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How plants evolved to make ants their servants
- nyc111 8y ago> If evolution is an arms race between species developing ways to profit off of their neighbors... But why are they calling this process "evolution"? This is symbiosis not evolution.
- vbuwivbiu 8y agoplants didn't evolve "to make ants" anything, and there's no such anthropomorphic relationship here, it's symbiosis like everything else in nature
- danaos 8y agoIt goes both ways. In my garden I observed ants carrying tiny little parasitic aphids up on sensitive plant spots and eat their glucose rich feces they produce by sucking fluids from the plant.
- markdown 8y agoFijian ants grow their own crops: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2113410-fijian-ants-grow-their-own-plant-cities-and-farm-tropical-fruits/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2113410-fijian-ants-gro...
- howard941 8y agoIf you're fortunate (but the aphids aren't) perhaps you'll spot the ants defending the aphids from other insect predators such as ladybugs.
- rezeroed 8y agoThese anthropomorphic evolution titles annoy me. How plants favourable to ants gained reproductive advantage.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoOr better: How Plants Benefit from Ants, and Ants from Plants. How can a science-centric site get it so wrong?
- braythwayt 8y ago> How can a science-centric site get it so wrong? Write software that A/B tests various titles. Measure the income from advertising click-throughs. Expand to A/B test various articles as well, optimizing for appeal to the kind of bored person who is susceptible to ordering miracle skin-creams at 2am. Presto, crappy click-bait.
- rbonvall 8y agoYes, article titles have evolved to be clicked.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoYet at the time science wonders why it's being questioned, it's authority, subverted, etc.? Isn't it obvious? Editorial: Perhaps instead of blaming the public, science should look in the mirror, as well as hold those between it and the public accountable for errors, inconsistencies, hyperbole, confusing correlation with cause, etc.?
- braythwayt 8y agoThis conundrum is no different than the moderation conundrum of social media. If you leave things to themselves and allow a social media forum to "evolve," it becomes a dumpster fire. If you leave a publishing journal to optimize for views and/or clickthrough revenue, it becomes a dumpster fire. If you don't want dumpster fires, somebody has to establish a set a of values and enforce them, even if they have "costs" in terms of popularity/clicks/attention.
- AndrewOMartin 8y agoI look forward to "How chickens and cannabis evolved to make humans their servants".
- nine_k 8y agoThis is how being tasty and easy to catch can lead to enormous reproductive success, plentiful free food, and access to advanced medicines, also free! Cats, who chose a different route, get the reverse if that, being spayed as a norm, getting their nature's KPI much lower than chickens' or even cows'. Oh wait... Seriously, you can see it as an evolutionary trap of specialization, getting into a deep (local) maximum without a feasible way out, should circumstances change.
- netcan 8y agoChickens are hard to catch. Source: Rocky
- wild_preference 8y agoTheir eggs aren't!
- d--b 8y agoThere is a tv show they literally makes that point about cannabis. And apples.
- evgen 8y agoIt is a series based on the book The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan.
- braythwayt 8y agoI’ve always made this joke about Tobacco. It’s a parasite that modifies our brain chemistry to make us physically dependent upon it. It feels a little more “HaHaOnlySerious” with Tobacco, because it is clearly harmful to its “host organism,” whereas cultivated livestock and Cannabis (or Coffee) are arguably good for humans.
- nickmancol 8y agoI think that there is a short story from Isaac Asimov with this exactly plot.
- hansbo 8y agoI believe you are thinking of Each an Explorer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Each_an_Explorer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Each_an_Explorer
- nickmancol 8y agoThank you!
- aasasd 8y agoIn regard to the question of who was first: while I understand that evolution is built on random mutations, still it seems to me that ants, being endowed with organs for mobility and sight, are in a much better position to take the initiative on innovation.
- mirceal 8y agoYes. The ants are more disruptive /s
- Nasrudith 8y agoIt is all relative to costs. If they were going with hollow thorns anyway it is theoretically possible the thorns could have existed before there was anything eating them as a "fluke" that didn't cost much anyway. Pre-ants they could have had variants with hollow ones mixed in. Once the hollow ones gave a significant advantage the other styles would fade away unless there were biochemical constraints. I don't know for sure but I would expect slow evolution from hive insects - their reproductive members are a fraction and thus a smaller working genepool. Ironically the sessile but more genetically diverse plants could have outmaneuvered the ants. For an example of biochemical constraints take sickle cell anemia trait for instance. One copy makes red blood cells just deformed enough to function but give malaria resistance. Two however and the cells go conclave. The little bastard mosquitoes and their littler bastard malaria made for a nasty situation. In regions with endemic malaria no copies and you are probably screwed - malaria will probably kill you unless you flee the region - a risk in itself. With two you don't need to worry about malaria killing you - your sickle cell anemia will do it on its own just fine. With one you are a-okay but your children or mate stand a chance of getting either bad outcome. The transmission method has leas to malaria as the number one historical killer.
- booleandilemma 8y agoHow plants evolved to make ants their servants We humans would think this way, wouldn’t we? I feel bad for the first primitive alien race our descendants encounter, however many eons from now.
- Nasrudith 8y agoThey're not wrong except in intentions that literally don't exist. The plants have something the ants want and it needs to be protected to keep on providing it. Cats domesticated themselves thanks to early farmers and granaries - the wildcat ancestors who had the shortest scatter distance and endeared themselves to humans got to spend more time pouncing on mice and rats that were flooding their stores as opposed to fleeing whenever the towering giants known as man came. (Although I can't help but imagine a farmer getting spooked the first time a cat got in among the grainery where he was going to shoo the rat pile, again seeing a cat with a dead rat in its mouth and thinking the rats plaguing him are now giant cannibals.)
- Stephen-E 8y agoRecently finished reading Semiosis by Sue Burke (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35018907-semiosis https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35018907-semiosis) that's a great fictional fictional exploration of this taken to extremes. Highly recommended.
- titzer 8y agoThis is really cool research. Nature is fascinating, complex and beautiful. Amazing the societies which it develops! But that said, this result should not be surprising if we would get our minds out of the very narrow species-oriented view of nature, where individuals and populations are selfish (even gluttonous) over-consumers and over-reproducers. This model is just wrong. Nature is a vast cooperation of thousands, millions of species. Cooperation at a larger scale that is very much like--in fact, might be called exactly the same--as our bodies, which are complex systems of interacting microorganisms, not all of which have a human genome. Nature is one giant organism, and the species and individuals that we elevate to godly status are really just cogs and wheels in the grand scheme of things.
- kopo 8y agoPeople like to keep saying the elite will reach godhood thanks to the increasing pace of biological/technical progress (that they will reap the most). But the opposite might well happen. The more data that pours in the more obvious it may become they are all, like you say, just replaceable cogs.
- ogig 8y agoI recently discovered ant keeping while looking for projects to do with my daughter. They are amazing animals to learn about, the amount of quirks in their different species is fascinating. I've spent hours watching ants on Youtube, AntsCanada channel is specially good. We got two queens and now they are growing a small colony. We are looking forward building a bigger formicarium as they grow. Patience is required. I guess most Americans won't be surprised since it was a common educational activity in the 60s over there.
- Loughla 8y agoMostly in the US, now, you can buy an 'ant farm' that comes with 10-20 little ants, no queen, and no real way to propagate your pets. One of the most disappointing memories I have as a child is that my ant farm was a dead-end street.
- patates 8y agoI watched all the videos of AntsCanada [0], I wish I had the means to do ant keeping myself. Amazing animals! [0]: https://www.youtube.com/user/AntsCanada/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/AntsCanada/videos
- ivanhoe 8y agothat channel is amazing, I highly recommend it
- yters 8y agoThe title says 'how' the article says 'don't know'. Maybe the title should be a question instead of a statement. > But scientists weren't sure how the evolutionary relationship between ants and plants got started.