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Are Butterflies Two Different Animals in One?
- frozenport 14y agoI once smashed two clocks together and a butterfly came out.
- mmanfrin 14y agoBiological Ship of Theseus.
- sswezey 14y agoThis is eerily similar to the biology on the planet of Lusitania in the Ender's Game series book 'Xenocide' in which every remaining species has a two part life cycle which is the result of an virus's effect on two previously separate species. They start as one form, die and are reborn into another form.
- Uhhrrr 14y agoBit of a spoiler for the previous novel in the series, that.
- sswezey 14y agoAh, I'm sorry, I completely forgot about spoiling it given it being so old. Too bad HN doesn't have spoiler tags :(
- sachinmonga 14y agoHa, this was all I could think about while reading.
- scotty79 14y agoMating between two different speciecs? Rather carying over significant dna of the host inside the parasite that grew out of it. There are a lot of the winged insects that lay egs inside other insects. Maybe some freakish viral infection long time ago carried over lots of dna of the host into the parasite egg. It's still insane but at least it's imaginable.
- adekok 14y agoIIRC, from an article long ago in New Scientist, there are precedents for this in small marine animals. i.e. plankton or hydras. The "adult" form grows inside of the "larval" form. And then breaks out, fully formed. The "larval" form continues as a separate individual for a few days, before dying. The eggs are then produced by the "adult" form, and the process continues. It's easier to do with smaller animals. The process is also simpler (grow new "adult" as a parasite of the "larva"). The caterpillar to butterfly change is much more complex.
- polyfractal 14y agoI suppose you could look at it as a parasitic relationship. But it's actually much simpler than that. (Hydra are super cool, so allow me to geek out for a sec) Basically, every cell in the hydra knows how to become a new hydra. What prevents a single hydra organism from trying to become a thousand hydras is a dual chemical gradient. The head emits one chemical, the tail emits another. Cells respond to this gradient depending on how concentrated it is in one particular direction At the "head" end, the "head" chemical is very strong. Those cells respond by being the "head". At the other end, the "head" chemical is very weak (and the "tail" very strong). Those cells respond by becoming the appendages. If you chop a hydra in half, the gradient becomes altered. On one half of the hydra, there is only "head" chemical diffusing. The other half only has "tail" chemical. These changes in chemical gradients signal the cells to start producing the parts of the body that were just lost. Eventually, you end up with two identical, smaller hydra. Theoretically, you could keep chopping hydra in half and keep getting identical, smaller hydra. Obviously you hit a point where you are just going to kill the poor thing, but in theory it doesn't matter...the hydra will always be capable of regenerating. Cool, right!
- gus_massa 14y agoThis was submitted a few month ago (4 points, 3 comments): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4334906 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4334906 I will quote a comment that I made that time (beacuse I don't want to write the same thing again): This article doesn't have any scientific base. Insect have exoskeleton so they can't grow like ducks or bats. They have to make a series of metamorphosis to grow. Usually the form for change from one stage to the next step, because they are adapted to different lifestyle. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphosis#Insect_metamorpho.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphosis#Insect_metamorpho.... . Butterflies are one of the most well known and extremes cases of changes. The caterpillar shape is adapted to eat a lot and be camouflaged, the butterfly shape is adapted to travel and mate. (Both shapes share the same general blueprint. For example, if you see a caterpillar carefully, it has only 6 small real legs in the front, and some prolegs in the back.)
- bennysaurus 14y agoIt's an intriguing idea though if nothing else. A question here (I don't know your background if it's biology mind you): what actually happens in the metamorphosis between caterpillar and butterfly/moth or any larval animal for that matter? It does seem rather radical to switch off a massive amount of genes and switch on a bunch of others in adulthood, drastically changing your physical form.
- robbiep 14y agoI don't know exactly what happens but apparently they mostly turn to mush then reassemble. Interestingly their nervous system/memories have been shown to survive between the different stages. Re genes turned off: as another poster mentioned huge numbers Of genes are switched off and on at different stages in our life cycle. It's kind of the same as saying 'but neurone don't need the same genes as skin cells so isn't it wasteful having all those extra genes doing nothing?' DNA is relatively cheap so while some 'skin' genes may never Be used in 'neuron' cells the cost is not prohibitive To the organism. Http://bit.ly/VNYxx2 (a link to livescience.com - apologies am moving between different devices, blocked HN on my mac!)
- georgecmu 14y agoDNA transfer in higher life forms occurs far more frequently than the geneticists of 60 years ago could have suspected. Astonishingly, only 1.5% of the genetic material in our cells codes for human life. Half of the rest is sometimes described as "junk DNA" with no known function, and the other half consist of genes introduced by viruses and other parasites. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17809503 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17809503]
- dennisgorelik 14y agoMy guess is that organisms are so susceptible to viruses, because in the long term viruses benefit their hosting organisms a lot -- by transferring potentially useful DNA.
- a_bonobo 14y agoThe term "junk DNA" is not used in science anymore, much of it is repetitive regions that serve regulatory functions, or other unknown reasons. "Junk" DNA has been renamed to "noncoding DNA", the recent ENCODE-project stated that 80% of human DNA has some purpose. See: https://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6099/1159 https://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6099/1159 P.S.: That article reads like the ENCODE-project killed the term "junk DNA", however, that term wasn't in use before the release of ENCODE, either.
- Camillo 14y agoIf the headline is a yes/no question, the answer is always no.
- jamesjporter 14y agoThis is extremely silly. Genes that act in larval, pupal, and adult development are all mixed up together in the same chromosomes; there's no plausible way for them to have integrated in the manner suggested. Moreover, the same genes and used and reused again and again in different contexts in insect development. Again, this is absurdly unlikely under the scenario he proposes.
- robbiep 14y agoI agree that it is extremely silly, however what you suggest about the genes being all mixed up in the same chromosomes as disproving it I don't buy.. I'm not sure if you've ever seen chromosome maps showing gene locations on chromosomes between different species but this is instructive in this matter: between species and thus, as numbers of chromosomes flux up and downwards, the genes which may have started in one chromosome end up spread throughout many- I am sure you will find the following links interesting Background: on chromosome rearrangement: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/21/basics-how-can-chromosome-numb/ http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/21/basics-how-can... Synteny map - cool explination http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/08/pufferfish-and-ancestral-genom/ http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/08/pufferfish-and... mouse human synteny map http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/MGA2-11-33smc.html http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/MGA2-11-33smc.html
- jamesjporter 14y agoYes, to some extent genes are mobile and do get shuffled around, but if this hypothesis were true, it would be obvious. Whole genomes don't just merge on the time scales we're talking here. If this hypothesis were true, there would be clear genomic anomalies indicating it (e.g. biases of genes used at the same developmental stage tending to cluster in similar genomic regions); no such anomalies have been found.
- mullingitover 14y agoI have a hypothesis of equal scientific merit: Caterpillars are turned into butterflies by an invisible wizard in the sky.
- joeycfan 14y agoI hope so - That would be insanely great.
- stcredzero 14y agoDissolving into the liquid oblivion of sleep, we are caterpillars to the butterflies of our next morning's waking selves.
- Luyt 14y agoBrrr, reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis (A novel by Franz Kafka, in which a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, wakes to find himself transformed into a monstrous vermin.)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- charonn0 14y agoAccording to this theory, long, long ago, two very different animals, one destined to be wormy, the other destined to take wing, accidently mated, and somehow their genes learned to live side-by-side in their descendants. This is simply rubbish, and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of genetics.
- Daniel_Newby 14y agoNo, it is entirely possible. Entire chromosomes could modified, as by methylation, and the transcription machinery could switch between the two at the appropriate developmental stage. What it is is (1) extremely unlikely, and (2) easily checked by looking at the DNA sequence of any insect that metamorphoses.
- charonn0 14y agoThe only somewhat similar thing I can think of would be mitochondria, but even mitochondria retain their own unique DNA outside of the nucleus.
- rcthompson 14y agoTrue, mitochondria contain functional DNA, but the majority of mitochondrial genes have migrated to the eukaryotic nucleus. The transcripts are transcribed in the nucleous, translated in the cytosol, and the protein products are translocated into the mitochondria. There's not necessarily anything preventing the remainder of the mitochondrial genome from making the same transition, although perhaps the mitochondrion would still require a "placeholder" chromosome because its cycle of reproduction is tied in with replication of that chromosome as it is in bacteria.
- carbocation 14y agoBetteridge's Law of... oh, whatever. Is the fetal human form a different animal from the adult human form? Different genes are switched on, but this doesn't mean that the baby growing inside of you is some alien that you're nurturing that just happens to become an adult human. Anyway, genetic analysis should make the actual question–if it were a serious scientific question–answerable: are butterflies the result of some prehistoric mating between different species? Is the genetic architecture vastly different between the two sets of genes? Is there evidence of what one or both of these two progenitor species were, and if so, can we identify the direction of gene flow and relative contributions?
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- rcthompson 14y agoOne way I've heard it described is that the caterpillar effectively develops an organ that is analagous to an egg from which the butterfly hatches. Then the rest of the caterpillar's body becomes food for the newly-hatched bufferfly. This all occurs inside the chrysalis so that we are spared from witnessing the carnage. I have no idea if this is a valid way of looking at it or not, but it's one explanation that I've heard. The appealing part about this is when you realize that some wasps lay their eggs inside other insects, which then become food for the wasp larvae in the same way that the caterpillar's body is supposed to become food for the butterfly.
- dspeyer 14y agoIs there any actual evidence that supports this hypothesis?