The Biology, Agriculture, and Paleontology thread

Ah, good old forest elephants, who have ancestry of all 4 elephantid GENERA. Mostly Loxodonta, with introgression of Elephas, Palaeoloxodon, AND Mammuthus.

It's almost like it's how speciation works.

Clearly an extensive spending of academic resources is required to investigate such fascinating topics. Instead of, I don't know, studies that might give hints as to how to avoid them going extinct.

Edited by Bexlerfu on Mar 25th 2024 at 7:23:49 PM

Never forget that we got the key piece for PCR by just looking at deep sea bacteria, and other scientists decades later using that information for something else.

Those aren't different things, though. Species phylogeny is a record of how a given population has adapted to its environment, what it has in common with other populations and what needs and features are unique, all of which is relevant information when we try to determine what that species requires to survive.

Oh? How so?

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Mar 29th 2024 at 11:11:07 AM

A bit late, but from last page:

...Huh.

When I think of hybrid animals, I always tend to think of ones between mammals...despite the fact that crossbreeding of plants is undoubtedly one of the most important feats in human history.

Thanks for reminding me of their existence.

Edited by dRoy on Apr 2nd 2024 at 9:14:12 PM

About elephant hybridization: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1720554115

Elephants are not racist. An elephant is an elephant to another elephant.

There is also evidence of the lion and snow leopard lineages having hybridized after their split from their closest living relatives (leopard and tiger respectively), to the point it shows up in their genomes: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4691742/

Edited by Eriorguez on Apr 3rd 2024 at 1:58:42 PM

I apologize to everyone who may find this question weird, but it's been bugging me too much to not seek out an answer for.

How do the females of nonhuman primates manage assuming a sitting posture on tree barks, soil or any other similar natural surface without scraping, irritating or contaminating their genitalia through contact with the surface they're sitting on, which is probably not smooth and of dubious cleanliness? This isn't a problem for humans and certain early hominids after the invention of clothing (which by some estimates may have been as early as 3 mya), since they are either already covering that part or can simply put a piece of sufficiently thick cloth (or animal hide) on the relevant surface.

Yeah I never said investigating actually new species, especially extremophiles that might have not been isolated yet, was uninteresting in any way, shape or form. Although the above case, just like Fleming and the penicillin, is often significantly twisted to make for a better story: I figure that whoever was the first person to have the idea of a PCR cycle would eventually have looked into various species of hot springs bacteria to check whether one had a polymerase that could withstand the temperatures required to separate DNA strands.

I am saying that spending ludicrous amounts of time, money and peer-reviewers' time on one of the most well-known animal species on Earth just because some people want to have "those who discovered a new species of elephants" on their resume is dumb.

It's a battle of academic egos that will do nothing for the actual issue - conservation. It's not that different from those ornithologists who want to be the ones to have personally seen the largest number of bird species in the wild - and are ready to travel over hundreds of kilometers in their car, carbon emissions be damned, to be on the other side of the country and add one more name to their list.

I’m going to make a blind guess and presume that their fur/hair offers a level of protection, as it should act as a form of cushion and/or debris filter.

If I’m right then it might be that humans loosing full-body hair has gone hand in hand with us developing clothes.

I don't think that's actually a risk - penises are covered in skin and hairs can collect their own dirt (poop, mainly), so I doubt that we are worse off.

Yeah, that was what I had been suspecting too.

I'm strictly talking about females here.

Currently reading Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. In addition to main theme about brain and psychology, the book is also introducing me to several concepts and facts I never knew before.

Just to name two, this is the first time I'm hearing about "allostasis", or the process of maintaining homeostasis through the adaptive change of the organism's internal environment to meet perceived and anticipated demands.

Also, how come I never even heard of this creature called amphioxus/lancelet until now? It's so fascinating, as described in its Wikipedia page:

(Also, this is the first time I'm hearing of the term "exaptation" XP)

Lancellets were everywhere during my Bio degree, in anything involving vertebrates. Still, they are the most conservative living Chordatans AFAIK, and, all in all, sea squirts of all things are more closely related to vertebrates.

Heh, still remember when I got their approach to kidneys wrong in an exam back in 2012. Fascinating brainless, heartless animals.

Silly question, is the reason there's less recorded single cellular species than multicellular because it's an absolute pain to find and record them?

There are many books in my (now massive...) reading list, and at least a dozen of them are about biology.

In particular, I hope to FINALLY read or at least start following titles:

• On the Origin of Species by, you know who.
• The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins
• Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, by Bruce Bagemihl.

In particular, I think Biological Exuberance would be a perfect book to start reading during the Pride Month this year.

Bit of a theoretical question: In an environment where there are frequent, profound food shortages that last long enough to starve most animals to death but are followed by full recoveries, how would predatory flightless birds, placental mammals and marsupials be affected? My sense is that in such an environment, taxa with more flexible reproduction schedules and lower food requirements would have an advantage.

How long are the shortages and what causes them? Such an area might have a lot of migratory animals or ones with long hibernation cycles.

Up to a year. It's a group of volcanoes that every few millennia flood the islands with lava, often also with acid rain and ash. It's not easy to get from one island to the other.

Sounds like a good environment for birds, amphibious animals and a bunch of animals that hibernate during eruption periods.

Marsupials generally do well in unpredictable, occasionally extreme environments. Less investment in their shorter pregnancies and they can repopulate quickly with a 'production line' of -developing embryo in the womb -developing joey in the pouch -baby cared for outside the pouch (kangaroos in particular can 'freeze' developing embryos to wait out periods of drought).

Edited by Gaiazun on Apr 28th 2024 at 4:28:47 AM

Not necessarily, it's mostly because the term "species" loses a lot of its meaning when you look at single cell organisms.

Being able to cross-breed is a major part of what defines a species, and many single cell organisms reproduce only by mitosis. And then you have some bacteria that seem to be able to transfer genetic materials to other bacteria that have little in common with them.

I think "strain" is more commonly used. But if you look at E. coli, there are a ton of subcategories that have pretty much no equivalent when compared to animals (including several very nasty ones - EHEC, ETEC...).

Usually in those situations it is less about being flexible with your reproduction and more about being flexible with your food sources. Opportunistic species fare better when their ecosystem is disturbed, while specialist ones are much more vulnerable.

Like, considering what you describe, a scavenging species (no matter its taxa) would probably get through the rough patch quite well.

Edited by Bexlerfu on Apr 28th 2024 at 6:44:53 PM

Well, cooling lava flows don't provide food sources of any kind (other than charcoal), and can last for several years. So the ability to quickly reproduce would be important to get a leg-up on other species, once food returns.