There is much debate over this question. Here is a website that provides simplified summaries (it's a resource for teachers) of the hypotheses for the marine insect question:
So, no, it's not entirely understood why after millions of years of adaptive radiation there are only a handful of oceanic insect species. And even still these species live on the water/air interface.
Interesting counterexamples to some of the hypotheses. The bloodworms of abyssal Baikal are way cool.
Hm, competitive exclusion is all very well when talking about a single niche and two species, but here we have a whole array of oceanic niches, and a whole array of terrestial ones, and two subphylum(?)-level groupings of species. Competitive exclusion as I understand it would have nothing to say against oceanic niches being parceled out some to crustaceans, some to insects -- freshwater niches are parceled out something like that. I can see as how exclusion might generalize to the larger scales too, but... yeah, "not entirely understood" sounds fitting.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2005-08-05 11:48 am (UTC)http://entomology.unl.edu/lgh/marine_insects/marinehome.html
So, no, it's not entirely understood why after millions of years of adaptive radiation there are only a handful of oceanic insect species. And even still these species live on the water/air interface.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-06 04:31 am (UTC)Interesting counterexamples to some of the hypotheses. The bloodworms of abyssal Baikal are way cool.
Hm, competitive exclusion is all very well when talking about a single niche and two species, but here we have a whole array of oceanic niches, and a whole array of terrestial ones, and two subphylum(?)-level groupings of species. Competitive exclusion as I understand it would have nothing to say against oceanic niches being parceled out some to crustaceans, some to insects -- freshwater niches are parceled out something like that. I can see as how exclusion might generalize to the larger scales too, but... yeah, "not entirely understood" sounds fitting.