The evolutionary pressures result in some pretty complicated host interactions.
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Evolutionary chaos as butterflies, wasps, and viruses have a three-way war
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I'm not a scientist but I know how this plays out; it's obvious.
The strongest organism evolves into a crab.
The strongest organism evolves into a crab.
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“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
Douglas Adams
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Was watching the Alien movie again and discussing with a friend alternative ways of dealing with face-huggers - a very large dose of PKF designed for them seems to be the logical choice
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I almost feel bad... all this war going back and forth then I come along and squish them and it's all over. Maybe not the virus.
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Life ... finds a way.
Basically, if you give complex (very complex) buckets of millions of chemical reactions, lots of time and just a little bit of external energy, even more complex things happen.
Basically, if you give complex (very complex) buckets of millions of chemical reactions, lots of time and just a little bit of external energy, even more complex things happen.
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In case anyone is wondering, I am pretty sure we have seen the birth of a new meme.
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Murder hornets...
Edit: I know they're different, but at this point... Not really, lol
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So, a complicated game of rock, paper, scissors with a dose of 2 on 1 for a good measure as well.
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'
Or the porpoise.
As has been long said, "If porpoises ever develop opposable thumbs, we're screwed",
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I mean, that’s where my mind went.
And then it went to Tucker Carlson. He is kind of like a parasitic wasp on society, right?
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infernal666
Ars Praefectus
Cats,if cats ever develop opposable thumbs,we're screwed,porpoises can be handled with helicopter dropped depth charges,cats however are fucking everywhere.
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Look up polydactylism in cats. Very prevalent mutation. Cats are too lazy and pampered to be a threat.
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infernal666
Ars Praefectus
My large fat lazy cat has that,her paws and claws wrap around things,as a result I keep her claws well trimmed,it's the small black one I'd be worried about,she'd cheerfully off all of humanity if she could operate a can opener.
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Well, at least they have a porpoise in life...
Edit: Couple days ago I read a short book by Cixin Lui about a dinosaur/ant alliance cretaceous civilization that was pretty damn cool. Quick read and as scientifically imaginative as everything else I've read by him.
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I can see that, at least if he was more evolutionarilly designed to be not a fatass, lol. I'd say he's more of a genetically engineered cross between a wasp and the ooze that leaks out of the syphilitic, gangrenous nut-sack of the equine half of a 2$ mexican donkey show.
Edit: The visual reference to said nutsack being Mitch McConnel's face.
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One way this could be more horrific is if there was a cordyceps fungus parasitizing the wasp.....
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Interesting stuff, and probably part of a process of horizontal transmission. While this article does not mention them, polydnaviruses are another relationship between parasitic wasps and viruses.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydnavirus
These viruses once plagued lep larvae ("caterpillars"), but made the hop to the wasps parasitizing the the caterpillars. Over evolutionary time, viruses that impacted caterpillar defenses but not the wasp defenses were selected for, as this let the virus spread farther without killing it's mobile wasp secondary host. The relationship was so successful that viral DNA eventually made its way into the wasp genome, and is expressed in the venom glands. When the wasp injects a caterpillar with an egg, it also gives the caterpillar a little cold to help overwhelm its defenses so the baby wasp can feed in safety. This relationship is so beneficial that it has developed independently in at least two separate lineages of wasp, the ichneumonidae and the braconidae.
The bottom line is that horizontal gene transfer shuffling DNA between lineages is nothing new.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydnavirus
These viruses once plagued lep larvae ("caterpillars"), but made the hop to the wasps parasitizing the the caterpillars. Over evolutionary time, viruses that impacted caterpillar defenses but not the wasp defenses were selected for, as this let the virus spread farther without killing it's mobile wasp secondary host. The relationship was so successful that viral DNA eventually made its way into the wasp genome, and is expressed in the venom glands. When the wasp injects a caterpillar with an egg, it also gives the caterpillar a little cold to help overwhelm its defenses so the baby wasp can feed in safety. This relationship is so beneficial that it has developed independently in at least two separate lineages of wasp, the ichneumonidae and the braconidae.
The bottom line is that horizontal gene transfer shuffling DNA between lineages is nothing new.
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SubWoofer2
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Vonnegut's Galapagos considers this. In a light touch which would delight those who enjoy Douglas Adams and Robert Sheckley, the porpoises back away from the possibility. They attribute humankind's woes to big brains and the consequences of being able to exercise them.
So it goes.
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Matt Ridley's book, The Red Queen, changed my perspective on evolution.
I used to think of evolution as primarily a race between predator and prey to become stronger, faster, or smarter. That's true in part, but the book shows how much evolution has been driven by parasitism and the fight against it, on multiple levels. Parasites have parasites that also have parasites, and everything from the immune system to sexual reproduction is part of this endless war.
I used to think of evolution as primarily a race between predator and prey to become stronger, faster, or smarter. That's true in part, but the book shows how much evolution has been driven by parasitism and the fight against it, on multiple levels. Parasites have parasites that also have parasites, and everything from the immune system to sexual reproduction is part of this endless war.
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Lots more parasitic relationships here: http://dailyparasite.blogspot.com/ Now off to try to have breakfast …
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Don't the Aliens reproduce in part by absorbing DNA? Wouldn't they just absorb a PKF gene introduced, thus making them stronger?
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At the most fundamental level, it's not the different species that are competing for survival, but the genes themselves. A gene couldn't care whether it's being propagated by a wasp, caterpillar or virus, as long as it's being reproduced and spread. (And of course it's just a string of base-pairs, so metaphors involving intentionality need to be applied carefully.)
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Probably not. Single-gene traits, like attached/unattached earlobes in people, are pretty rare. Most traits are the result of a constellation of genes. It's the traits that see selection pressure, not the individual genes that comprise them.
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Totally unrelated, but this would be a perfect sentence at the end of pretty much every news broadcast ever.
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As a biologist, I feel confident in saying that we won't need to wait half a million years for the situation to be more complex than it is now. In fact, I would assert that it is already way, way more complex than we can currently imagine.
These creatures are also host to other domains and kingdoms of predatory, parasitic, commensal and/or symbiotic microbiota. What we are seeing with this fascinating hymenoptera/lepidoptera/virus interaction might even be a proxy war run between fungal and bacterial warlords
These creatures are also host to other domains and kingdoms of predatory, parasitic, commensal and/or symbiotic microbiota. What we are seeing with this fascinating hymenoptera/lepidoptera/virus interaction might even be a proxy war run between fungal and bacterial warlords
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Some of that sounds a little confused -- e.g., the linked article doesn't say anything about the viruses originally infecting caterpillars, and I'm pretty sure the viral particles are produced in the wasp ovaries, not the "venom glands".
The full story is even weirder, though, since since some of the viral DNA that has been incorporated into the braconid parasitic wasp genome has been found in some lepidopteran genomes (including the monarch butterfly), where it has been repurposed to defend against infection by a different set of viruses. Or, as this 2015 article by Ed Yong in The Atlantic put it:
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"parasitoid killing factor,"
Now that sounds like something I'd love to have handy
Now that sounds like something I'd love to have handy
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