The Ghosts of Evolution

About this book

"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. For the first time, the concept of deep time has entered ecological science and is changing the practice of both ecology and conservation biology.". "The Ghosts of Evolution is the first book of any kind to pull together all the various elements of the "missing partners" idea. It's a report on a scientific program in its infancy - so new, in fact, that the cutting edge is well within reach of any amateur naturalist. In this book, Connie Barlow finds new examples of North American anachronisms and does experiments at her kitchen sink that call into question the published theories of professional ecologists. She finds evolutionary ghosts on New York City streets, in her sister's backyard in Michigan, and on her neighbors' ranches in the desert southwest. After reading this book, you won't be able to look at a nearby park or even a shopping-mall parking lot without seeing the remnants of the elephants, camels, rhinos and lions that once roamed North America."--BOOK JACKET.