If all life forms had, since their beginning, life spans double what the did or have now, would evolution take twice as long?
Could life have survived the outside influences like catastrophic events over much of the globe?
Same question for half life spans? Evolution advance twice as fast corrected for the slowness of some world changes? ( ice ages ) for example.
Manny peoples ask and now I wonder…
I would be hesitant to say it would have taken twice as long, but perhaps faster or slower.
That said, it’s a big hypothetical. Life span in and of itself is something that has evolved into an organism to help it fill its eveolutionary nitch.
Generally, longer life-spans can increase the survivability for complex species (like humans) where the metabolic resources consumed pose a significant barrier in growing up to become an adult. I think that’s why larger animals might tend to live longer than smaller animals.
So, like everything else in biology, there’s no single one good answer, it’s an equilibrium between competing forces. There are advantages for the species in living a long time, and there are advantages for the species in living short-life spans and coming out with new versions like gangbusters.
So, in a way, asking if evolution would be half or twice as fast is probably too hard to define. What other characteristics about the way the world works are you altering to make shorter or longer life-spans advantagous?
Probably not.
Evolution is driven by two things: Survival of environmental pressure, and rapidity of reproduction.
So, you could live twice as long (on average), but if you reproduced at 1 year, and every 15 minutes after that, evolution would take place much faster.
Just the opposite, I would think.
It is not so much life span that affects the rate of evolution but birth rate. So if a longer life span meant later reproduction and/or fewer offspring, then there would be a slowing effect. But if reproduction still began at the same age, then I think no effect would be seen, except the effect of greater population pressures, which would actually speed evolution up for niche lifeforms - greater pressure to adapt to harsher environments.
Same with half life spans, less population pressure might actually slow evolution down, unless there was a corresponding faster rate of sexual maturity and higher numbers of offspring.
Interesting points.
I was leaving all other things aside but I see I can’t as life is indeed filling it place I suppose.
I was just wondering if everything else was the same what would be happening and I see that one thing affects the other so that is not realistic for the question.
I think.