Name: The Ghosts of Evolution
ISBN: 9780465005529

The Ghosts of Evolution

"In October 1977, Dan Janzen, an ecologist then in his late thirties, wrote to the famous paleontologist Paul Martin, saying "I've got a screwy idea." What had led to Janzen's "screwy idea" was a mundane observation about the Costa Rican forest that, as he thought about it more and more, made less and less sense: There was a lot of uneaten fruit lying around on the forest floor. Fruit evolved to be eaten - it's a strategy plants employ to get animals to scatter their seeds - so such massive piles of rotting fruit made no evolutionary sense. Janzen wanted Martin to tell him what animals might have eaten the fruit in past eras. The paper the two co-wrote, published in Science in 1982, became an enduring classic in the ecological literature.". "Janzen and Martin had put their finger on an unnoticed contradiction in ecological thought. First, ecologists know that all living species evolve intricate, mutually dependent relationships with other species. Second, ecologists had also assumed that all species are adapted for their present environment. But what happens when a partner in one of these mutually dependent relationships goes extinct? The remaining partner is no longer well adapted: it becomes an ecological anachronism. At first such anachronisms were considered rare curiosities, but as increasing numbers have been discovered, they have emerged as an important element in understanding how ecosystems work.

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eruditelyNov 2016

Obviously this is biased towards older books, because simply books that have been around for a long time can be mentioned.

Let me get across a book with unusual conclusions that deserves to be known more.

"The Ghosts Of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms"

https://www.amazon.com/Ghosts-Evolution-Nonsensical-Ecologic...

"A new vision is sweeping through ecological science: The dense web of dependencies that makes up an ecosystem has gained an added dimension-the dimension of time. Every field, forest, and park is full of living organisms adapted for relationships with creatures that are now extinct. In a vivid narrative, Connie Barlow shows how the idea of "missing partners" in nature evolved from isolated, curious examples into an idea that is transforming how ecologists understand the entire flora and fauna of the Americas. This fascinating book will enrich the experience of any amateur naturalist, as well as teach us that the ripples of biodiversity loss around us are just the leading edge of what may well become perilous cascades of extinction."

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adolphFeb 2025

The giant sloth was the first thing that came to my mind. Nearly every time I'm at the grocery I think about the giant ground sloth theory of avocado evolution:

  A number of authors, including Connie Barlow in her 2001 book The Ghosts of 
  Evolution, have speculated that the avocado is an "evolutionary anachronism" 
  with megafaunal dispersal syndrome (a concept originally proposed in the 
  1980s by Paul S. Martin and Daniel H. Janzen), arguing that the avocado 
  likely coevolved dispersal of its large seed by now-extinct megafauna. Barlow 
  proposed that the dispersers included the gomphothere (elephant relative) 
  Cuvieronius, as well as ground sloths, toxodontids, and glyptodonts. The 
  concept of evolutionary anachronisms/megafaunal dispersal syndrome has been 
  criticised by some authors, who note that many large fruit are readily 
  dispersed by non-megafaunal animals, with it being noted that living agoutis 
  disperse avocado seeds, with spectacled bears have also having been observed 
  eating domestic avocados.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avocado

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reidacdcDec 2021

There is a book on my reading list about this, "The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronsims", by Connie Barlow. I saw a review of it somewhere, and given the timing, it may be an expansion of the article.

Glad to see them take on the "pristine forest" thing, ecologies are complex open systems. Human activity doesn't do them any favors, for sure, but also there's no edenic prior state to which they can be returned. The only way out is forward.

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