Elly PoretskySep 4
myrmepropagandist

Consider the alternate history where fungi never evolved the ability to digest lignin, the tough woody material found in many plants.

The period of time where plants could produce lignin, but fungi couldn't break it down resulted in the massive coal deposits found in the earth.

Some bacteria can break down lignin, but they require wet conditions to do this. This is what happens in the gut of termites.

So, of course, we can imagine an alternate history where termites rule the earth.

Sep 4 at 11:30amWeb
Show threadSleepyCatSep 4
@futurebird they could hardly do a worse job of it than we have
Show threadRupert V/Sep 4
@SleepyCat @futurebird I, for one, welcome our termite overlords etc. etc.
Show threadViolet MadderSep 4

@futurebird

OSU did a trench composting study where they claim to have been able to generate a material chemically similar to lignin through their compost process alone-- no burning. Very exciting sequestration & soil enrichment possibilities there.

Show threadMobile Suit LarrySep 4
@futurebird I remember some years back seeing that proposed as a Great Filter (for anyone unfamiliar, the unknown reason that the galaxy isn't full of interstellar civilizations) candidate. If nothing figures out how to digest it, all your carbon gets sequestered and your biosphere collapses. On the other hand, if you don't have that long gap between synthesis and decomposition, you don't build up a big reserve of easily extracted fossil fuels to kickstart industrialization with
Show threadMichael BuschSep 4

@funkula @futurebird

That particular suggestion is geochemically and technologically implausible.

Life on Earth survived right through the Cryogenian and volcanism eventually recycles fossil carbon back into the atmosphere.

And one can do industrialization with biofuels or wind or hydro or solar power.

Show threadMobile Suit LarrySep 4
@michael_w_busch @futurebird the first part I will grant you, but I think you are underestimating the importance of a fuel that burns hot enough to smelt iron and is readily available to be extracted with nothing more than picks and shovels. There may be a technically possible path to renewables that doesn't run through fossil fuels, but would the intermediary steps be useful enough to keep pursuing without an end goal in mind?
Show threadMichael BuschSep 4

@funkula

Iron can be, and very often has been, smelted in charcoal and electric arc furnaces. It has also been less commonly smelted in solar furnaces.

So we can imagine aliens who make charcoal like humans have for thousands of years, or who figure out electrical generators after making wire from float copper, or who make solar furnaces to cook things and then experiment.

All of this is aside from @futurebird 's thread, unless she is imagining technological termites.

So I will stop here.

Show threadFinal Round Player 😷🇪🇺🍸Sep 4

@michael_w_busch @funkula @futurebird

Modern civilisation can be considered to be a "Whale-Fall" exploiting fossil fuels in a one-shot process. But Whales keep falling out of the upper ocean. Not often, but there might be another one in 100m years or so.

Show threadllewellySep 4

@futurebird 1/5
I will confess that even though the idea that fungi took tens of millions of years to evolve a complete lignin breakdown process is widely accepted in paleontology, I have some issues with it.

First, once you get away from Europe and eastern N. America, there is an awful lot of coal that is younger than the carboniferous; Wyoming has whole mountain ranges of Paleogene coal, and Colorado and Utah also have huge amounts of coal younger than the Carboniferous.

Show threadllewellySep 4
@futurebird 2/5
Colombia, Ecuador, India, China, all also have vast deposits of coal that is younger than the carboniferous. Granted, I don't know of a consecutive 60 million years that has quite as much coal as the Carboniferous, but the point is that there is plenty of coal from eras that had lignin-destroying fungi, and in most cases, also termites.
Show threadllewellySep 4
@futurebird 3/5
The Carboniferous has another major feature capable of explaining all that coal: it had a huge swath of low-lying lands that were under, or nearly under the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ). The ICTZ is a semi-permanent band of intense thunderstorms near the equator, which in modern times is a major factor making the giant Amazon and Orinoco rainforests of South America, and rainforests in equatorial Africa, equatorial southeast Asia, Indonesia, and northernmost Australia.
Show threadllewellySep 4
@futurebird 4/5
Land under the ICTZ is ever-wet, and that makes it great for coal formation, even in modern times with tons of termites and lignin-destroying fungi. But the Carboniferous had a lot more land under the ICTZ than any subsequent period; During the Carboniferous, most of the continents either straddled the equator, or were near it.
Show threadllewellySep 4
@futurebird 5/5
So to me, the "nobody could break down lignin" theory seems actually not needed to explain all the Carboniferous coal. None of this disproves the theory, and of course I'm not a scientist of any kind. Further, there is genetic clock evidence pointing to late evolution of wite rot fungi, which I can't refute. But on the whole, I feel the theory is not as strong as it is often made out to be.
Show threadFElon&Felon47🇺🇦🇨🇦🇩🇰🇹🇼Sep 4
@futurebird
termitids.win ?
Show threadGuitarsophistSep 4
@futurebird Termites are enemies of ants though. I thought you would favor the ant side.
Show threadqurlyjoeSep 4
@futurebird
There is a book by Lewis Thomas called Lives of a Cell , Notes of a Biology Watcher. It’s a collection of essays he wrote for NEJM 1971-1973. In one of them he talks about the bacteria that live in the gut of termites that does the digesting of lignin. He suggested that biological research as a whole be put on hold and redirected to figuring out how it works. Big recommend to anyone interested in biology. #bookstodon #Science #biology
Show threadJulieRSep 4
@qurlyjoe Ooh, it's only $8 on Kobo!