The Next Species: The Future of Evolution in the Aftermath of Man (41 page)

slow-moving, drifting animals with no vision
: Jose Luis Acuña, “Faking Giants: The Evolution of High Prey Clearance Rates in Jellyfish,”
Science
333, no. 6049 (September 16, 2011), 1627–29.

Jellyfish are ancient, dating back 600 million
: Anahad O’Connor, “No Fins? No Problem: Jellyfish Have Their Ways,”
New York Times
, September 30, 2011.

overfishing is promoting the presence of jellyfish
: Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, “Boom in jellyfish: Overfishing called into question,”
ScienceDaily
, May 3, 2013.

his crew struggled to find calm waters
: Roberts,
The Unnatural History of the Sea
, xi–xii.

Today, Palmyra Atoll, 1,000 miles south of Hawaii
: Nature Conservancy, “Palmyra: A Marine Wilderness: Palmyra is that rare place where top predators such as sharks still dominate the reef ecosystem,”
www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/unitedstates/hawaii/palmyraatoll/
.

11
 PREDATORS WILL SCRAMBLE

the role of sea otters as predators
: J. A. Estes, D. F. Doak, A. M. Springer, and T. M. Williams, “Causes and consequences of marine mammal population declines in southwest Alaska,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
364, no. 1524 (June 25, 2009), 1647–58.

never dawned on me that that would be an interesting question
: Author interview with James Estes, March 1, 2012.

kelp rises like an undersea forest
: Monterey Bay Aquarium, “Giant kelp, Natural History,”
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animal-guide/plants-and-algae/giant-kelp
.

no predatory pressure on the urchins
: J. A. Estes, M. T. Tinker, and J. L. Bodkin, “Using Ecological Function to Develop Recovery Criteria for Depleted Species: Sea Otters and Kelp Forests in the Aleutian Archipelago,”
Conservation Biology
24, no. 3 (June 2010), 1523–739.

In 2011, Estes—along with John Terborgh
: James A. Estes, et al., “Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth,”
Science
333, no. 6040 (July 15, 2011), 301–6.

in the absence of predators, prey populations exploded
: John Terborgh, et al., “Ecological Meltdown in Predator-Free Forest Fragments,”
Science
294, no. 5548 (November 2001), 1923–26.

predators played a major part in making the world green
: “The Lake Guri Experiment,”
National Geographic’s Strange Days on Planet Earth
,
www.pbs.org/strangedays/episodes/predators/experts/lakeguri.html
.

Sharks are another vulnerable predator
: Dalhousie University, “Shark Fisheries Globally Unsustainable,”
Newswise
, March 1, 2013.

studying hammerhead shark populations
: Brian Handwerk, “Do Hammerheads Follow Magnetic Highways to Migration?”
National Geographic News
, June 6, 2002.

Large tiger sharks can grow to 20 to 25 feet
: Michael Tennesen, “In Hawaii, scientists are helping to dispel some myths about tiger sharks,”
National Wildlife
, August 2000.

Bull sharks get their name
: Michael Tennesen, “The Bull Shark’s Double Life,”
National Wildlife
, November 2011.

shark ecotourism currently generates more than $314 million a year
: Andres Cisneros-Montemayor, et al., “Global economic value of shark ecotourism,”
Oryx
, July 2013.

attaching tracking devices to elephant seals
: Tennesen, “Testing the Depth of Life,”
National Wildlife
, February 1999.

recorded their hunting in tightly coordinated groups
: Russ Vetter, “Interactions and niche overlap between mako shark,
Isurus oxyrinchus
, and Jumbo Squid,”
California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations Reports
49 (2008).

Giant squid are the biggest invertebrates
: “Giant Squid,
Architeuthis dux
,” photo,
National Geographic
,
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/giant-squid/
.

limbs equipped with sharp claws or hooks
: Museum of New Zealand, “Colossal Squid: Hooks and suckers,” Te Papa Museum, April 30, 2008,
http://squid.tepapa.govt.nz/anatomy/article/the-arms-and-tentacles
.

Cuttlefish also have a rich vocabulary
: Marguerite Holloway, “Cuttlefish Say It With Skin,”
Natural History
, April 2000.

octopuses are more intelligent than any of the fishes
: Michael Tennesen, “Outsmarting the Competition: When it comes to intelligence and personality, the giant Pacific octopus shines,”
National Wildlife
, December 2002.

They currently live to about one and a half years of age
: From “Chinese commercial fishery data off Costa Rica,” provided by William Gilly.

12
 THE DECLINE AND RETURN OF MEGAFAUNA
But we’re not creeping anymore
: Author interview with Charles Marshall, April 4, 2012.

settlers apparently hunted giant moas for generations
: Leakey,
The Sixth Extinction
, 185.

early hunters shut off all the methane
: Felisa A. Smith, Scott M. Elliot, and Kathleen Lyons, “Methane emissions for extinct megafauna,”
Nature Geoscience
3 (2010), 374–75.

predators show heavier tooth wear
: Brian Switek, “Broken teeth tell of tough times for Smilodon,”
ScienceBlogs
, February 15, 2010,
http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/tag/tar-pits/
.

Animals grew about eight orders of magnitude
: Alistair R. Evans, et al., “The maximum rate of mammal evolution,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
, October 1, 2011,
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/26/1120774109.abstract
; National Science Foundation, “Mammals grew 1,000 times larger after the demise of the dinosaurs,” NSF, November 25, 2010,
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=118129
.

The Tibetan woolly rhino lived at a much warmer time
: Tao Deng, “Out of Tibet: Pliocene Wooly Rhino Suggests High-Plateau Origin of Ice Age Megaherbivores,”
Science
333, no. 6047 (September 2, 2011), 1285–88.

it’s known as Bergmann’s Rule
: Melissa I. Pardi and Felisa A. Smith, “Paleoecology in an Era of Climate Change,” in
Paleontology in Ecology and Conservation
, edited by J. Louys (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2012).

an indication of pack rat size and diet
: Steve Carr, “UNM Researchers Explore Evolution of World’s Mammals Over the Past 100 Million Years,” University of New Mexico, November 25, 2010.

had adapted to eating all meat, all of the time
: Blaire Van Valkenburgh, Xiaoming Wang, and John Damuth, “Cope’s Rule, Hypercarnivory, and Extinction in North American Canids,”
Science
306, no. 5693 (October 1, 2004), 101–4.

restore all the big animals that once stocked North America
: C. Josh Donlan, et al., “Pleistocene Rewilding: An Optimistic Vision for 21st Century Conservation,”
The American Naturalist
168, no. 5 (November 2006), 660–81.

can’t just reintroduce a large herbivore like a horse
: J. W. Turner, Jr. and M. Morrison, “Trends in number and survivorship of a feral horse population: Influence of mountain lion predation,”
Southwestern Naturalist
(2001).

The American cheetah fist appeared perhaps 2.5 million years ago
: Donlan, “Pleistocene Rewilding.” Donlan’s paper proposes and explains many of the animals mentioned in this section on rewilding.

Wolves were introduced in the 1990s to Yellowstone National Park
: US National Park Service, “Wolf Restoration,”
http://www.nps.gov/yell/naturescience/wolfrest.htm
.

there were many more predators and prey
: Gary W. Roemer, Matthew W. Gompper, and Blaire Van Valkenburgh, “The Ecological Role of Mammalian Mesocarnivore,”
BioScience
59, no. 2 (February 2009), 165–73.

working on the Reserva de Faia Brava in Portugal
: Staffan Widstrand, “Western Iberia II—Faia Brava, Portugal,” Rewilding Europe, April 20, 2011,
http://www.rewildingeurope.com/areas/western-iberia/
.

the best candidates for a future laid waste by man
: Ward,
Future Evolution
, 105.

identified the canine tooth of a saber-toothed cat
: John M. Harris, “Bones from the Tar Pits: La Brea Continues to Bubble Over with New Clues,”
Natural History
, June 2007.

I met with UCLA paleontologist Blaire Van Valkenburgh
: Author interview with Blaire Van Valkenburgh, May 28, 2013.

Modern species evolved with larger and much more complex and large predators
: Blaire Van Valkenburgh, “Tough Times in the Tar Pits,”
Natural History
, April 1994.

this city was a wide floodplain
: Harris, “Bones from the Tar Pits.”

13
 INVADERS
TO
MARS?

I ventured into the observatory that Lowell built
: Michael Tennesen, “Stars in Their Eyes: The Exquisite Telescopes Crafted by Alvan Clark and His Sons Helped Make the Last Half of the 19th Century a Golden Age of Astronomy,”
Smithsonian
32, no. 7 (October 2001), 78–82.

The fourth planet from the sun is more like Earth
: Michael Tennesen, “Mars: Remembrance of Life Past,”
Discover
, July 1989.

It would be an inhospitable place for a moonlit walk
: Robert Zubrin and Richard Wagner,
The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must
(New York: Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 1996), xxiv.

the
Curiosity
rover in 2013 analyzed a powdered sample
: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “Mars Rover Carries Device for Underground Scouting,” October 20, 2011,
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2011-325
.

enough gas to make the round trip
: Zubrin and Wagner,
The Case for Mars
, 161–70.

Zubrin agrees but thinks that a small crew would still be best
: Ibid., 98–99.

Geothermal power would be an attractive source
: Ibid., 226–27.

the possibility of interstellar trade
: Ibid., 242–43.

The first Martian task would be to find water
: Ibid., 211–16.

Mars might also be a good place to understand our past
: Amina Khan, “Study: Mars could have held watery underground oases for life,”
Los Angeles Times
, January 21, 2013.

all life on Earth is descended from microorganisms on Mars
: Rick Fienberg, “MIT: Are you a Martian? We could all be, scientists say,”
American Astronomical Society
, March 23, 2011.

The ice provides what scientists call “thermal buffering”
: Tennesen, “Mars.”

Using CF gases [as opposed to CFCs]
: Author interview with Robert Zubrin, October 1, 2013.

space travel may have to be an international effort
: Chris Bergin, “Fobos-Grunt ends its misery via re-entry,” NASA, January 15, 2012,
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/01/fobus-grunt-ends-its-misery-via-re-entry/
.

a DNA sequencing machine that could be landed on the surface of Mars
: Antonio Regalado, “Genome Hunters Go After Martian DNA,”
Technology Review
, October 18, 2012.

You would live your life out on Mars
: BBC, “How to get along for 500 days together,”
BBC News Magazine
, March 1, 2013.

Lots to offer here, just no welcome-home party
: Alan Boyle, “One-way Mars trip attracts 165,000 would-be astronauts . . . and counting,” NBC News, August 23, 2013,
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/one-way-mars-trip-attracts-165-000-would-be-astronauts-f6C10981032
.

Biosphere 2 offers a way to study
: Author interview with John Adams, November 5, 2012.

dependent on the facility’s different biomes and infrastructure
: J. P. Allen, M. Nelson, and A. Alling, “The legacy of Biosphere 2 for the study of biospherics and closed ecological systems,”
Advances in Space Research
31, no. 7 (2003), 1629–39.

they also needed to adjust to the levels of CO
₂
that fluctuated wildly
: Abigail Alling, Mark Nelson, and Sally Silverstone,
Life under Gas: The Inside Story of Biosphere 2
(Oracle, AZ: The Biosphere Press, 1993).

They develop bird legs
: National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI), “How the Human Body Changes in Space,”
http://www.nsbri.org/DISCOVERIES-FOR-SPACE-and-EARTH/The-Body-in-Space/
.

Is it someplace where large portions of our population might escape
: Richard Hollingham, “Building a new society in space,” BBC Future, March 18, 2013,
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130318-building-a-new-society-in-space
.

habitable planets like Earth around other stars
: Dennis Overbye, “2 Good Places to Live, 1,200 Light-Years Away,”
New York Times
, April 18, 2013.