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There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)

eukaryotewritesblog.com

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Re: There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)

#51

Post by ajuc »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #50

This is also a thing with mushrooms. The Common Earthball [1] f.x. is more related to a Porcino [2] than to a Meadow Puffball [3] which itself is related to the Field Mushroom [4]. Seems like genes are more like a toolbox where evolution takes from what it needs. After all we share a significant amount of common genes with totally different animals like flies. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scleroderma_citrinum 2:…

Interesting. I couldn't understand for a moment why this should be surprising. Then I remembered English has 2 words for "grzyby" - fungi and mushrooms. Is that it?

Re: There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)

#52

Post by harrisi »

metanomicon wrote: post #43

Shape seems to be a very superficial trait. One need only consider an elephant's trunk. In terms of shape and size, it has more in common with my leg, but ask anyone, "What is an elephant's trunk?" and they will immediately tell you "A nose!" When it comes to examining various lifeforms and fossil remains to determine ancestory, it seems to be more a matter of homology - the relationships between parts. Whether it's…

I typed out a lot about how I've never compared my nose or leg to an elephant's trunk, but it seemed beside the point. The general idea was it's interesting to think of how we identify things, and this comment reminded me of Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?[0][1] and the idea of psychic continuity.

[0]: https://youtu.be/cv66xFD7s7g

[1]: side note: this documentary was pretty influential to my interest in compilers (specifically lexing and parsing), and is an interesting watch.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)

#53

Post by ajuc »

yesenadam wrote: post #13

Well, I thought this was a fascinating and well-written article. p.s. I learnt not long ago that there's no such 'thing' as an antelope: "The term antelope is used to refer to many species of even-toed ruminant that are indigenous to various regions in Africa and Eurasia. Antelope comprise a wastebasket taxon (miscellaneous group) within the family Bovidae, encompassing all Old World ruminants that are not bovines, c…

Biology is what happens when you try to decompile code written in assembler into OO language.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)

#54

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

ajuc wrote: post #51
2-718-281-828 wrote: post #50

This is also a thing with mushrooms. The Common Earthball [1] f.x. is more related to a Porcino [2] than to a Meadow Puffball [3] which itself is related to the Field Mushroom [4]. Seems like genes are more like a toolbox where evolution takes from what it needs. After all we share a significant amount of common genes with totally different animals like flies. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scleroderma_citrinum 2:…

Interesting. I couldn't understand for a moment why this should be surprising. Then I remembered English has 2 words for "grzyby" - fungi and mushrooms. Is that it?

no - a mushroom is a large fruiting body of a fungi. if you want to know what I mean look at the pictures.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)

#56

Post by Zababa »

yesenadam wrote: post #13

Well, I thought this was a fascinating and well-written article. p.s. I learnt not long ago that there's no such 'thing' as an antelope: "The term antelope is used to refer to many species of even-toed ruminant that are indigenous to various regions in Africa and Eurasia. Antelope comprise a wastebasket taxon (miscellaneous group) within the family Bovidae, encompassing all Old World ruminants that are not bovines, c…

A good reminder that the map is not the territory. Lately I've started to see more and more "categories" in general as a very human construct, probably made to save on processing power when thinking about things. Reality is hard and very complex and you can't be thinking about all the details all the time.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)

#58

Post by jwdunne »

Groxx wrote: post #42
Rebelgecko wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between a ruminant and an ungulate?

Broadly speaking: a ruminant is a subset of ungulates. Well, technically too. Ungulates have hooves (horses, pigs, camels, cows, etc). Ruminants are ungulates that eat grasses in a somewhat unique way, by partially fermenting it in their gut, and horking it back up for another good chew or three (cows, giraffes, deer, antelopes, etc). And I say "broadly" and "somewhat" because, to intentionally misrepresent the artic…

And killer whales. Big, carnivorous and hooved with lots of teeth. Those are ungulates too.

Interestingly enough, Judaism uses rumination, in part, to determine whether an animal is okay to eat. It was called “chewing their cud”.

Pigs don’t do this and that’s why they’re not kosher.

I suspect this was the inspiration for pork being haram in Islam but it’s explicitly prohibited by name, rather than by property.

I’m not Jewish or by any means religious but I got curious one day and that’s how I learned what ruminants were (and even toed ungulates from the split hooves rule).

EDIT: clarity on comment regarding cetaceans as ungulates

Re: There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)

#59

Post by svara »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #49
svara wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of evolution as an optimization algorithm that finds organisms for ecological niches. The monophyletic grouping approach tells you something about the path through solution space taken by the algorithm. The paraphyletic approach instead focuses on properties of the solutions. I think it's fine to think of those as equally valid.

> I think it's fine to think of those as equally valid. Only for extremely limited purposes. Both approaches are about properties of the organism as it currently exists. The paraphyletic approach will let you know about similarity in maybe three dimensions of a ten-thousand-dimensional space. The monophyletic approach captures the other 9,997.

> Both approaches are about properties of the organism as it currently exists.

Not really, no. The monophyletic approach does that only indirectly.

Think of marsupial/mammal convergence. Is it really wrong to think of marsupial mice and mammalian mice as a somehow similar kind of thing?

Or consider secondary unicellularity. Losing multicellularity is as drastic a change as can be, and it makes no sense to try to understand the ecology of a unicellular organism by grouping it with its multicellular ancestors.

Living things are not the way they are just because of their evolutionary history, but also because of the ecological niche that evolution optimized them for.

When similar niches are filled by organisms that are not closely related, that often leads to similar solutions, which is interesting in its own right.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)

#60

Post by rusanu »

> Why don’t more plants evolve towards the “grass” strategy?

Grasses have a trick: Grass blades grow at the base of the blade and not from elongated stem tips. This low growth point evolved in response to grazing animals and allows grasses to be grazed or mown regularly without severe damage to the plant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaceae#Description

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