Survival of the Marginal

Consider Darwins Finches. Which changed first? Their bodies? Or their behavior? And why
did they change their behavior?
The idea of the survival of the fittest is a mistaken understanding of the dynamics of evolution.
It is not those best adapted to an environment who win the game of life. It is the weak, the losers
in the competition for supremacy within their environment and within their species, who in the
end triumph. The fittest either come eventually to die, clutching the residues of their spoils, or
survive on as prisoners, trapped inside the bounds of the field of their victory, hemmed in by the
descendants of those they once drove forth into hardship.
For when the strong drive out the weak, what happens to the weak? In their home environment,
the weak may be well adapted, both physically and behaviorally, to exploit its resources, and
prosper. However, the weak must compete against those like them, but stronger, both for those
resources, and for the right to reproduce their kind. But since they are the weak, they are
outcompeted for food and reproductive rights by the strong.
In a crowded environment, the strong may physically drive them into the margins. Even if the
weak are not directly confronted by those stronger than they are, they may still be faced with
starvation. Certainly, they face an unpleasant choice. They may choose to endure, and
eventually die, perhaps without issue. However, they may also choose to depart, and move out
into the margins of their former environment.
The margins will not be as favorable to the weak as was the center of the ecology that the strong
still claim. The behaviors which served them in that environment will no longer be adequate, and
different behaviors are demanded. To survive, the weak will be forced to adapt. (And some will
be prepared for this, because their old behaviors will have failed them, and they will be ready to
change.) In particular and in general, a greater variety of behaviors will be demanded. Physically,
they may be mal-adapted to their new environment, and their new behaviors must first
compensate for this. Different food sources must be pursued. Different locations for food and
even different varieties of food must be sought, because those sources they once relied upon will
no longer be adequate, if they are available at all. None of the sources which they once
depended on will be available in sufficient quantity.
Meanwhile, their enemies may follow them. They may be forced to deal with new predators,
who may see them as a new opportunity for predation. They may be forced to deal with new
hazards. And their survival will depend on their ability to adapt their behavior in response.
In the old environment, the strong of the species are in a sense optimized, or will evolve to
become so, both physically, and behaviorally. And when they do become optimized, the
strongest will be the most fit to that environment, and any individual who deviates, the carrier of
any other random mutation, will be inferior in its ability to compete, and thus selected against.

As long as their environment remains constant, so will the species, and for these individuals, and
their descendants, the process of evolution effectively ceases. The only remaining outlet for
change, a domain of random drift, within which the external pressures of selection are essentially
absent, within which genetic alterations, which still randomly occur, in no way change the
functional relationship of the species to its environment.
Those driven into the margins, however, are not optimized to their new environment, either
behaviorally, or physically. And because they are suboptimal, and suboptimal possibly to a
variety of different optima, both physically and behaviorally, they may have choices. Their new
environment may present them with a selection of possible niches for them to move into, for
them to both adapt to and mould to their behavior. (Every time a species successfully colonizes a
new environment, it alters that environment, and thus the structure and relationships of the niches
occupied by the other species already occupying that environment. and of course the species
themselves.)
First they must alter their behavior so that with their imperfectly adapted bodies they may best
cope with their new reality. If they succeed and survive, and have issue, they pass these
behaviors on to their descendants. Physically, the descendants slowly evolve, as the shape of the
new environment potentiates net forces upon them. These provide relative advantage to the
random mutations which create the altered structures that improve the ability of the species to
cope and prosper, and relative disadvantage to those which do not. (Note the earliest generations
have the greatest opportunity to change behavior, and adopt to different niches. Indeed, a
random physical adaptation which is inappropriate to the behavior adopted by the parent may
lead the descendant to alter its behavior, and thus branch into an alternate niche. This suggests
that branchings, rather than predominately binary, would tend to be clustered about points of
colonization, when the differing opportunities reachable to the species are greatest in availability
and number.)
The forces imposed upon the colonizing species would be of two basic types, push and pull,
pressures and opportunities. Singly, these would respectively tend to be dispersive and
attractive. However combinations of opportunities could be dispersive, and arrays of sources of
pressures compressive. As a result of these environmental forces,
There is also the possibility that colonization happens into an environment where no particular
niche offers sufficient opportunity for the new species to survive. No singular alteration of
behaviors enables survival, but a combination of two or more groups of techniques must be
adopted if the species is, say, to acquire enough food to survive. The species may eventually
come to physically adopt to one or another niche and specialize. It then may come to exploit that
niche with sufficient efficiency to survive. Due to environmental forces, this may involve
acquiring physical strength, over subsequent generations, and the weak become strong.
However, it may also be that specialization is not possible, and the individual of the species must
continue to exploit several niches in order to survive. Since physical adaptation to one niche will
likely compromise its ability to exploit other niches, increase in the ability to exploit its
environment might then be primarily a result of an increase in the varieties of behavior.
Behavioral adaptation, especially where an increase in the variety of behaviors is required, puts a

premium on intelligence. Of course, even the simplest act of colonization requires more
intelligence than is needed by an optimally adapted species in its home environment.
In the adaptation to its environment, a species acquires those qualities it needs, but in more than
the quantities it needs. The ability to meet the bare minimum of demands of the environment
will not be sufficient. Survival requires more than efficiency: In the distribution of coping
abilities in its environment, the abilities of individuals in all but the lower tail of that distribution
must exceed the demands of the environment. This necessarily includes intelligence.