5 ms·
The article mentions that unless all of the individual organisms die at the same time it is theoretically possible for the colony to live forever. I wonder if w
by scrumbledober 5y ago
The article mentions that unless all of the individual organisms die at the same time it is theoretically possible for the colony to live forever. I wonder if we have any way of telling how old a particular colony could possibly be?
- 9dev 5y agoRadiocarbon dating of samples, maybe?
- 323 5y agoRadiocarbon dating only works for dead stuff: > When the animal or plant dies, it stops exchanging carbon with its environment, and thereafter the amount of 14C it contains begins to decrease as the 14C undergoes radioactive decay. Measuring the amount of 14C in a sample from a dead plant or animal, such as a piece of wood or a fragment of bone, provides information that can be used to calculate when the animal or plant died.
- 9dev 5y agoAh, that makes sense. Thank you.
- AitchEmArsey 5y ago
- ajuc 5y ago> I wonder if we have any way of telling how old a particular colony could possibly be? Maybe sequencing DNA from a lot of the individual organisms and counting how many differences there are? Older colonies should accumulate the differences, right?
- andrewflnr 5y agoDifferences relative to what? A young and old colony are still the same evolutionary distance from their last common ancestor. Even if there was some change in mutation rate once a colony is formed, it would be really hard to measure the difference. Maybe diversity within a colony is a clue?
- ajuc 5y agoDifferences between each other? IIUC the colony forms from a few individuals cloning itself over and over? If that's the case then old colony would have more differences between the individuals than a new colony.
- dr_dshiv 5y agoBlob of Theseus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus