<story><title>Sea life bounced back fast after the ‘mother of mass extinctions’</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00383-9</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>RegularOpossum</author><text>Oceans as an ecosystem are fascinating. This is simplified but on land the food chain is usually something like Plant-Herbivore-Predator but in the ocean the food chain is much longer, algae-Zooplankton--Predator-Predator-Predator-Predator-Predator-Predator-Predator. There&amp;#x27;s so much opportunities in the predator niche in the oceans that land animals keep going back to the ocean, because the evolutionary challenges were regularly worth it. This truly is a blue planet.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>culi</author><text>Interesting, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t really think the ocean food chain is &amp;quot;more complicated&amp;quot;. Soil ecosystems themselves are extremely complex and much more tightly integrated with what&amp;#x27;s happening above ground than we often realize for example&lt;p&gt;But I do agree there&amp;#x27;s some really interesting key differences. For one, speciation on land is often driven by geological barriers that split populations apart. But these types of barriers are much less common in the ocean where this only really happens to organisms that are restricted to shallow waters (and even then &amp;quot;island-hopping&amp;quot; happens much more commonly)</text></comment>
<story><title>Sea life bounced back fast after the ‘mother of mass extinctions’</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00383-9</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>RegularOpossum</author><text>Oceans as an ecosystem are fascinating. This is simplified but on land the food chain is usually something like Plant-Herbivore-Predator but in the ocean the food chain is much longer, algae-Zooplankton--Predator-Predator-Predator-Predator-Predator-Predator-Predator. There&amp;#x27;s so much opportunities in the predator niche in the oceans that land animals keep going back to the ocean, because the evolutionary challenges were regularly worth it. This truly is a blue planet.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>HPsquared</author><text>I suppose in economic terms there is a lot of &amp;quot;liquidity&amp;quot; (pardon the pun). Species can move around very freely and find their ideal niche.</text></comment>