Losing our own game?
What if humans were no longer the most adaptable species on the planet? A recent study highlighted an invasive plant called Famine Weed is very well adapted to the ecological changes we are creating. As humans we have a story that we are the ultimate species of adaptation as our history has proven. Yet the story of the Famine Weed suggests this may not continue to be the case. What would that look like, and what would it mean?
The success of human society has been built extensively on our adaptability and resilience. We have proven time and again that we can adapt to varied and often extreme environments, survive extensive deprivations, and find ways to adapt ourselves to rapidly changing contexts within a single generation. We have colonised almost all landed areas of the Earth as a result, and are now the single dominant species on the planet. So our track record is very strong, but every champion may eventually be overhauled by a challenger. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns as they say. And that is particularly true if the previous winner is complacent about their position.
What we have recently learnt about Famine Weed is that it is able to secrete a more toxic poison than it used to. This is because it makes poison from the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. The more carbon dioxide there is, the stronger it appears the poison can be. It uses this poison to make conditions very difficult for other plants, and so it can protect and expand the spaces where it grows. It seems that it is adapting to the changes we are making to the atmosphere and there are significant impacts already being witnessed. And in crowding out crops or other ‘desirable’ plants, it might make life harder for us.
Photo by Hikmet Çolak on Unsplash
A few patches of Famine Weed here and there are hardly going to bring down civilisation, but as we are still in the early stages of the changes we are making to the world, is this a sign of things to come? It seems likely that Famine Weed is just the first example of parts of our ecosystem that will thrive in a changed world. These are very likely to be things we cannot predict until we see them. Not all of them will align with human life.
Our global ecosystem has spent the last multiple billion years balancing conditions to sustain life. When there has been a gradual or abrupt change, the ecosystem has adapted to find a new stability. We should expect that this will happen again.
What does this mean for us? For now, very little of practical consequence. But it does ask the question of whether we can assume we will continue to be the best adapted to this world in the future. To assume we automatically will is to ignore the dynamic complexity of our ecosystem and just how powerful changes within it could be. It also asks us to expect the unexpected as the many beings and processes that make up life adapt in their own ways to the changes we are making.
Perhaps the world is more dynamic and active than we sometimes like to think.
Banner image by Dinesh Valke under Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license