How do you measure success from an evolutionary perspective?

Which vertebrate animal is the reigning champion in the fight for survival?

We could measure by biomass, I suggested as much in my live lecture last month,

but that seems to give a pretty unreasonable advantage to large animals.

We could measure by time, but frankly it's hard to know if time should be factored in at all, given that many long-existent

species are on the verge of extinction today. Calling them champions seems a little misled.

It's also hard to know whether it's reasonable to use some kind of predictive

metric. I'm sure some evolutionary biologists have thought about this and think they have a

pretty good idea of which animals are most likely to still be around in another 500 million years.

Maybe cockroaches, maybe humans if you're feeling bullish on interplanetary

colonization. But given how subject to change the factors determining survival are, it would feel

more like speculation than science to measure success that way. Natural selection is essentially a battle to survive and reproduce,

so perhaps we should make it easy on ourselves,

and just tally the individuals who have survived and can reproduce.

In which case, we have a winner.

The Bristle mouth.

Cyclothone palida.

I'm Mackin.

This is species.

Welcome to the show.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

I'm grateful for all of my listeners, but I'm especially

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