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Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

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Re: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

#21

Post by alexey-salmin »

calibas wrote: post #16
mmooss wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The exact list is up for debate, and currently undergoing change. My strong impression is that even the roots of the tree are debated, with competing models that often change. > The four-kingdom system should have died out decades ago First, hopefully not! :) Second, I think it's used because it's the last stable model. Third, it's a model that the public can understand - theres no point in even trying to use "Arch…

Children can memorize all 50 US state capitals, they can memorize a handful of scientific names. If we really wanted to, we could teach them a much more accurate view of the tree of life. Also, I don't think the four-kingdom system has been taught in schools for a while? I went to high school in the late 90s and it wasn't taught then. It's strange to see people promoting it online in 2025. If adults want to remain ig…

I strongly disagree. It's necessary to teach oversimplified things to small minds, even oversimplified to the extent of being incorrect.

It's unlikely you understand relativistic mechanics unless you learn and practice Newtonian for a few years, then many people stop there and never go for relativism.

It's unlikely you understand Peano axioms without first spending years just working with numbers, completely disregarding the formal foundations. Then many people stop there and never study the formal math.

It's unlikely you understand electron configurations and orbitals without first imagining electrons orbiting the nucleus like earth is orbiting the sun. And even that part you won't understand until you master the false concepts of "sunrise" and "sunset".

You can't climb the ladder without stepping on the first step. I've been studying for many years, observing people around me, I also did a fair share of teaching myself. The purist approach that avoids oversimplifications inevitably leads to disaster. There are maybe 1-2 kids in the class who can "jump the ladder", the rest are left on the ground helpless and confused.

Another curious observation: when I found myself in that role of a kid jumping the ladder in a purist class, I did that by secretly building a false ladder of my own. When professor said "Banach space" I would imagine Euclidean or Hilbert spaces and would get correct intuition half the time. The other half I would remember and use it to understand the difference. Most of others suffered dearly, unable to grasp anything at all, seeing the glass bead game instead of vectors and functions. And we were 20 years old back then, not even that small.

Re: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

#22

Post by sashank_1509 »

bbor wrote: post #20
calibas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children can memorize all 50 US state capitals, they can memorize a handful of scientific names. If we really wanted to, we could teach them a much more accurate view of the tree of life. Also, I don't think the four-kingdom system has been taught in schools for a while? I went to high school in the late 90s and it wasn't taught then. It's strange to see people promoting it online in 2025. If adults want to remain ig…

I'm a huge cladistics fan, but insisting that "animal" isn't a useful term is pretty out there, IMHO. Certainly we can (and do!) teach cladistics in high school biology, but does your ideal world have baby books titled with one of the mentioned names...? More personally speaking: what am I missing out by using the four kingdoms? Like, how could that possibly ever backfire in a way that slightly impacts my life negati…

Why not go the other way, what are you missing if you don’t learnt four kingdoms. Why should that be taught at all.

One obvious reason it should not be taught, if it is wrong then it kills curiosity and imagination by giving us a neat story we think is true. In a way it has the same negative effect religion can have but to a smaller degree. Why does the earth exist, because god made it kills all spirit of enquiry. This is the same problem I have with the big bang. This is another theory that kills inquiry. Similar example:

Re: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

#23

Post by bbor »

I saw this on bsky a few days ago and was fascinated, so glad to see it made its way here! I had this question that went unanswered, so hopefully there's some experts/fellow musers here:

Why grow up if you don't need photosynthesis?

From my perusal of The Literature (AKA an amazing Wikipedia article + the paper discussed in this link), we have a few strong theories about the prototaxites:

1. They fed off decaying matter in the soil through a vast network of mycelia/roots, and didn't photosynthesize.

2. They grew large, trunk-like protrusions, but without any branches or leaves (that were fossilized, at least). Like, way, way taller than the bugs, moss, and short weird proto-grass around at the time.

3. These protrusions were regularly burrowed into by aforementioned bugs, which surely was a major health risk.

4. Even before this analysis, they've always been something of an oddball compared to contemporary life -- so everything's on the table, so to speak.

Given those facts, I'm pretty stumped as to what evolutionary pressures might have driven them to grow upwards. At first I considered spore (seed?) dispersal, but mushrooms seem to get along just fine without towering above everything else, and I don't think wind speeds were way lower or anything. Anyone here have any better guesses?

Re: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

#24

Post by clort »

bbor wrote: post #23

I saw this on bsky a few days ago and was fascinated, so glad to see it made its way here! I had this question that went unanswered, so hopefully there's some experts/fellow musers here: Why grow up if you don't need photosynthesis? From my perusal of The Literature (AKA an amazing Wikipedia article + the paper discussed in this link), we have a few strong theories about the prototaxites: 1. They fed off decaying mat…

When you feed off decaying matter, hosting a colony of bugs which go out daily, bring back food and leave waste all around your environment sounds like a pretty good strategy when you don't have any way to move to better pastures?

Re: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

#25

Post by mjan22640 »

mmooss wrote: post #12
calibas wrote: post #9

> with eukarya containing all multicellular organisms within the four kingdoms of fungi, animals, plants and protists. This bugs me so much. The four-kingdom system should have died out decades ago, it's absurdly wrong. For one thing, fungi and animals should be together (opisthokonts) if you're dividing eukaryotes into the major groups. If you consider genetics, there's no such thing as "protists", they're just a wh…

> The exact list is up for debate, and currently undergoing change. My strong impression is that even the roots of the tree are debated, with competing models that often change. > The four-kingdom system should have died out decades ago First, hopefully not! :) Second, I think it's used because it's the last stable model. Third, it's a model that the public can understand - theres no point in even trying to use "Arch…

> Who can understand and remember that?

Anybody who is interested in it

Re: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

#26

Post by 9dev »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #22
bbor wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a huge cladistics fan, but insisting that "animal" isn't a useful term is pretty out there, IMHO. Certainly we can (and do!) teach cladistics in high school biology, but does your ideal world have baby books titled with one of the mentioned names...? More personally speaking: what am I missing out by using the four kingdoms? Like, how could that possibly ever backfire in a way that slightly impacts my life negati…

Why not go the other way, what are you missing if you don’t learnt four kingdoms. Why should that be taught at all. One obvious reason it should not be taught, if it is wrong then it kills curiosity and imagination by giving us a neat story we think is true. In a way it has the same negative effect religion can have but to a smaller degree. Why does the earth exist, because god made it kills all spirit of enquiry. Th…

Well in very practical terms, it gives you a way to name things you see in the forest, to figure out what is edible, and to understand what has a sentience of its own, similar to yours.

I don’t mean to be snarky, but it seems like you’re very removed from the reality of normal people and parents out there.

Re: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

#27

Post by renewiltord »

calibas wrote: post #9

> with eukarya containing all multicellular organisms within the four kingdoms of fungi, animals, plants and protists. This bugs me so much. The four-kingdom system should have died out decades ago, it's absurdly wrong. For one thing, fungi and animals should be together (opisthokonts) if you're dividing eukaryotes into the major groups. If you consider genetics, there's no such thing as "protists", they're just a wh…

One of the great wonders of clustering algorithms is that no matter what k > n you choose, you can construct k clusters. Then we can argue about the clusters and about k. It is said that when Humanity discovers the One True K, the taxonomy will disappear and be replaced by a different one.

Re: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

#28

Post by sshine »

qbxk wrote: post #3

> Prototaxites did not contain chitin, a major building block of fungal cell walls and a hallmark of the fungal kingdom. The Prototaxites fossils instead appeared to contain chemicals similar to lignin, which is found in the wood and bark of plants. ... best considered a member of a previously undescribed, entirely extinct group of eukaryotes So these are the ancestors of Groot? or Ents? and all manner of "animated t…

Protogroots

Re: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

#29

Post by johnisgood »

9dev wrote: post #26
sashank_1509 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not go the other way, what are you missing if you don’t learnt four kingdoms. Why should that be taught at all. One obvious reason it should not be taught, if it is wrong then it kills curiosity and imagination by giving us a neat story we think is true. In a way it has the same negative effect religion can have but to a smaller degree. Why does the earth exist, because god made it kills all spirit of enquiry. Th…

Well in very practical terms, it gives you a way to name things you see in the forest, to figure out what is edible, and to understand what has a sentience of its own, similar to yours. I don’t mean to be snarky, but it seems like you’re very removed from the reality of normal people and parents out there.

There is much more to figure out what is edible and what is not. Considering shrooms alone, it is much more "complicated", so much that there are specialists for that, even, but I agree, could be an useful skill, but not for people who do not even leave the city, I think.

However, they should know the basics such as "not eating potatoes (or its parts) that are green", and so forth, since that is something you run into even if you never leave the city. Food spoilage in general would be useful to teach, but that is the job of the parents, I would say. That said, my teachers in elementary school always used to tell me that they are our second parents. I can see where they were coming from.

Re: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

#30

Post by boxed »

calibas wrote: post #9

> with eukarya containing all multicellular organisms within the four kingdoms of fungi, animals, plants and protists. This bugs me so much. The four-kingdom system should have died out decades ago, it's absurdly wrong. For one thing, fungi and animals should be together (opisthokonts) if you're dividing eukaryotes into the major groups. If you consider genetics, there's no such thing as "protists", they're just a wh…

From what I've gathered it's been pretty clear for a while now that archea is basal to eucarya, meaning humans are archea.
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