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

livescience.com

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

#81

Post by exe34 »

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…

> it creates a false picture and it kills the imagination.

this reminds me of a certain voting population that think male and female are very simple XY and XX things and nothing else exists.

unfortunately a lot of people take dumbed down models and mistake the map for the terrain.

I'm not sure there's a cure for it - I have cousins who went through the same schooling and came out with very different abilities to generalise.

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

#82

Post by culi »

BrenBarn wrote: post #18

> Upon examining the internal structure of the fossilized Prototaxites, the researchers found that its interior was made up of a series of tubes Who knew the internet evolved millions of years ago?

it's called the wood wide web (seriously)

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

#83

Post by andrewflnr »

hydrogen7800 wrote: post #74

Discussions about classifying the domains of life aside, this article implies that there was, or could have been entire domains that are now extinct. Is this the case?

That's really hard to answer without tackling the classification question head on. Do you mean groups that "would have" been considered a domain if humans had been around at the time? Or groups that are in some sense different from other domains to the same degree those domains are from each other?

Whether we tag something as a domain also depends on its abundance and/or visibility. I bet if you take dug into microorganisms, you'd find tons that are as different from plants and animals as plants and animals are fun each other. But they all tend to get lumped in as "protists" or something because... we kinda don't care. I wouldn't be surprised if we somehow found out there were a lot of extinct critters in equivalent situations.

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

#84

Post by calibas »

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…

I'm not arguing that animal isn't a useful term, but if you're dividing eukaryotes into the major groups, it's not one of them.

> 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 negatively, or impedes the scientists studying genetic lineages?

Sure, where does kelp fit in? How about slime molds?

Also, I'm not suggesting we teach children all the nuance of phylogeny. I'm suggesting we don't teach a version that we've proven to be objectively wrong.

Eventually, the four-kingdoms system will go away, and it will sit next to the "animal, vegetable, mineral" system in the annals of scientific history.

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

#85

Post by someone7x »

adrian_b wrote: post #40
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…

When classifying living beings, a single classification criterion is not good enough. One classification criterion is descendance from a common ancestor, i.e. cladistic classification. In many cases this is the most useful classification criterion, because the living beings grouped in a class defined by having a common ancestor share a lot of characteristics inherited from their common ancestor, so when using a name…

As an unscientific layperson this was a riveting analysis, thanks for interesting reading.

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

#87

Post by macintux »

jon_richards wrote: post #47
kruffalon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my limited experience (being a child and raising one child) I would say that the problem is more that we (as adults) pretend that the simplified thing is the whole picture. Every time someone told me: "this is a simplified version to give you a basic understanding and later you will be able to learn more accurate versions" that was tremendously helpful and sometimes it sparked my curiosity and motivated me to lo…

When I moved to the US in 3rd grade, I was marked wrong for putting negative numbers as answers on a math test. The correct answer was "You can't subtract a larger number from a smaller number".

I got into an argument with my science teacher in 4th or 5th grade about whether rivers could flow north, because on a globe, north is up.

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

#88

Post by xdavidliu »

mmooss wrote: post #17
dragonwriter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Single cell eukaryotes also exist. Yes, "with eukarya containing all multicellular organisms" does not mean "all eukarya are multicellular organisms" it means "multicellular organisms are a subset of eukarya". > Is it strictly true that there are no multicellular prokaryotes (what they call bacteria) or archaea? First off, "prokaryotes (what they call bacteria)" is incorrect. Both archaea and bacteria, in the three…

> Both archaea and bacteria, in the three-domain model referenced in the article, are prokaryotes. I suppose it depends on which model you use, and as discussed they seem to vary and be in flux right now, but the three domain model I learned was prokaryotes, archaea, and eukaryotes - the first two being different domains. > Yes, "with eukarya containing all multicellular organisms" does not mean "all eukarya are mult…

> We agree. I don't grasp your point?

your original comment didn't refute the quote, but one needs to squint hard to see that you didn't refute it.

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

#89

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

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…

Would you also propose we skip over the Bohr model of the atom and teach Schrödinger to ten year olds?

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

#90

Post by 1970-01-01 »

verisimi wrote: post #54
intsunny wrote: post #52

The article about the study writes: `The study has not yet been peer-reviewed.` We should just stop reading the article then and there. This is a major method of how a single study can perpetuate fake science and fake news.

> This is a major method of how a single study can perpetuate fake science and fake news. It's a feature, not a bug.

Clickbait is a bug tagged with WON'T FIX
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