4 ms·

I think bacteria are already doing this kind of thing in nature. Just here we get to document the results.

• culi 4y ago
  Yeah but in nature these organisms are forced to adapt more as generalists to the large variety of environments they're exposed to One of the most invasive species in the world is the argentine ant. Which evolved over many many years under a very specific set of conditions until one day they were exported by colonists and have basically taken over the world. It turns out that that intense Amazonian environment, one which is very rare to find anywhere else, just happened to be an amazing training ground to evolve certain traits that gave them the ability to take over the rest of the world When you leave organisms in such specific conditions, there's always the chance that you're selecting for incredible fitness for a specific ability. A specific ability that might not evolve in a more diverse set of conditions because perhaps it doesn't pay off until it's sufficiently developed. With argentine ants this might be how well adapted they are at having multiple queens and quickly reproducing to recover from any sort of damage
  • taneq 4y ago
    Argentine ants are fascinating! And also a pain in the neck because they’re so hard to get rid of.
• popcube 4y ago
  but this is difficult to get sample