Evolution question

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I suggest we start saying "fit to survive" rather than "survival of the fittest."

[ScholasticSpastic]

Larger means bad surface to volume ratio.

Interestingly, this has been proposed as pretty much the primary reason fungi are poorly represented in the microbial ecology of our oceans. Sure, they're bigger, but they just can't compete with prokaryotes for the bite-sized goodies. In terrestrial systems they make up for it by being able to extend their hyphae into luncheons which might be too inhospitably dry for many bacteria to survive in.

[Epictetus]

If bacteria is so adaptable and can survive so easily and in the harshest of condition, why did multicellular organisms, let alone humans have bothered to evolve?

I mean,..think about it... If giant meteors are gonna strike earth, they'll be the only species to survive...why/how the heck did we evolve if they're far more of survivors than us?

Bacteria are still around and outnumber all other living things by many orders of magnitude. I'm sure that in the distant future (or perhaps not so distant) we humans will go the way of the proverbial dodo, like the dinosaurs did some 65 mya, but bacteria will still be here thriving as they have for billions of years.

Also, bacteria aren't the only organisms to survive these extraterrestrial impacts. Had our ancestors gone extinct, or the ancestors of any extant species, we wouldn't be here to puzzle over such matters.

Given three facts: "superfecundity" (Darwin's term), variation, and a struggle for existence, evolution follows perforce. From this it follows, as Darwin put it at the end of his Origin of Species: "From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful, and most wonderful, have been, and are being, evolved."