10-12-2016, 03:45 PM
It's great that everyone is so enthusiastic about figuring out how the poor Muuh do it, but I'm now realizing that my previous post wasn't very clear at all. I meant to point at sexual reproduction as a strategy used by everything from marigolds to, well, squids. It's generally considered to be "expensive," not in terms of the sex act alone, but as an overall summation of the incredible amount of energy/resources that go into producing viable offspring. In comparison, budding, for example, doesn't require much. I don't even know if budding feels good, although sexual reproduction doesn't always feel good either. Sad face.
Budding has it's uses (just ask a Hydra), especially if you're energetically/resource challenged, but it doesn't exactly rock the genetic variability angle, and, anyway, I haven't seen anything on OA which would suggest that the Muuh are into budding. Yet.
But I did see this today:
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.v...Millennia/
Lateral Gene Transfer, aka Horizontal Gene Transfer. Okay, I'm obsessed with it. I'll just come clean. In the past it's been discussed as a prokaryotic thing, but there's more and more evidence of LGT-type activity in eukaryotes/multi-cellular creatures. Like humans. And, yeah, I am seeing part of the discussion taking place in terms of disease vectors in humans, and, yeah, I'm also obsessed with how LGT seems to undermine conventional definitions of "species." I'm willing to admit all of that. But still, for the energetically challenged, it might offer survival advantages that aren't applicable to a Garden World context. Whether it's a strategy that evolves "naturally" on Muuhome (or elsewhere), or it's been provolved into the picture, or the Muuh did it to themselves just so they could have options.... Hey, they could even make it feel good.
Ooohhh, and here's something which suggests that, without LGT/HGT, arthropods might never have been able to wreak havoc on the plant world, which they definitely do:
http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/6/1785.full
There's also the further implication that LGT/HGT might have come to the fore as a relevant to the process of natural selection in herbivorous arthropods precisely because plants are so successful at fending off herbivores. Actually, plants can be incredibly manipulative. Don't fall in love with a plant.
Anyway, talk about undermining conventional notions of how natural selection works in eukaryotes.... Well, only if it's a strategy that's used more often than it seems to be used on Earth....
Hey, what if the Muuh (or any other non-prokaryotes) never even crossed the Darwinian Threshold:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043529/
?
Or what if they straddled it? With so many legs, it shouldn't a problem.....
Budding has it's uses (just ask a Hydra), especially if you're energetically/resource challenged, but it doesn't exactly rock the genetic variability angle, and, anyway, I haven't seen anything on OA which would suggest that the Muuh are into budding. Yet.
But I did see this today:
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.v...Millennia/
Lateral Gene Transfer, aka Horizontal Gene Transfer. Okay, I'm obsessed with it. I'll just come clean. In the past it's been discussed as a prokaryotic thing, but there's more and more evidence of LGT-type activity in eukaryotes/multi-cellular creatures. Like humans. And, yeah, I am seeing part of the discussion taking place in terms of disease vectors in humans, and, yeah, I'm also obsessed with how LGT seems to undermine conventional definitions of "species." I'm willing to admit all of that. But still, for the energetically challenged, it might offer survival advantages that aren't applicable to a Garden World context. Whether it's a strategy that evolves "naturally" on Muuhome (or elsewhere), or it's been provolved into the picture, or the Muuh did it to themselves just so they could have options.... Hey, they could even make it feel good.
Ooohhh, and here's something which suggests that, without LGT/HGT, arthropods might never have been able to wreak havoc on the plant world, which they definitely do:
http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/6/1785.full
There's also the further implication that LGT/HGT might have come to the fore as a relevant to the process of natural selection in herbivorous arthropods precisely because plants are so successful at fending off herbivores. Actually, plants can be incredibly manipulative. Don't fall in love with a plant.
Anyway, talk about undermining conventional notions of how natural selection works in eukaryotes.... Well, only if it's a strategy that's used more often than it seems to be used on Earth....
Hey, what if the Muuh (or any other non-prokaryotes) never even crossed the Darwinian Threshold:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043529/
?
Or what if they straddled it? With so many legs, it shouldn't a problem.....