Species competition (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, June 17, 2014, 21:23 (3812 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Darwin's idea of species competition not found in this study of algae:
-http://www.livescience.com/45205-data-dont-back-up-darwin-in-algae-study-nsf-bts.html
 
 
QUOTE: "Darwin "was obsessed with competition," Cardinale says. "He assumed the whole world was composed of species competing with each other, but we found that one-third of the species of algae we studied actually like each other. They don't grow as well unless you put them with another species. It may be that nature has a heck of a lot more mutualisms than we ever expected.
 
"Maybe species are co-evolving," he adds. "Maybe they are evolving together so they are more productive as a team than they are individually. We found that more than one-third of the time, that they like to be together. Maybe Darwin's presumption that the world may be dominated by competition is wrong."-Lynn Margulis cracked this myth thirty years ago when she emphasized that cooperation was just as important to evolution as competition. Do these researchers not know of her work? Do they really think they are onto something new? You may remember she was the one who also called for more research on the subject of cellular intelligence, as a result of the studies she had made of bacteria.