Friday, November 18, 2022
are viruses relatives?
I guess all things living are descended from one original asexual 'cell'. Seems odd of course, but is most likely origin.
But what about viruses. This is rather less obvious. I could imagine that these might have started a number of times independently, whatever that means. A virus could be created in the decomposition of other life forms a number of times.
This begs question about evolution. Is decomposition a new creation, or a metamorphosis?
I think the later. You cannot have viruses without preceding life. ? .
One might expect a greater design diversity in viruses, with fewer obvious ancestral trees.
Martin
Tuesday, November 01, 2022
Without sex, what is a species?
I think one of the ideas is that sex between a couple of the same species should be able to produce fertile offspring of the same species.
This sexual reproduction will stimulate variety by producing lots of different combinations of genes, and over time the production of new species.
So quite why are there so so many species of fungi?
Are we just going to say, if the dna is unique then it is a species. I bet there are tiny differences everywhere. Or if there is some visible difference which propagates? In which case there would be far too many separate species. Or significant differences?
Sounds dubious to me.
