Could the Portuguese Man Of War become a new organism?

[Everten P.]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war

Unfortunately I have to begin this forum post with a Wikipedia link for basic information on the Portuguese Man Of War. However my question is, could the Portuguese Man Of War become proof of many organisms becoming one, new organism? It is believed that mitochondria were once an independent bacteria that became part of cells when they realized survival and reproduction were more likely as part of a cell than alone.

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/cells/organelles/

The Portuguese Man Of War seems to be working in the same way. With multiple organisms working together because survival and reproduction are more likely. Could in the next 50-100 years could we start seeing whole Portuguese Man Of Wars being born instead of the cluster that we see today (my estimate may be off but I am no biologist )

[pincushionman]

It seems you think these colonies are a collection of separate individuals of various species that come together - I don't think that's the case: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=28025.0

It seems they're born as a kind of larva which buds off the other specialized individuals. Kind of like a colony of ants, bees, or termites which are made up of caste individuals all descended from a single queen.

Now, there are colonial organisms which exhibit this "come together" behavior, but they're pretty mch all lichens, and they haven't really made any steps toward true integration since being some of the very first land organisms ever, so I don't wxpect them to change in the next hundred years.

[fenderzilla]

Mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell

[Dkmdlb]

Thanks for sharing that Mr. Zilla.

[lajoswinkler]

This creature is a colony of zooids. And yes, it is possible that during very long periods of time (100 years is painfully little time to consider) their dependancy on one another will be so high that it could be called one organism.

After all, that's how multicellular organisms came to be. Not all branches of the evolutionary tree are proceeding at the same speed, and some of them go backwards. It's a blind process. What's optimal, survives, no matter how weird it seems to be.

There are weird creatures all over the Earth, but the general public rarely encounters them and, sadly, most of the latest "natural documentary shows" only know of feriocious mammals and reptiles. Life on Earth is vastly more interesting than that.

[hugix]

Mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell

I thought it was what the force was made of???

[PakledHostage]

I thought it was what the force was made of???

You're thinking of metaclorians... Best you forget about those (see Rule #3 of "4 Rules To Make Star Wars Great Again").

[moronwrocket]

The bacteria that live inside us outnumber the number of cells in our body. And many in the microbiome do provide useful services to us. It's possible that given enough time they could become incorporated into our cells directly like mitochondria and chloroplasts at some point in the future.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3298082/#S5title

[Vanamonde]

Keep it on-topic, please.

[KerikBalm]

The Man of War is a single species.

Its like asking if an ant colony can become a new organism.

This isn't symbiosis like mitochondria and eukaryotic cells.

This is more like an ant colony. There are different forms, they all depend on each other, and they are all the same species.

There's a large grey area in terms of where you draw the line between a collection of single celled organisms working together, and a "true" multicellular organism.

Likewise... while we don't currently recongize any multi-organism-superorganisms... one could imagine a grey area too.

The individuals are to the superorganism what cells are to multicellular organisms.

The man-o-war would be one candidate for such an organism.

Hymenoptera colonies would be another.

Corrals would be another

Human tribes, clans, nations, civilizations, etc would be another

...

and so on

Mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell

They are also (in multicellular organisms) involed in the immune response, in apoptosis, and are the site of Fe-S cluster formation.

They also play a role in branched chain amino acid synthesis.

Its quite an oversimplification to say they are just the powerhouse (ie ATP source).

they realized survival and reproduction were more likely as part of a cell than alone.

They didn't realize anything.

First, they are most closely related to alpha proteobacteria that are parasitic.

They were likely invading cells long before becoming mitochondria.

What likely happened, was that they evolved ot be rather benign (too virulent, and you kill your hosts too quickly... much like the selection pressure for lambda phage... and a lot of viruses that are persistant, but not lethal).

And if you're going to be a long term parasite of your host (much like mycoplasma today), if your host does better, so do you.

What we've got, is a parasite that evolved to be more and more benign, to the point it became beneficial.

Edited April 11, 2015 by KerikBalm