Far Future Evolution

Predicting the future is a mug’s game, but I’ma do it anyway! It’s not like I’ll be around in a billion years to be corrected.

There are trends to evolution (even if only statistical artifacts ala Steven Jay Gould) and I think I can project these into the future:

Increasing diversity (lots and lots of different birds)

Decreasing disparity (they are all descended from the English sparrow)

Conquest of low-productivity areas (more life in deep oceans, deserts, mountain-tops, the Earth’s crust, the air, low earth orbit 😉

Longer chains of mutualism (nitrogenous bacteria > legume > ant colony > guardian mammal > ?)

More complex behavior (eusociality, pattern-recognition, cultural transmission, tool use, language, trade, statistical sampling, experimentation)

Horizontal gene transfer (I’d love to see eukaryotes finally figure this out. You can do it, guys!)

Did I miss anything? What do you guys think?

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