First the scientific community sells us on the fact that evolution is an on going process, then they turn around and despise it when they see it happening before their very eyes...
They never got this excited over Kudzu.......................
If a survivable niche exists, a more successful organism will evolve (or emerge) to dominate it.
THAT *IS* a maxim of evolution.
The question becomes, what altered the balance of the prior state? Why now do the vines increasingly dominate?
n.b. — climbing vines need a climbing substrate. Once the vines kill the trees, the next species will dominate the vines. And so on.