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posted by mrpg on Saturday February 23 2019, @06:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the algae dept.

The transition took place over the course of 50 weeks and was caused simply by the introduction of a predator to the environment. Time-lapse videos are available in the supplementary info.

The transition from unicellular to multicellular life was one of a few major events in the history of life that created new opportunities for more complex biological systems to evolve. Predation is hypothesized as one selective pressure that may have driven the evolution of multicellularity. Here we show that de novo origins of simple multicellularity can evolve in response to predation. We subjected outcrossed populations of the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to selection by the filter-feeding predator Paramecium tetraurelia. Two of five experimental populations evolved multicellular structures not observed in unselected control populations within ~750 asexual generations.

De novo origins of multicellularity in response to predation


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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday February 23 2019, @05:47PM (1 child)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 23 2019, @05:47PM (#805666) Journal

    Sorry, but you shouldn't accept the wiki page as an authoritative report on the experiment. It's been simplified for public consumption, and was probably written by either an intern or a reporter. Other reports on the experiment that I've seen earlier explained what kind of "convergent" beneficial mutations happened, how they differed, and why it's what you should expect to see. (OTOH, IIRC my source, also not a prime source, was a book by Dawkins. So if you're offended by his religious views you can reject him as a biologist.)

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  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday February 24 2019, @09:36PM

    by Bot (3902) on Sunday February 24 2019, @09:36PM (#806052) Journal

    You watch a videogame 3D FPS duel, and one of the two players seems to always get the good move, then you HAVE to theorize he might be wallhacking. If a statistical analysis says he might be just lucky, you don't need to proceed further.

    If there is a statistical analysis that finds some ratio of p of mutation depending only on IRL parameters and it models the result of the experiment, I am fine with it. It's been some years I keep telling that evolution is not a dual of creationism, but are orthogonal/independent. As for trusting Dawkins, it is irrelevant. This is a matter for the stats guys not the bio guys. The implicit (and therefore dangerous) assumption that mutations are impersonally random, which isn't even a religious matter but a matter of how the universe works (on planes beyond the physical maybe), can only be addressed by statistics.

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