Re: One celled organisms acting as a swarm?

Hi John,

"John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:gd7rd9$grl$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
JE:-
<snip>
This is not necessarily true. For example, slime mold cells have been
shown to be selected at just the cell level (not the gene centric level)
to form optimally tall grouped cell fruiting bodies. The hight of the
fruiting body can be empirically demonstrated to provide a fitness
increase per cell per slime mold slug by increasing the mean dispersal
range available for all spores, *BUT AT A COST*. The benefit to every
cell taking part in this mutualized fitness strategy is a simple risk to
fitness ratio. To form the fruiting body some of the cells have to die
just to be able form the stalk which supports the fruiting body. If no
stalk is paid for via stiffened dead cells then the mean reproductive
fitness of EVERY cell decreases dramatically because their spores are
not sufficiently dispersed. If just some cells have to be sacrificed to
form the stiffened stalk then the random risk of being so employed can
be less than the reproductive gains as a cost benefit ratio, even if
total reproductive loss (death) is the risk involved.

Nature is providing a insurance premium provided by dividing up and
selling off risk pet cell per group at heavily reduced rates. Affordable
risk is selected for within nature but cannot be obtained for nothing.
In the slime mold situation, as soon as the risk to fitness ratio drops
below a certain point it is necessarily selected against because the
premium costs more than the gains in fitness.


I see this evolutionary patterning principle being roughly as if repeated in
that an (primarily an) opportunity has been taken by front-runners in the
world of banking and finance (i.e. greedily alert but never introspectively
insightful individuals of such organizations) in the 'dangerously' loosely
formed form [N.B. am this time not referring to specific/synaptic
hibernation imploring type predicaments and to their insidiously
co-motivating conditioned-in aftermaths] of the 'creditor's debt default
swop scheme' (more commonly referred to as "credit default swops" - I
rephrased it for - what I believe - a more precisely self-explanatory
effect). %-)

<snip>



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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Hamiltons rule
    ... >> a mutualised basis from taking this fitness loss, ... > help the cells that for the stalk. ... Each cell within the slug can be shown to be acting in a FITNESS ... The fact that a risk of not reproducing at all ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: Hamiltons rule
    ... >>>a mutualised basis from taking this fitness loss, ... >>help the cells that for the stalk. ... Each cell within the slug can be shown to be acting in a FITNESS ... The fact that a risk of not reproducing at all ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: One celled organisms acting as a swarm?
    ... Upon receiving this signal, some bacteria ... remains a nested subset of ONE cell bodies fitness (i.e. is not ... just an intersecting gene centric fitness for genes within different ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: Wynne-Edwards ( was Homosexuality)
    ... >> levels of selection, I mean that I think fitnesses at those levels are ... >>> cannot heuristically refer to the fitness of just a single trait. ... > I would put that more concisely: a trait is a dependent entity which is just ... > cell forms the stalk wherein it does not reproduce at all. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: Hamiltons rule
    ... Each cell within the slug can be shown to be acting in a ... >>FITNESS ... >>>may not form any spores at all because it ends up as a stalk cell. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
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