Re: Mammal competency.

[jrw6f@faraday.clas.virginia.edu]

> JONATHAN WAGNER: "...I have grown more than a bit weary, of theories
> that involve one species out competing another..."
>
>      And yet a large body of evidence supports this: Gause's
> competitive exclusion principle and his predator/prey experiments,
> natural selection, Wilson's island biogeographical studies, island
> extinctions caused by novel predators, MacArthur's niche
> partitioning.  A powerful message of predator/prey studies is this:
> if the prey species cannot avoid being eaten by the predator (i.e.,
> by evolving new tactics, morphologies etc.,), they will become
> extinct. [...] But the fossil record is full of species no longer
> with us, with species whose tactics and morphologies were no longer
> sufficient.  Did they become extinct for no good reason--as one post
> put it: "Because their time had come"--or has there been replacement
> of species by competition and predation?  Or must all species wait
> for a bolide to come along before they can go extinct?

        I would certainly never argue that extra-biotic influence is
required for extinction, and I am willing to submit that many species
do become extinct, effectively by being "out-competed".  I believe it
is more likely that a montage of events aside from direct pressure of
another organism are also culprits in most extinctions, such as,
competition+disease, or competition+climatic change+random genetic
quirk that allows one species to gain a decisive advantage while the
other is weak, etc.  The point being that "out-competition" has to
accomplished *BEFORE THE TARGET SPECIES CAN ADAPT*.
        The point of my posting (or one of them, at least), was that
what applies to a species does not always apply to a group.  While you
have followed a logical approach in setting up your murder mystery,
with a putative weakness in the victim, and a strength in the alleged
killer.  As I mentioned in my previous posting, you have not explained
why evolution, the "police" as it were, did not step in sooner to stop
the crime.