The Inter-connectivity of Everything

What I found most interesting and exciting in the reading was Darwin's depiction of the inter-connectivity of all species. He discusses how small variations in nature and species have a profound effect on all other species in the area. He first discusses this ripple effect in Chapter 3. At one point he says, "I am tempted to give one more instance showing how plants and animals, most remote in the scale of nature, are bound together by a web of complex relations" (47). He goes on to give an example of felines and flowers. He claims, "Hence it is quite credible that the presence of a feliine animal in large numbers in a district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district" (47-48). He takes this idea even further in chapter 4 when he is discussing the importance of variations in the survival of species. Very small variations have such a great effect on the survival of certain species that this effects other species through the increase or decrease in competition. What makes this even more extraordinary, is how slow the process of natural selection is. It is almost impossible to immediately discern what the extended outcomes of certain variations will be, and many of these effects might not become evident for generations. This idea made me think about the theory of the butterfly effect. I think the idea that everything that happens, even the smallest event (or in Darwin's argument, variation) can cause a ripple effect that changes and helps shape the future.