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Succes in biology is an evolutionary idea. It is best defined as the longevity of a species with all its descendants.

The founder effect:
Because founder populations are so likely to be small in size, they are also likely to differ genetically from the parent population by chance alone.

Great biological diversity takes long stretches of geological time and the accumulation of large reservoirs of unique genes. The richest ecosystems build slowly, over millions of years. A panda or a sequoia represents a magnitude of evolution that comes along only rarely.

Given the right circumstances, a new species can arise in one to several generations. This vision of the origin of diversity raises a troubling question: if evolution can occur rapidly, why should we worry about species extinction? The answer is that new species are usually cheap species. They may be very different in outward traits, but they are still genetically similar to the ancestral forms

The differences between species ordinarily originate as traits that adapt them to the environment, not as devices for reproductive isolation. Speciation is a byproduct of vertical evolution.

The origin of species is simply the evolution of some difference-any difference at all-that prevents the production of fertile hybrids between populations under natural conditions.

The dynamism of the evolutionary process and the individuality of species make it unlikely that a complete universal species definition will ever be fashioned.

Western North America saw a sudden and severe reduction in the pollen grains of flowering plants at the K-T boundary, followed by an equally abrupt jump in fern spores (the ‘fern spike’ of the fossil record)

The surveys made on Rakata and later Anak Krakatau disclosed far more haphazard buildup, with some species inexplicably going extinct and other flourishing when seemingly they should have disappeared.

Ballooning spiders are members of what ecologists have delightfully called aeolian plankton.

In the succession, pioneer species are the sprinters, old-forest species the long-distance runners.

In the Amazon rain forest, ants compose of more than 10% of the biomass of all animals. They make up of half of the insect biomass overall. Social insects are among the most abundant of all organisms. Likely this is because a colony forms a superorganism.

Poikilohydry enables mosses to persist in water-stressed habitats which more endured plants cannot endure. But this tolerance comes at a serious cost.