Re: Extinction (was Jurassic Intelligence)

[rowe@lepomis.psych.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe)]

Phil Bigelow responds to Peter Sheehan:

> But, having not read the paper in question yet, I can only guess
> that Jablonski put a very high "weight" on the environment, itself,
> moreso than did my little list, which places more weight on the
> responsibility of the *organism* to resist the environment.

Just to spur you that much harder to read the paper, let me quote the
last sentence of the abstract:

   These results corroborate earlier work suggesting that some biotic
   factors that enhance survivorship during times of lesser extinction
   intensities are ineffectual during mass extinctions.

My reading of the paper suggests to me that the "rules" that you
posted will generally be of use to a species, but during a large
extinction event they don't help you much because biological rules
are getting rewritten at such times.

-- 
Mickey Rowe     (rowe@lepomis.psych.upenn.edu)