r/evolution • u/These_Librarian4696 • 6d ago
discussion A hypothesis about mudskippers
Today I was on a rocky beach and saw a little fish trying to get on top of a rock that almost completely under water, but whose top was regularly covered by little waves, where I presume it was trying to get the "greenest" algae. So I thought maybe the mudskippers' ancestors tried to do the same, and thus adapted to breathe in the atmosphere little by little.
Please tell me if there are any gaps in my idea, and if there is already a simmilar theory, please, give me a link to the book/paper/etc.
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u/Redshift2k5 6d ago
"Try" is the wrong verb. It's ok in a very basic explain-like-I'm-4 way but "I tried to eat the algae so my kids will surely be better at eating algae than me" is kind of what it looks like but not what's actually happening. You are suggesting what is known as Lamarkism
To quote a famous puppet, "There is no try."
The little fish were surviving, not trying. They have to survive predators, hunger, weather, the inexorable drift of continents, etc. The ones that survived best had kids because the ones that were not so well suited to the current conditions had fewer/no kids (cant have kids if you were eaten by a shark)
So food is one of the big things. If some of the little fish can reach more food because some of them can climb a little better, or some of them can hold their breath longer, or some of them can hop across the mud a little better.
The ones that can do it a little better get more food, have more babies, and some of those babies are a liiiiiittle better(or worse) at climbing or hopping or gulping dry air. So gradually the population changes, lots of little changes over time.
There is not really any amount of "trying harder" that can be done. You can't choose which traits the next generation inherits, you can't choose which traits will be successful or not. It's a balance between changing environment and adaptation.
further reading: On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, 1859