[Taxacom] Evolutionary "winning" taxa

[Jan-Erik Bergh]

I would regard all surviving species in a given moment as 
evolutionary "winners"
Jan-Erik Bergh


At 17:08 2009-02-03, Kenneth Kinman wrote:
>  Dear All,
>         After reading an abstract for a paper appearing
>in the February 2009 issue of American Naturalist ("Lower Extinction
>Risk in Sleep and Hide Mammals"), I started reading some press releases
>and statements by some of the authors. I was rather surprised and
>disappointed by statements like:  Despite these results, sleepers and
>hiders shouldn't be viewed as evolutionary "winners", the authors say.
>         I haven't read the full article, but I certainly hope that they
>didn't say that in the article.  In the long run, sleepers and hiders do
>tend to be evolutionary winners, and it was a major factor in
>determining which land vertebrates survived the end-Cretaceous
>extinction event.  As I have said in the past, it's not surprising frogs
>made it through that extinction since various species can go underground
>and enter extreme hibernation states for long periods.  Or
>proto-tinamous surviving in their burrows and then giving rise to all
>the living ratites.  The meek did inherit the Earth at the end of the
>Cretaceous.
>          ------Ken Kinman
>
>http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090128160935.htm
>
>
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