For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

This evolution subtopic has me thinking... 

So often we think of evolution in terms of the organism.  Different beaks due to different islands and food sources kind of thing.  Longer legs. Longer neck. 

But I wonder if we should think about evolution (of larger organisms) as evolution of the community that makes up that animal?  Given that gut bacteria for instance will enjoy thousands of times the generations for each successive generation of the larger animal within its environment...  There is likely an interplay here that hasn't found its way into the textbooks. 

 

Not that it hasn't been studied:

Quote

The gut microbiome remodels host chromatin, causes differential splicing, alters the epigenetic landscape, and directly interrupts host signaling cascades. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680557/

.. I just don't know if anyone has tied the likelihood of animal / species as a community with the evolution of the animal / species itself. 

 

 

[kerbiloid]

Life is a self-reproducing periodical thermodynamic process with accumulation of information (in its thermodynamic sense, as delta-information = - delta-entropy, or ln(statistic weight of the system state)).

The evolution is how it works.

No difference if the system is chemical, economical, social, or what.

The life increases the ability of the "owning" system to withstand changes of external conditions with less efforts.

Like plants prevent the ground from erosion.

Just you call "life" (in narrow sense) the kind of such process bound with cognitive functions.

The cognitive functions are probably closely connected to the physical "observer" term, and are the way of the quantum deterministic mechanism.

Edited April 15, 2022 by kerbiloid

[darthgently]

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I recently posted this (longest running evolution experiment, video below)

Great video (love that channel).  It is the incredible rate of bacterial and viral adaption that makes me wonder if there may be an acceleration mechanism for higher animal mutation via infection through virus (and maybe fungi and bacteria).  As I mentioned above, I was aware that simpler life forms could demonstrate very fast adaptation rates.

It must be noted however that a lot of that in the vid could be pre-existing genes turning on and off in response to environmental triggers and not so much raw mutation, but they seem to have tested for that but I got a bit lost (was distracted by life while mostly watching).  Another factor I didn't hear mentioned is that while bacteria can adapt quickly adapt to a given antibiotic, it is almost always at the cost of something else and the strain becomes progressively more brittle.  That final generation would not do well against a different antibiotic that focused on that weakness; it might be a 100% kill the first generation with zero ability to adapt in fact.  Thus the antibiotic cocktail approach.  Often the final strains of a bacteria highly resistant to one antibiotic has incredible inefficiencies elsewhere in the organism that make it very precarious as its genome narrows to specifically survive that antibiotic's actions. 

Even MRSA became more vulnerable to some antibiotics while it became more resistant to others.  Still a tough booger though

[tomf]

Deer are already pretty good at being deer, for every conceivable mutation that might make then into better deer there must be millions that make for a worse deer.

Also evolution doesn't work on the survival of individuals, it works on genes. Genes that promote the survival of other members of your species over the individual can work on the basis that the others are likely to have the same gene.

[Gargamel]

4 hours ago, tomf said:

Deer are already pretty good at being deer, for every conceivable mutation that might make then into better deer there must be millions that make for a worse deer.

They'd do a lot better if they evolved blinking warning lights on their heads, and a sense of physics.    I hit three in a year 2 years ago.     Or more accurately, I hit one, and two of them ran into me... which is quite a feat considering I was doing 70mph each time.   

[kerbiloid]

reindeer = reinforced deer

They get upgraded!

[StrandedonEarth]

12 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

They'd do a lot better if they evolved blinking warning lights on their heads,

"Hey wolves, here I am!" Aside from that, maybe luminescent antlers? But that assumes they have antlers...

You can get little ultrasonic whistles that attch to the bumpers that are supposed to warn wildlife, but I don't know how effective they are...

[adsii1970]

30 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

reindeer = reinforced deer

They get upgraded!

And then from reindeer they become moose.

And when you hit one, you stop dead in your tracks.

[kerbiloid]

Deer → Rein. Deer → Moose

Unicorns, too.

***

And the elfants. More than just elefants.

Spoiler

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

You can get little ultrasonic whistles that attch to the bumpers that are supposed to warn wildlife, but I don't know how effective they are...

Yeah... no.... I can still hear those.   I have horrible low range hearing, but great high range.   I can hear most dog whistles.    *shrug*

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

"Hey wolves, here I am!" Aside from that, maybe luminescent antlers? But that assumes they have antlers...

We only have coyotes here, and while I have personally seen one (I assume the pack was on it's way) take down a deer (in a semi suburban neighborhood too), I don't think they'll be the issue, more like hunting season.  

 

[kerbiloid]

Sometimes the evolution plays strange games...

Spoiler

Once two loving hearts have met...

 

Spoiler

...Their daughter

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... Their grandson.

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... Time passed.

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He tried to be a good, a Good teacher for the the silly humans, but...

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... they rejected his help.

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Alone... Always alone...

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But wait... 

A human? A stranger? Maybe a friend?

Spoiler

... Again they take the sword before getting any word of his wisdom, like then, on the swamp.

Spoiler

... so, let it be. They chose this themselves, not him.

Spoiler

...What's that? A piece of beauty in the cave of dark...

Spoiler

... A ring... The Ring...

Spoiler

... I...iss.. sso... muchh... hhappy... ourss preciouss...

Spoiler

The light! Back to the light... to the day light! To the Sun!

Spoiler

...Look! It's healing!

Spoiler

Oh, ourss Preciouss... Ourss little Preciouss..

Spoiler

Water!

Spoiler

Fresh air!

Spoiler

Hallo, peoplss! Me'ss back.

Spoiler

Spoiler

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Edited April 16, 2022 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

On 4/15/2022 at 8:11 PM, kerbiloid said:

Life is a self-reproducing periodical thermodynamic process with accumulation of information (in its thermodynamic sense, as delta-information = - delta-entropy, or ln(statistic weight of the system state)).

The evolution is how it works.

No difference if the system is chemical, economical, social, or what.

The life increases the ability of the "owning" system to withstand changes of external conditions with less efforts.

Like plants prevent the ground from erosion.

Just you call "life" (in narrow sense) the kind of such process bound with cognitive functions.

The cognitive functions are probably closely connected to the physical "observer" term, and are the way of the quantum deterministic mechanism.

Who is true, with the caveat that economic and social evolution are not passive. Also economic tend to overreact as in chasing trends way to hard. 

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Gargamel said:

We only have coyotes here, and while I have personally seen one (I assume the pack was on it's way) take down a deer (in a semi suburban neighborhood too), I don't think they'll be the issue, more like hunting season.  

Humans killed off most large predators as they attack them or at least their livestock animals. 
This is new as in just effective the last hundreds of years. Lots of cars is much newer.
Mammal evolution still trying to adapt to humans starting with farming, this includes humans. 

And hitting moose is terrifying. One gory story was an high speed impact with an moose who rear end entered the cabin. 
Car was a mess and its was entrails visible on the driver, they wrapped it all up an airlifted him to an hospital. 
The good news was that the entrails was from the moose  

The place I grew up had an standard that the meat from moose and deer people had to track down and kill after impacts went to the nursing / old / disabled people home. 
Who was nice as lots of them had been hunters but they got too much of it so started selling some off 

[ARS]

Is it possible for a planet to have a moon that's much larger than it is as long as the planet in question has much more mass (and stronger gravity)? For example, a rogue planet that wanders the universe entered a system and gets captured by a planet much smaller than it (but has much more mass and stronger gravity). Or is there an absolute limit of moon's size related to the parent planet it orbits?

Edited April 17, 2022 by ARS

[darthgently]

14 minutes ago, ARS said:

Is it possible for a planet to have a moon that's much more massive than it is as long as the planet in question has much more mass (and stronger gravity)?

If by "much more massive" you really mean "larger" then sure

[Bej Kerman]

On 4/14/2022 at 9:19 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

Awhile back I wanted to read more about the concept and Googled “why don’t we launch nuclear reactor waste into space”, however most of the discussions seemed to focus on Earth orbit and the danger of reentry. But why not launch it into solar orbit?

Namely, if it gets to the point where nuclear electric or nuclear thermal rocket space tugs are commuting around deep space (with things like Zeus and DARPA’s recent NTR initiative) and therefore might be economically viable.

You will have to do a retrograde slingshot around Jupiter in order to collide with the Sun without cancelling all of Earth's 30km/s of velocity, and you need to either build a rocket of frankly ridiculous proportions or build a lot of rockets in order for this to be feasible. You've played KSP before, you might know how hard it is to launch hundreds of very heavy things into Kerbol without spending all your space program's money..

52 minutes ago, ARS said:

Is it possible for a planet to have a moon that's much more massive than it is as long as the planet in question has much more mass (and stronger gravity)? For example, a rogue planet that wanders the universe entered a system and gets captured by a planet much smaller than it (but has much more mass and stronger gravity). Or is there an absolute limit of moon's size related to the parent planet it orbits?

If it's not very dense, maybe.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, ARS said:

Is it possible for a planet to have a moon that's much more massive than it is as long as the planet in question has much more mass (and stronger gravity)? For example, a rogue planet that wanders the universe entered a system and gets captured by a planet much smaller than it (but has much more mass and stronger gravity). Or is there an absolute limit of moon's size related to the parent planet it orbits?

So size does not always equal mass... But for the smaller body to be considerably more massive than the larger - something really interesting would have needed to happen. 

Like perhaps a gas giant got shredded somehow with its super dense core being flung out (while the gas was captured) and the core being later captured as a planet of a star.  

Although for the super dense core planet to have a larger terrestrial planet as its moon, it probably had to bring it along as a remnant of the original event that stripped its gas. (three body moon capture scenarios often throw the lightest thing away 

Edited April 17, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[ARS]

1 hour ago, darthgently said:

If by "much more massive" you really mean "larger" then sure

Yeah, I mean larger. The smaller planet has much more mass and stronger gravity than the larger ones

[darthgently]

On 4/15/2022 at 1:57 PM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

This evolution subtopic has me thinking... 

So often we think of evolution in terms of the organism.  Different beaks due to different islands and food sources kind of thing.  Longer legs. Longer neck. 

But I wonder if we should think about evolution (of larger organisms) as evolution of the community that makes up that animal?  Given that gut bacteria for instance will enjoy thousands of times the generations for each successive generation of the larger animal within its environment...  There is likely an interplay here that hasn't found its way into the textbooks. 

 

Not that it hasn't been studied:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680557/

.. I just don't know if anyone has tied the likelihood of animal / species as a community with the evolution of the animal / species itself. 

 

 

There is a lot of very interesting research in this area.  Like the following.  While mice are normally instinctively afraid of cat odor from birth, toxoplasma gondii caused some mice to permanently lose their fear of cats.  Which is important for the parasite as it then infects the cat, that poops it out for the next phase of its life cycle. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2013.13777

There is also evidence that the oral and gut bacteria that cause tooth decay, when in the gut release substances that make the host crave sugar and carbs which is what that bacteria find the most useful.  The link below is not that specific, but is what I can find in a pinch:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270213/

So maybe the idea of "demonic possession" to explain gluttony was the best people could come up with back in the day, but when you think about it, it wasn't a bad explanation given the information they had on hand.  The people were likely in a sense "possessed" and controlled by another lifeform to a degree. And the mice previously are in a sense "possessed" by a parasite causing them to march to their deaths by cat.

 

Edited April 17, 2022 by darthgently

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

6 minutes ago, darthgently said:

There is a lot of very interesting research in this area.  Like the following.  While mice are normally instinctively afraid of cat odor from birth, toxoplasma gondii caused some mice to permanently lose their fear of cats.  Which is important for the parasite as it then infects the cat, that poops it out for the next phase of its life cycle. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2013.13777

There is also evidence that the oral and gut bacteria that cause tooth decay, when in the gut release substances that make the host crave sugar and carbs which is what that bacteria find the most useful.  The link below is not that specific, but is what I can find in a pinch:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270213/

So maybe the idea of "demonic possession" to explain gluttony was the best people could come up with back in the day, but when you think about it, it wasn't a bad explanation given the information they had on hand.  The people were likely in a sense "possessed" and controlled by another lifeform to a degree. And the mice previously are in a sense "possessed" by a parasite causing them to march to their deaths by cat.

 

What you've written falls in-line with what I was thinking about Darwin's Finches.

(and of course, once I think of the terms - google shows me a paper on just that thing: Host phylogeny, diet, and habitat differentiate the gut microbiomes of Darwin’s finches on Santa Cruz Island | Scientific Reports (nature.com)   )

 

Although: as I begin to read - they're not answering the direct question I posed... rather:

Quote

Additionally, each gut microbial community could easily be classified by the habitat of origin independent of host species. Altogether, these findings are consistent with a model of microbiome assembly in which environmental filtering via diet and habitat are primary determinants of the bacterial taxa present with lesser influence from the evolutionary history between finch species.

They seem, instead, to suggest the host evolution, diet and biome affect the gut bacteria... although I wonder if they even considered the question I posed (effectively mutual cooperative evolution or hand-in-hand evolution or micro-biome assisted evolutionary adaptive radiation)

Edited April 17, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Edit - okay... I'm gonna have to read this in detail.

 

 

Quote

 

Investigating time scales of correlation between host and microbiomes

To test whether the congruence found with PACo for both foraging data and host phylogeny fit with a model of co-diversification, beta diversity through time analysis (BDTT)⁹ was applied to the microbiome data. BDTT analysis samples the bacterial phylogeny at given time intervals, providing a correlation profile between the bacterial taxa and corresponding metadata at different phylogenetic resolutions. Profiles that show high correlation coefficients further back in evolutionary time indicate that more ancient bacterial lineages are driving the observed correlation. In contrast, profiles with high correlation coefficients at more recent dates but low correlation further back in time signify that recent bacterial diversification is responsible for the similarity between the microbiome and metadata.

 

 

(Dis just got interestin)

 

[darthgently]

27 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

They seem, instead, to suggest the host evolution, diet and biome affect the gut bacteria... although I wonder if they even considered the question I posed (effectively mutual cooperative evolution or hand-in-hand evolution or micro-biome assisted evolutionary adaptive radiation)

Yes, there seems to be quite a bit of resistance to the idea that the mechanism could work both ways.  But one thing is certain, Kerbals have somehow incorporated Tardigrades Kardigrades into their microbiome as it is the only thing that could explain their natural space abilities

Edited April 17, 2022 by darthgently

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

3 minutes ago, darthgently said:

Kardigrades

 

HAH!

[darthgently]

Just now, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

 

HAH!

Ok, not to toot my own horn too loud, but kardigrade research needs to be in the tech tree even if only in a mod.  Unlocking would give the kerbs the ability to hibernate without high tech and survive EVA atmospheric deorbits even better

[Jacke]

Talk about hitting animals on the road....

I was very lucky.  All the years and kilometres I drove for the Canadian Forces, never hit anything.  I have good night sight and whether on the road with headlights or off-road without I could see where I was driving.  But this story I heard from my parents about a young couple.

Starts bad.  They were partying with friends and there was a portable hot tub.  Husband goes to check the hookup and gets electrocuted and dies.

After about 6 months, the now widow was finally starting to become social.  Was out visiting friends, that night was being driven home with another couple.  She was in the middle of the front bench seat.

Hit something on road, deer or moose.  Animal comes through the windshield and kills the widow.

Night road-strikes are serious matters and can kill.  @Gargamel, 3 in 1 year.  Dude, you are so lucky.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Jacke