cab67
cab67's Journalhow this ends - insights from really, really old alligators
Folks,
A while back, I compared changes in the Republican Party since 1980 with the phenomenon of runaway selection in evolutionary biology. It's especially prominent in the context of sexual selection. When selective pressure on a feature is very strong - for example, if females have a very strong preference for males with elongated tail feathers, brightly colored scales, tall antlers, or some other display structure that doesn't necessarily improve survivability - that structure can evolve very rapidly to an extreme condition. This is even true if the sexually selected trait impairs the ability of a male to escape predators or find food - as long as it survives long enough to breed, an early death doesn't matter.
This is what we've seen with the Republican Party. The Reagan "Revolution" brought a higher levels of demonization of Democrats. This was amplified by AM radio, and then by partisan cable news and the internet, so that each succeeding Republican candidate had to be more conservative than anyone else or risk losing during the primaries. But this may be approaching the limit of survivability, because they've now become so extreme that they risk losing the general election.
I thought some more about this over the past few days, and my own work might indicate how this might end.
It's a generally accepted axiom that generalized ancestors evolve into specialized descendents, but not the reverse. Butterflies that can collect nectar from a wide range of flowers gradually become increasingly specialized toward a particular kind of flower to the point that, eventually, they can only really collect nectar from that one kind of flower. (This also happens with hummingbirds. Look up the sword-billed hummingbird, and you'll see what I mean.) In turn, the flower evolves to cater only to that one kind of butterfly.
(This axiom is actually false, as I'll discuss below.)
This has the benefit of ensuring a relatively competitor-free source of food for the butterfly as long as the flower is around, and it ensures pollenation of the flower as long as the butterfly is around.
But this implies a serious cost - if the flower disappears, so will the butterfly. Specialization, in general, increases the risk of extinction if the environment changes in ways that prevent the specialist from functioning. Generalists, being more capable of using other resources, are more likely to survive.
I really do think we're at the point where the Republican Party has become overly specialized. It is now directed at Trump-style populism and nationalism. There are still plenty of people who call themselves Republicans and regard themselves as economic conservatives or libertarians, but who also dislike Trump, but anyone watching the impeachment process can clearly see that fear of offending Trump's base is keeping them from doing anything about it. The party is now specialized for the collection of votes from red hatters in gerrymandered districts.
This hurt them in the 2018 midterms - they may have succeeded in the primaries, but not so much in the general election. It appears to have been less true in the 2020 congressional elections, but it was a weird election all around. I fully expect this trend to continue for the next several election cycles.
So how does this end?
There are two possibilities. The first, and most obvious, is extinction. But here, I see a disconnect between my analogy and political reality. A species goes extinct when none are left alive. The Republican Party might collapse, but its members are still going to be here.
This is where my work, and that of my students, might prove insightful, because we've helped show that specialists can, indeed, become generalists. (This is also where I run the risk of revealing my identity - not too many people do what I do - but so be it.)
A good example is the North American alligatorine radiation. Alligatorines comprise comprise the two living species of Alligator (American alligator, A. mississippiensis, and critically-endangered Chinese alligator, A. sinensis) and extinct forms more closely related to them than to the caimans currently found in Latin America. (Alligatorines and caimans together form Alligatoridae.)
There's only one species in North America today. But if you go back to between 65 and 40 million years ago, there were several. One could find as many as three species co-occurring in parts of the American West. (The same was true in Europe, by the way.) And none of them really looked like an American alligator - they were all very small (6 feet in length for some, no more than 3 feet for others), they had comparatively short snouts, and most had blunt, anvil-like teeth in the back of the jaws. These were specialized for hard-shelled prey.
At the same time, there were several other crocodylians living alongside these wee alligatorines. One was a kick-ass hoofed form with no close living relative, but others were distantly related to modern crocodiles. They also looked more or less like a modern crocodile - about the same size, with a long, flattened snout with conical teeth and a diet that included anything they could swallow. They took the larger prey that the small alligatorines were unable to process, and when young may have eaten fewer turtles or mollusks.
What happened? Climate changed abruptly. Temperature was probably not the main driver - the region was still plenty warm enough for crocs. It probably had more to do with changes in rainfall that led to the expansion of dry areas and the first grasslands. All crocodylians in western North America died out except one of the small blunt-toothed alligatorines.
The modern American alligator is basically like a crocodile, at least ecologically - fairly large, with a long, flat snout filled with conical teeth and a very broad diet. And its ancestors were specialized for small hard-shelled prey.
The transition from specialist to generalist took a very long time. The earliest forms to appear shortly after the diversity crash were still fairly small, though the snout was somewhat longer and the teeth not so knobby in the back. Body size and snout length gradually increased, as did the number of teeth in the jaws. It was another 10 to 20 million years before animals that would have lived like a modern American alligator arose.
I think this is what we'll see. The Republican Party won't go away - not completely, anyway. It might even have a different name. But over time, it will recalibrate toward the center. This will be necessary for its survival; demographic changes in the US will make it much less likely they'll win elections, an gerrymandering might not be able to rescue their chances. They'll see a choice between keeping some red hatters happy and actually being in office. Meanwhile, some media outlets (e.g. Fox "News"
will begin to moderate, at least a little. They won't have had a change of heart - they'll be desperate for viewers and advertisers. And the initial changes will be so modest, many of us might not even really notice.
I have no idea when any of this will come to pass. I hoped we'd have seen stronger evidence for this in 2020. And I could be completely full of shit with my analogy. But I really do hope this happens sooner rather than later.
(For your viewing pleasure, here are a couple of skulls showing the kinds of changes I mean. The first skull is about 55 million years in age; the second is about 39 million years in age; the third is modern.)
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back yard just now -
it's my 5-year-old daughter's first Accipiter.
(male Cooper's hawk)
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some animals I've seen
Folks,
I'm not a professional wildlife photographer. In fact, I'm not a photographer at all. I'm a vertebrate paleontologist whose camera equipment is optimized for objects within 4 or 5 feet of me that aren't moving.
Nevertheless, I've tried for some animal shots over the past few years. I apologize if these are substandard, but I did the best I could with the equipment I had.
I put up some bird shots on the Birding group. I'm a birder, so I tend to focus my photography on birds. But my research is dedicated to crocodylians, so there's also a gator and croc bias evident in my photos.
Not sure if I'm bragging or asking for advice on how to improve, but I thought some of you might appreciate them.
Scarlet tanager, Ryerson Forest Preserve, Illinois
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Vermilion Flycatcher, near Tucson, AZ
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blue-spotted salamander, Ryerson Forest Preserve, Illinois
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Nile crocodile, Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda
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American alligator, Cameron Prairie NWR, Louisiana
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Ethiopian wolf, Bale Mountains NP, Ethiopia. (It helps when your birding guide did his thesis work on this species.)
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Black-pencilled marmoset, Riberao Preto, Brazil. I don't usually have much use for primates, but this was cute.
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giraffe, Maasai Mara, Kenya
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bush elephant, Murchison Falls NP, Uganda
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spectacled caiman, near Manaus, Brazil. This species is undergoing major revision and will probably be split up into several species.
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blue mud wasp, Hickory Hill Park, Iowa City, IA
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African giant snail, National Museum of Kenya grounds. (This was a juvenile about the size of snails I typically see in the upper midwest.)
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Could the new videos of Marjorie Taylor Greene made a difference?
We've all seen the recently circulated videos of Marjorie Taylor Greene revealing just how loathsome she is - looking for Muslim members of Congress to force them to swear an oath on a Bible, calling for violence, and so on.
On a recent thread, I asked why these videos hadn't come to light before the election, when they might have made a difference. A couple of you suggested that they wouldn't have made a difference in that district - that there was no way a Democrat could have won, and that a lot of people in her district are as unhinged and ignorant as she is.
On the whole, I now agree with that point of view. By November, the results in that district were a foregone conclusion. BUT - I do think one of the videos might have made a difference during the primaries.
I have several Facebook "friends" who are Republicans. They're mostly either family or people I knew in high school; some people in my social and professional circles consider themselves conservative, and may vote Republican, but they had no use for Trump and his core.
Some of them would have no problem with voting for a candidate who'd previously called for the execution of a Democratic congresswoman, or who had the mistaken belief that swearing an oath on anything other than a Bible is somehow un-American.
But most of them would have a very real problem with the video showing her pursuing and shouting at David Hogg. They might like their guns, but they don't think Parkland was some sort of "false flag" operation, and they would recoil at the thought of someone accosting the young survivor of that mass shooting, or any other, to promote conspiracy shit. It would cross too many lines - lines of credibility (however one stands on gun control, these mass shootings happened) as well as lines of decency (someone who actually survived a mass shooting might have a different opinion on gun control than you, and it would be morally wrong to attack that person for sharing it).
Not all of them would feel that way. I saw plenty of commentators on Fox Jazeera attacking David Hogg, and Trump's base will believe anything. But assuming at least some of the conservatives in MTG's district would, there's a reasonable chance they might have preferred a different candidate during the primaries.
Hindsight hope springs eternal, I suppose, but due diligence by the media is central to making sure nutbags don't get elected to Congress.
some warblers
These were all taken last year.
Magnolia warbler, Ryerson Forest Preserve, IL:
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Wet blackburnian warbler, Gillson Park, Wilmette, IL:
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Hooded warbler, Ryerson Forest Preserve, IL:
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Ovenbird, Gillson Park, Wilmette, IL:
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Myrtle warbler (not yet re-split from yellow-rumped warbler, but it should be), Iowa City, IA:
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some hummingbirds.
Three of these - the black-fronted mango, indigo-capped hummingbird, and rufous-tailed hummingbird - were taken at Jardin Encantado, a private residence about 35 miles west of Bogota. The owner has set up a battery of hummingbird feeders, and for a small fee, she'll let you watch from a porch. I saw 13 species of hummingbird - nine of them lifers - and was told it was a slow day for them. (There were other great birds there as well - thick-billed euphonia, several tanagers - so even without the hummingbirds, I'd have had a great time.)
In an earlier post, someone remarked that I must have high-end photographic equipment. In fact, I don't - it's a Canon EOS Rebel SL3. I used the 50-250 mm zoom that came with the kit.
I actually work on living and extinct crocodiles and alligators for a living - while my wife, who's a clinical psychologist, was working with some colleagues in Bogota, I split my time between chasing birds and playing with late caimans and gharials in the Geological Survey collections - so the camera just has to be able to take good photos of fossils and specimens from modern species. That I've learned to take halfway decent wildlife shots is incidental - I work on animals that used to occur everywhere, so I go everywhere, and I'm also a birder, so I generally head to wildlife-friendly areas when I'm not in the collections. The SL3, along with a couple of macro lenses, is perfect for that. It's not a very fast camera, so I haven't invested in a high-end telephoto lens; I'm also still making car payments and raising my daughter, so it's unlikely I'll be able to get one anyway.
The trip to Colombia was memorable for another reason - I took our daughter, who was just starting to walk, to a couple of local parks in the mornings. One of them turned out to be a great place to see sword-billed hummingbirds. (Look them up if you've not seen one. The beak is longer than the rest of the bird.) That I got to see one was a thrill, but being able to share that with my daughter made it that much cooler.
Sparkling violetear, botanical Gardens, Bogotá, Colombia:
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Black-fronted mango, San Francisco de Sales, Colombia:
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Indigo-capped hummingbird, San Francisco de Sales, Colombia:
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Rufous-tailed hummingbird, San Francisco de Sales, Colombia:
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Costa’s hummingbird, Tucson, AZ:
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more.....
Speckled pigeon, near Lake Turkana, Kenya:
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Downy woodpecker, Wilmette, IL:
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Hairy woodpecker, Evanston, IL:
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Red-bellied woodpecker, Evanston, IL:
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Red and yellow barbet, near Lake Turkana, Kenya:
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Ruby-crowned kinglet, Wilmette, IL:
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Pin-tailed whydah, near Nairobi, Kenya:
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White-rumped shama, Chulabhorn Dam, Thailand. One of the few shots I took there that actually looks like an animal.
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Abyssinian slaty flycatcher, National Museum of Ethiopia grounds, Addis Ababa:
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...and still more. (raptors this time.)
Bald eagle, somewhere south of Homer, AK:
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African fish eagle, Lake Naivasha, Kenya:
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Red-tailed hawk, near Naperville, IL:
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Rüppel’s griffon, Debre Zeyit, Ethiopia:
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Turkey vulture, near Iowa City, IA:
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Black vulture, Canyon del Sumidero, Chiapas, Mexico:
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Secretarybird, Nairobi National Park, Kenya:
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Pygmy falcon, west of Lake Turkana, Kenya:
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American kestrel, Tucson, AZ:
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Northern crested caracara, Attwater’s Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, TX:
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more photos I've taken.
Some more.
Abyssinian owl, Bale Mountains, Ethiopia:
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Shoebill, near Entebbe, Uganda:
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blue-footed booby, Rabida Island, Galapagos Islands:
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anhinga, Cameron Prairie, LA:
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African darter, Doho, Ethiopia:
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northern fulmar, St. Paul Island, AK:
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lilac-breasted roller, Lake Bogoria, Kenya. (I think this is my favorite bird. That, and the white-breasted nuthatch for personal reasons.)
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parakeet auklets, St. Paul Island, AK:
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Maybe more later (passeriforms, woodpeckers, raptors, waterfowl).
photos I've taken. (LINKS FIXED)
Thought I'd share some of these. They're not in any particular order.
(Please bear in mind - my camera was purchased for professional purposes. It was intended to take photos of objects of various size, none of which is moving, and all of which are near me. This is why action photos I've taken of birds at distance aren't necessarily of professional grade.)
Kori bustard, Middle Awash NP, Ethiopia:
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western gull, Ocean Shores, WA:
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ring-billed gull, Northwestern University campus, Evanston, IL:
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African jacana, Murchison Falls NP, Uganda:
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sanderling, Monterey, CA:
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little bee-eater, near Nairobi, Kenya:
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pygmy kingfisher, Melka Kunture, Ethiopia:
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black-crowned night heron, Everglades NP, FL:
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goliath heron, Murchison Falls NP, Uganda. The gray object behind it is a hippo.
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guira cuckoo, Riberao Preto, Brazil:
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greater roadrunner, near Tucson, AZ:
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sandhill crane, near Homer, AK:
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speckled mousebird, grounds of the National Museum of Kenya, Nairobi:
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northern saw-whet owl, Iowa City, IA:
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More later if there's interest.
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Member since: Wed Jul 24, 2013, 01:10 PMNumber of posts: 2,992
