Species Radiating

In ‘What is Biospheric Communion’, I mention species radiating. This is a technical term in evolutionary biology. One definition of the word 'radiation' is the 'shooting forth of anything from a point'. The radiation of a species is metaphorically like that in that a single species (like to a single point) suddenly splits into many species each of which moves away from the original (in terms form and function) in different directions (different forms and functions).

Species radiations can have many causes but two causes in particular capture the imagination. One cause is extinction events; when a large number of species goes extinct relatively suddenly, they leave many niches empty. Species that survive the extinction event will suddenly radiate into many new forms, which take up the niches emptied by the extinction. For instance the extinction event that erased the dinosaurs, left many niches for large homeotherms empty. Many species of mammal and bird, that existed at the time, radiated into those empty niches so that our shrew-like ancestors of the time evolved rapidly into the ancestors of the primates, the whales, horses, elephants and lions.

A second cause of species radiations is the evolution of a single species with a novel ability. Early amphibians, had the ability to live on land, something no really large animal could have done before them. The ancestral amphibian radiated into many species quite suddenly; large herbivores, then large predators; many species of each, each prey species with different defences and each predator species adapted to breaking through a different prey's defences.

The biospheric communion project will cause a huge radiation of the second sort. As soon as we create one species with the novel ability of surviving in space, it will radiate rapidly into many novel species; autotrophs (plant-like), heterotrophs (herbivore-like) and secondary heterotrophs (predators), parasites and symbionts. A small effort on our part will have a huge positive effect on the biodiversity of the universe.