:

>>12583498

We would see the rise of hive-beings. Cellular-cellular life.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 15 Jan 2021 06:06:58 No.12583711 Report

Quoted By:

>>12583329
I would bet that the insects would fill their niches, constrained in size by the oxygen levels of the atmosphere, and that it would take as long as bacteria took to evolve to dinosaurs/mammals for their to be anything the size of deer or oxen.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 15 Jan 2021 06:15:13 No.12583727 Report

Quoted By:

>>12583329
They wouldn't, they'd die out quickly due to the entire global ecosystem being suddenly fucked in the ass.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 15 Jan 2021 17:51:21 No.12585436 Report

Quoted By:

Wouldn't matter. Sentience wouldn't evolve for another 800 million years, by which time the sun will be going red giant. Even if sentience evolved before that happened it would find all the economically extricable energy and mineral reserves so severely depleted that they wouldn't be able to build an advanced technological civilization. They would probably have enough time to discover our fossils, piece together what happened, and roundly curse us before being swallowed by the expanding sphere of the Sun.

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