"Michael Ragland"  wrote
>
>What is a "weed lineage"?
>
It applies to plants. The technical term is "ruderal". The idea is that you
can have environments of high or low richness, and high or low disturbance.
If you have high disturbance and low richness, nothing much can grow. If you
have high richness, good competitors are selected, whilst if you have low
richness then good resource conservers are selected for. In high richness,
high disturbance habitats, you get "weedy" species - high rates of growth,
high rates of seeding, paid for by very low investment in permanent
structures like woody parts.
>
> Speaking of environmental disturbances which are man made
> such as acid rain, greenhouse effect, etc. it seems this represents
> a different kind of environmental "disturbance" than the ones are
> ancestors encountered and which played a part in their
> evolution.
>
Unless the pollution is so severe that it blankets out everything, it will
almost by definition benefit some organisms whilst disadvantaging others.
The problem is that whilst, ultimately, life on Earth will evolve to adapt
to the new conditions, on any human timescale we may lose huge amounts of
biodiversity and production long before this effect is felt.
>
---
þ RIMEGate(tm)/RGXPost V1.14 at BBSWORLD * Info{at}bbsworld.com

---
 * RIMEGate(tm)V10.2áÿ* RelayNet(tm) NNTP Gateway * MoonDog BBS
 * RgateImp.MoonDog.BBS at 6/21/04 6:10:52 AM