| Actually, you raise a big issue: considering that one simply takes what comes and makes the best of it, and considering the urgency to find an initial survival niche in a radically disturbed environment, there would seem to be very little chance for a survivor population to adapt to subsequent niches. Instead, the probabilities would favor limited populations of low- resource- using creatures with small litters and short breeding seasons, so that social chaos did not ensue due to resource competition. If the size of the population never too far exceeded replacement levels, than there would be no pressure to spread out into other niches, and if there were a relatively small, inbred gene pool, the tendency would be toward genetic homogeneity, and therefore further disfavor niche adaptation. In other word, the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium would most likely leave us with a sparsely populated world of small creatures without much initiative or sexual drive, hanging on to their little resource areas for dear life.......... |
