Will Amphibians Go Extinct?

[Firedragon52]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6249901/

 

Its not looking good...

[Ophiolite]

Not just the Amphibians. We are arguably in the midst of a major extinction event.

 

"The rate of extinction today appears to be similar to, or perhaps greater than, the rate during the five 'classic' extinction events in deep geological time, such as the Permian extinction that extinguished some 90% of the Paleozoic biota, or the Cretaceous extinction event that eliminated all dinosaurs (except for the birds) at the end of the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago.

The Holocene extinction differs from all previous extinction events in that it appears to be caused by humans."

 

The above is an extract from this article on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction_event

[hyebeh]

maybe conservation efforts are anti-natural selection

maybe their extinction is a part of evolution

[Ophiolite]

maybe conservation efforts are anti-natural selection

maybe their extinction is a part of evolution

Absolutely, their extinction is part of evolution, but it is an extinction brought about in many/most/all cases by humans through our impact on the environment. We can ignore it and watch biodiversity disappear off the bottom end of the scale, then see what effect that has on our evolution! Or we can behave with enlightened self interest and seek to counter it.

[Aardvark]

If the decline in Amphibian numbers is due to a fungus being inadvertantly spread by people across the global then paradoxically we might be cautiously optimistic.

 

If it is the case of a plague of some kind then some individuals will likely have some immunity and in time populations can recover. This depends on the original habitat remaining for the populations to recover back into and for the original populations being large enough to have contained enough resistant individuals.

 

We probably will loss some of the more vunerable species, but there could be the potential for recovery for others.

 

Fingers crossed.

[LucidDreamer]

I am sure that some species of amphibians have gone extent and more will go extent soon, but I don't think that all of the amphibians will go extenct. They have survived previous extinctions and they will probably survive this one.

[AL]

maybe conservation efforts are anti-natural selection

maybe their extinction is a part of evolution

Remember not to confuse positivism with normativism. The theory of evolution describes what happens; it does not make a value judgement about what happens. If an animal goes extinct, evolution will describe that. But evolution does not say "animals should go extinct." That is a value judgement.

 

After all, if a doomsday meteor were headed for our planet, I doubt you'd argue "well, if the meteor wipes us out, that's natural selection, so the world community should do nothing to try to stop this meteor." Yes, if it wipes us out, it would be natural selection, but that does not mean we should desire it.