Role of the Flood in Evolutionary Change
The Mozambique Flood will probably play a part in future evolutionary change. It removed and shrunk populations of species, and possibly added new ones in. When the Mozambique Flood came through, it took much of its vegetation with it. It started in the east coast, ripping out most of the producers the consumers need to live. The primary consumers will have to find some other trees or plants to eat, and the top-level consumers will need to find other prey. The food web itself will evolve, and the consumers will adapt to find other things to eat. It will also kill many of the predators though, which may cause overgrowth in others. The dugong (which is like a manatee), for example, is almost extinct because the flood took so much of the resources went away. The buffaloes were hit hardest, because they are no longer in the regions where the flood hit, so they were wiped out altogether. The cashew trees went endangered, and crops were cleaned out almost completely.