I still cannot get over the wonder and mystery of what gall wasps can do to plants. This is bio-engineering! The wasp lays her egg and somehow the plant makes a structure that is not a fruit, it is not a seed, it is not a leaf or stem. It's a wholly recombinant architecture customized to the needs of the growing young larva. The plant provides food and shelter-- It's like a cancer, but with a purpose.
How did it evolve? How is it done!?
(Photo by Timothy Boomer, https://wildmacro.com/)
There is a great article producing "how did that evolve" and "what the hell is going on here" and a little "they can do that?" And a couple "wait, what's"
"Plant Cells of Different Species Can Swap Organelles"
"In grafted plants, shrunken chloroplasts can jump between species by slipping through unexpected gateways in cell walls."
https://www.quantamagazine.org/plant-cells-of-different-species-can-swap-organelles-20210120/
@sophieschmieg @kevinrns @futurebird
Now I've gotta learn more biology. :D
@sophieschmieg @leftfieldfarm @futurebird
Stealing is the wrong word.
A cell shrinks its own chloroplasts, the photosynthesis structures (!) down to a fraction of their useful size, like it always had the ability (what?) and opens a hole in its cell wall (what? WHAT?) large enough (what?) to pass these structures out.... and the OTHER SPECIES cell walls open up (what!?) And the structures allowing eating sunlight are INSTALLED (WHAT?)
A priori mutual life support. A PRIORI.
WHAT?!
@sophieschmieg @leftfieldfarm @futurebird
Just think about it, we HAVE NO IDEA how hive minds work. Insects organize the behavious of individual creatures to accomplish massive complex tasks, building bridges, carrying plant matter that can rot over great distanxes so it can be installed to rot in another place.
And this is a cell (A CELL) acting to preserve not just another family member, "here ya go mike" but to a different species.
@futurebird @sophieschmieg @leftfieldfarm
a bit. I used the example of the hive mind to highlight how motivation for action, and the process of determining WHAT action, and the process of communicating those complexities to millimeter scaled complexities represent inherent properties of life.
How does a hive mind determine a war would be bad, and standing in the way would help, and how distribute evenly . . . the NUMBER of choices diasplayed here astounds me.
@currentbias @futurebird @sophieschmieg @leftfieldfarm
Its hard to see, but the ants have a line of ants, just like the bigger termites ...
They made a lil DMZ
@futurebird @sophieschmieg @leftfieldfarm
Yeah, the hive mind has chemical structures that can transit various levels of instruction for action, sure, but a choice was made to not war in the ant gif, a choice was made to stop it by separation, and on and on up a GANTT diagram.
So the chemicals can transmit action, but how the mountain of choices was sifted to stimulate the chemical clues distributed, is the "huhhh whaaa?" of the behavior.
@sophieschmieg @leftfieldfarm @kevinrns @futurebird The streams are crossing in the most delightful way possible. From a couple of days ago:
Fascinating, wait what?
I knew nothing about this. This is sooo fascinating.
@futurebird
Aren't figs made like this too?
Figs... those sweet wonderful pockets of yummmm?!
@futurebird I would suspect a symbiosis here, in the sense the plant would not have evolved to do that unless there were some evolutionary benefit to the plant. Perhaps the wasp offers protection against other predators or infections by some means.
As a winemaker I've been observing and studying something similar in connection with the relationship between apples and grapes and endogenous yeasts which used to be called "wild" but the properties of which now seem anything but wild. These yeasts seem to grow inside the fruits because they survive a wash in tapwater.
When I crush locally sourced unsprayed apples to make natural cider, the endogenous yeasts also produce better tasting cider than cultivated wine yeasts based on comparative observation and tasting.
@futurebird Consider mitochondria.
Did we get infected with them?
Or did we absorb them to exploit their special oxygen-handling skills?
Now they're "organs" for our individual cells.
Similarly for chloroblasts in plants.
With some insect-plant relationships, we might wonder if they're really separate at all.
It's also pretty, like a fairy house.
@futurebird The science fiction species I'm writing are plant-people. Their "technology" is largely biohacking of their (and other plant) physiology.
A backpack? It's a living plant grafted to the host. A space ship? One of the People sacrificed themselves to be mutated into that vessel. Communication and transportation? "World trees" link colonies whose space-born seeds offer zero-risk expansion. #peirspapre #spapre
The complexity of life and its interactions will never cease to amaze.
@lawlznet @futurebird Well, and key point: consciously derived. The Zerg weren't really given a choice in the matter.
But don't worry, the evil snuck in with the #spapre goddess during the formation of the universe. But its goal is survival; hard to call that truly evil—except to the exclusion of all life which it sees as antithetical in the long-term. Parasitic, almost. But parasitic to universes.
(Life speeds up the "heat-death" of the universe… that evil sure takes a long view of things!)
@lawlznet @futurebird (with some internal knowledge not as yet shared)
👹 And wave functions… collapse.
@yewscion @futurebird I’m planning on swapping my instance over to something more conducive to long-form posting, to better share what I’ve got. Short answer: both.
I have a #Stellaris species collection + series of event chains (my favourite chain: archaeologists excavating an archaeologist excavation… yo dawg) as well as at least two novels planned. “Children of the People” (the term for orphans of war) and one covering the Awakening (to being a sentient species) and the first #spapre Avatar.
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
myrmepropagandist
Rob Bos
Analog AI
neville park
Permacultureandpolitics
Kevin Russell
Left Field Farm
Sophie Schmieg
CurrentBias
Barry Goldman
Mark Hughes
Chris Price
kechpaja
MacSmiley
Christopher Evans
secretsloth
Doxy_cycling, MPH MLS
AngrySexagenarian
maloki 🍍
ijo Stella
Mat-Su Monitor student paper
normen
gnarf
Canadian Curmudgeon
Richard Kay
Androcat
Supportive Tree-based lifeform
Edelruth, PBS Passport Holder
Rev. GothAlice
Ginnikin
Lawler Hix 
Claire Rodriguez
Floaty Birb
Mx. Luna Corbden 🐸
nebulos
Probably Paul
Pedro Quixote ‽ aka MultiVax
Karen Strickholm
Chuck