Don't stop there: fungi and beetles are some other stressors that could be modeled alongside caterpillars using similar techniques. Like lepidopterans, they are very host-specific, though they have somewhat different transmission vectors, so you could see the defoliation (or other foliage impacts like leaf curling and yellowing) spread / not spread depending on factors such as proximity, moisture, wind and the parasite's lifecycle.
In my cheesy work-friends jam band, I (the drummer) tried using a click track when we'd record just the drums, and it never went well. I would invariably get frustrated that I wasn't keeping up with it and we'd end up with jagged skippy parts where I was trying to get back on track. I'm sure it was just an experience thing, but ultimately I ended up just recording my part first (sans click track), and the other members just used in-ear monitors of my part while they were recording theirs, and it worked out just fine
Copepods and a variety of other things like molluscs and small fish, not necessarily just one species. Of course, as you point out, the fish must have more food biomass than themselves, but it is not as concentrated (high density of one genus) in the lower trophic levels.
Someone asked me on reddit a few days ago for recommendations on places to eat in the town I live in, said they were going to be traveling here soon and wanted some ideas. So I took 30min out of my day to give some good thoughtful suggestions, clicked submit, and _then_ decided to go check out their post/comment history. It was all perfect grammar and oddly short and specific statements.
To nit 1: "totally unrelated" could reasonably mean "not in the same genus", but even relaxing that to "not in the same family" holds true for the word "cedars". The author's point about "common names" seems pretty salient
To nit 2: I fail to see what you're actually nitpicking here... How evolutionary related things are and how they evolved _are_ pretty well illustrated by taxonomic ranking. Some organisms (in a stable ecology) don't change much over time and some things do, and taxonomy gives us a good way to discuss that.
I suppose "totally unrelated" might mean not in the same genus to some set of taxonomists, but for the larger audience to which this essay was directed, unrelated might mean "is not related in any way" (as in, does not share a common ancestor).
Yes, they are "totally unrelated" in the sense that I am likely totally unrelated to you, but this not a very evolutionary sense of the word "related".
> Yes, they are "totally unrelated" in the sense that I am likely totally unrelated to you
Why would you assume that the "larger audience" would assume that "unrelated" means that these species of trees came from independent origins of life on earth instead of this totally normal and common sense of the phrase that you use here?
