Richard Prum: belief

Transcript context

…Do they just worsen the Malthusian equilibrium? How well does the Malthusian subsistence theory predict bird populations? Are birds at the margin of subsistence, first of all? One of the things that Malthus didn’t take into account, or much account, was variability, the fact of an ice storm, for example. A lot of birds in the winter — if you think about birds at your feeder — they can do fine at -5, -10 degrees Fahrenheit, -20 if you get the chickadees — if they have enough food. But if they don’t have access to food, they will die in a single night. These ice storms, which could be just 32 degrees, covering all the food, the whole environment with ice for a day — can be just devastating for lots of birds. If there weren’t feeders, their populace would really be harmed. Things like Carolina wren, which is a bird expanding — I think a big ice storm will set down Carolina wren populations at the edge of the range in New England or the Mid-Atlantic. For five years, it’ll take them to rebound after that. Do we have good theories of bird property rights, somehow invoking the ideas of relative scarcities to explain when birds are territorial or not territorial? Or is that just a big mess that we don’t understand?…

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