arteteco @arteteco@qoto.org

@rixx this thesis rocks!

Dear fediverse, I would love your input here.

I'm considering a research to understand the distribution and vulnerability level of microfungi by using some kind of proxy, like orchids to understand the mycorrhiza distribution and such, basically for conservation purpuses and IUCN listing.

I won't be too specific in my doubts not to influence you too much, but the data is pretty lacking and I'm not sure about how to proceed from here.

do you know if such a thing has been studied for any organism, not just for fungi?

Do you have any input or idea to throw at me?

What do you reckon a good proxy should have in this context?

I'm at an empasse with the practicality of the idea, so right now I'm wondering if to keep it and work on it or just drop it and move on.

@luciobarabesi wordpress è considerato uno standard in generale, ma dipende davvero dal livello tecnico e che ci vuoi fare

#coronavirus update from #italy : Even here in the South is now red code: most places are closed, university, schools etc. That's ok.
We can't assembly in groups of people, and we basically have to stay at home.
I can live with that. It's a medical emergency.

University courses will continue online, using Microsoft TEAMS.
Here is where I snap.

@aluaces thanks for your opinion, maybe I should give it another try...

G'day y'all, has anyone got experience with #moodlenet (moodle.net), has opinions or anything about it?

@ContendersEdge

Man I took all of what you said, piece by piece, and show you evidence, yet you don't in one moment say "oh sorry, I was wrong about that". You just gently "concede".

> what may be positive under one set of circumstances may be negative under another.

I don't think I used the term "positive mutation". I said mutation that raise the fitness, which is environment dependent. I don't see the point.

You can create new genetic material during transcription errors in the germinal line and then you can transfer and recombine that, yes.

Yes, the common ancestor between us and the amoeba was a single cell organism.

There is no such thing as a blueprint. That's not of DNA works, but I can try to make it as simple as possible in general terms, as I'm not well studied with amoebas at all, I study fungi mostly.

Say you have a lot of LUCAs (last unknown common ancestors). This lucas were all around, with many subpopulations. Some subject to some pressure from selection, other to others. Slowly, in time (we are talking billion of years here, and a generation of Lucas can be as short as 10 hours) they differentiate. Some become adapted to very hot climate, others to cold. The one in the cold maybe have a different season for mating, which starts to create a barrier to gene flow. This happens via selection and mutations/recombination.

Now, at one point those two subpopulations won't be able to mate anymore, for many kinds of reproductive barriers. They start to evolve in different directions.
The pseudopods of some may become more stiff, and give rise to more solid structure, even polynucleate. Another one may be able to go into freshwater, as modern amoebas, etc.

Again I don't know much about amoebas, but the principle works.

Hybrids are quite frequent in nature actually, depending on your definition of species.
The fact that sometimes the hybrid is sterile is kinda of proving my point: a reproductive barrier is starting to form between recently separated evolutionary lines

Regarding Down syndrome mate could you at least try to read a wikipedia page before asking me?

you are not bringing forward no evidence for any alternative theory, just trying to confute one idea after the other, and when you fail you move on to the next, misinterpreted fact.

I don't think I want to keep engaging with this gish gallop

@CynicalBroadcast

@ContendersEdge

Man I'll give it to you straight, like a pear cider that's made from a 100% pears: you don't know genetics, or microbiology.

Insertion is an ok term because there is the insertion of a nucelotide between 2 other nucleotides. I can insert something in myself, can't I? And even if it wasn't an ok term it is the standard way of saying, from wikipedia to any high school biology book, the fact that you are talking and making hypothesis and going against a solid scientific consensus on the matter without such a basic knowledge is worrying.

You produce nucleotides from a few elements, nitrogen, carbon, phosphorus, basically that's it. They are not spontaneously generated, you get those stuff from food. No metaphysics here.

When you have genetic mutation those can corrupt the copying process in case they disrupt the framework of copying (what's called a frameshift mutation). That is usually bad and has a strong selective pressure.

Usually mutations are wither bed (that is, the phenotype has a lower fitness), or neutral, happening in non-coding areas of the dna (See the work from Motoo Kimura on the matter).

Some of them are positively selected for though, that means the resulting phenotype has a higher fitness thanks to that allele. In this case the mutation is likely to be carried through the generations and become more common in the population

Evolutionists, better, the scientific consensus is that life has evolved in a period of billion of years. The DNA, as explained, does not always do the same things: by recombination, mutations, transfers, the DNA can change and the resulting phenotype with it. In the humans you have around 0.5×10^-9 mutation per basepair per year, some say more, some less but point is we change through generations.

Now, some mutation can even be pretty dramatic if they happen in some regulatory genes, like the HOX and such, but let's stick the gradualism: you can't have an amoeba turn into a human, because they are both here, now, but both the amoeba and the human share a common ancestor.

In case of plant poliploidy hybridation again sir, you don't know what you are talking about.
In a single generation the double amount of genetic information changes the phenotype, so it has different fitness and different niche, and it also makes it unable to breed with the parent species. It's a speciation there, in front of you, in a very classic Mayrian sense: individuals that can breed between themselves but not with other groups of individuals. Corn has followed this path, or saffron is another good example, likely a poliploid from the Crocus cartwrightianus.

Species come from species, and to be fair the concept of species is not useful here: organisms come from organisms.

Then mutations happen, start to be selected etc.

In the down syndrome the chromosome is not corrupted as you said, but it's an extra amount of information and you can clearly see it in the phenotype. They look different, don't they?

How to go from an aminoacid to a cell is something that we haven't done in our experiments, haven't got that far yet. It's still the most likely hypothesis@nothingplanet@social.nothingplanet.com @CynicalBroadcast

@ambulocetus Welcome!

@nothingplanet
No, argument was fine as far as I can tell, but in my experience in arguing with creationists just use it as a way to refresh your biology and geology notions, don't let them get under your skin =D

@crackurbones

@crackurbones
Thanks for mentioning me. I've chipped my 2 cents in the discussion, but in general I think
@nothingplanet has done a great work presenting most of the evidence already

@CynicalBroadcast @ContendersEdge

Hi, natural sciences student here, kind of an evolutionary biologist but I'm in the ecology/mycology field mostly.

I think @nothingplanet has done a great job explaining stuff, I don't see much controversy here.

Basic DNA mutations are insertion, deletion, transversion, duplication, inversion etc. They don't need any kind of external push to happen, it's just a transcribing error most of the time (we do have horizontal gene transfer by viruses and bacteria but that is a whole another chapter of the story).

The creation of more genetic information is not really a big deal. Plants can double their DNA bases in a single generation by poliploidy, and Down syndrome is a whole extra chromosome. Talk about extra infos!

Regarding Gould, who is not a "voice against the system", is very Darwinian by his own words, being a paleontologist he has seen that the fossils tended to remain similar for long periods of time, and then "explode" in different forms very quickly in others (explosive adaptive radiation). This is easier to see for a paleonthologist, as they work with the strathigraphic layers, while a biologist takes less into account the effect of time usually.
Be sure, Gould knew a lot about genetics, but it wasn't that important to the PE theory.
Also, he didn't mean that you have evolution in a single generation span, as Goldschmidt argued. The hypothesis is not bad I think, but we lack evidence for it.

At the moment there is no controversy about it, it is accepted that evolution works at a non-constant rate. There is of course debate to which factors are more important, how much can it vary and so on, but that's what scientists do, we argue, that is our proud strength, not a weakness.

As far as "blueprint can only go until a certain point", that may or may not be the case, but you don't know what that point is.
Can a single cell evolve into a fully fledged human? Man, you've done it yourself in 9 months.

And yes, evolutionary theory doesn't say anything about the origins of life. That's a matter for chemists mostly, but there were nice experiments by which aminoacids were produced simulating what was the Earth condition at the supposed beginning of life

In general: you can think and make thoughts that sound rational and beautiful. That is fine, but it doesn't mean dick bupkis. You need evidence, no matter how convincing to you or others the idea is.

I hope to have addressed most of the concerns of the conversation... I really just added a few points to what nothingplanet already very eloquently said

@dude where are you writing from?

@freemo @mngrif @design_RG I guess with the later development we should put on hold any decision on sunbeam.city.
As far as scholar.social is involved, I'll dig in that too, I've always appreciated the users from that instance

@freemo @noelle @mngrif @design_RG

A lot of unjust and not really meaningful accusation in this topic, I'm not sure I understand what the problem is and why admins don't reach out to us before deciding stuff.

The subscription feature without following is shaking everyone, as if it wasn't possible with a simple rss anyway. This is so weird.

I'm not sure I'm ready to enter in that arena of discussion on such a bright Saturday morning though

@freemo I see. Give me some time to catch up, I'll open a topic on discourse, see what I can find and get back to you

@freemo were the mods over there sensible to the matter?

@freemo Did he attack an user of ours? Mods were contacted and explicitly said they are ok with it?

Sorry for missing things out, I don't have much time lately and it's difficult to follow mastodon threads, I always lose something

@freemo I voted NO. It highly depends on what do you mean by doxxing: if it's actively trying to hack other users' account then I think we should, on a case by case bases, try to solve it first by looking at the evidence and then contacting the instance and only then, if necessary, silence if not block.

If we mean people scraping around the public stuff of a user, as we said in another discussion, that is public and I am not against any bot binging on it.

A mod saying he is in favour is not enough for me: we would need evidence of that happening and evidence of a harmed user and mods on the other side doing nothing. Otherwise we are cutting bridges for no reason at all, and sunbeam.city has some high quality users

@Drew@radical.town
You are aware that anyone can also subscribe to your toots by using rss, right?

If you post publicly, your posts are public and there is no privacy invasion in listing them.
If you only want your followers to see them there is an option for it

@freemo