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  #1151  
Old 10-22-2014, 09:08 AM
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Yeah, figs are … complicated. The type of “fruit” produced by a fig is properly known as a syconium. It is both a multiple fruit and an accessory fruit. The way that it develops is just plain weird.

To do it justice, we need to briefly review flower anatomy. Two important things to consider are what a receptacle is and what an inflorescence is.


As you no-doubt remember, the receptacle is the swollen portion of the stem, right at the base of the flower. The flower parts grow from the receptacle. An inflorescence is a cluster of flowers borne on the same stem.



The receptacle is the swollen portion of the stem, where flower and stem meet.




There are lots of different inflorescence types. What matters here is that an inflorescence is a cluster of flowers borne on the same stem.




Just as an individual flower has a receptacle at its base, an inflorescence may have a receptacle as well.



Now, what’s so special about the inflorescence of a fig (genus Ficus)? Well, the receptacle is enlarged, fleshy, and hollow. And it’s involuted. That is, it basically folds inward as it develops, leaving only a tiny opening at one end, called the ostiole. So the flowers of the inflorescence grow on the inside of the receptacle.

So, the syconium (“fruit”) of a fig is both an accessory fruit and a multiple fruit. It’s an accessory fruit because most of the flesh of the “fruit” is produced by the receptacle, not the ovaries of the flowers. It’s a multiple fruit because the true fruit on the inside is produced by the several flowers of the inflorescence, rather than from a single flower.



The inflorescence of a fig develops on the inside of the involuted receptacle. The syncomium (“fruit”) is composed mostly of tissues produced by the receptacle, making it an accessory fruit. Since the true fruit on the inside is formed from the fruits produced by several flowers, the fig “fruit” is also a multiple fruit.


Reproduction in Figs:
The genus Ficus is very large, with about 850 known species. The one that most of us are interested in, however is the Common Fig, Ficus carica.

Ficus carica is gynodioecious. What this means is that some trees have “perfect” (hermaphroditic) flowers that have both male and female flower parts – while other trees produce only female flowers.

Hermaphroditic trees of Ficus carica are often called “Inedible Figs” or “Goat Figs.” Their “fruits” are called caprifigs, and are traditionally considered to be food for goats. (“Capri” means “goat.”)

The trees that have female-only flowers are often called “Edible Figs.” The “fruits” of the female trees tend to have softer flesh and more oil than do the “fruits” of hermaphroditic trees, and they are generally considered tastier. That’s why the fruits of the hermaphroditic trees are rarely consumed by humans. Even so, you need both the female and hermaphroditic trees for successful cultivation of the species, because only the “Inedible Fig” trees produce pollen.

What about those wasps?:
“Fig wasps” are tiny wasps that live inside the “fruits” produced by fig trees, entering the “fruit” through the ostiole. Some species of fig wasps are pollinators. As the name implies, pollinating wasps pollinate the female flowers. Other fig wasp species are parasitic; they live in the fig “fruits,” but don’t pollinate them.

The fig wasps that pollinate the Common Fig are members of the genus Blastophaga. Males are wingless and never leave the syconium in which they are born. Females, however, have wings; they can and do leave their natal syconium.


A female
Blastophaga psenes. This is the species that pollinates the Common Fig (Ficus carica).



So, how does it work?

Well, female wasps lay their eggs in the ovules of female fig flowers. The thing is, whether or not any male flowers are present, the inflorescence contains two different types of female flowers. The pistils of some of them have very long styles, while the styles of other flowers in the same inflorescence are much shorter.


Some of a fig’s female flowers have long styles, while others have much shorter styles.


After it hatches, the larval wasp feeds on the ovule of the flower in which it hatches. Any flower which hosts a wasp larva will fail to produce a viable seed, of course.

But remember how some of the female flowers have long styles and some have short styles? Well, the adult wasps cannot lay eggs in the long-styled flowers, only in the short-styled flowers.

In short, the fig has evolved to produce two different types of female flowers. Some of them function not as seed-producers, but instead as food sources for the wasps who pollinate the remaining female flowers.




Anyway, the relationship between the figs and the wasps goes something like this.

A mature, pollen-bearing female wasp enters the unripe syconium through the ostiole. In the syconium, she lays eggs in short-styled female flowers. As she moves over the flowers to lay her eggs, she will spread pollen over the long-styled female flowers, pollinating them.

If this is a hermaphroditic plant and if the wasp leaves the syconium after laying her eggs in order to search for another syconium in which to lay more eggs, she will collect some pollen from the male flowers as she exits. The male flowers tend to be clustered near the ostiole, making it easy for the female wasp to collect pollen as she exits the syconium.


Flowers in which eggs have been laid form gall-like structures, which provide food and protection for the wasp larvae inside. The male wasp larvae mature and emerge from their galls before females do. As soon as the adult males emerge, they roam about the syconium in search of females, which they fertilize while they’re still in their galls.

When the females emerge, the males dig “escape tunnels” for them, and then die. (The males, remember are wingless; they can’t leave the syconium anyway.) Enzymes produced by the fig will cause their bodies to gradually disintegrate.

A newly-emerged female wasp collects pollen and then leaves the syconium in which she was born to search for another one in which to lay her eggs. And thus, the cycle is complete.


The reproductive relationship between Figs and Fig Wasps.


The relationship between Fig Trees and Fig Wasps is an excellent example of mutualism. A mutualistic relationship is one in which two (or more) different species live in close proximity, and each benefits from the relationship. In the case of the Fig Trees and Fig Wasps, the trees benefit because the wasps pollinate their flowers. The wasps benefit because the trees provide them with shelter and food.
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  #1152  
Old 10-22-2014, 09:11 AM
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Originally Posted by ceptimus View Post
I remember reading something (maybe by Dawkins?) about figs - there was some incredibly complex story about wasp grubs (or something like that) that live inside the figs and then the adult wasp stays inside the fig to fertilize the 'flowers' which are all internal to to the fig.

I forget the details though - maybe they weren't even wasps. :shrug:
Yeah, Dawkins describes the relationship between them in ... Climbing Mount Improbable, I think it was. I'd have to dig out my copy to be sure. Regardless, the relationship between Fig Tree and Fig Wasp is a beautiful example of coevolution.
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  #1153  
Old 10-22-2014, 11:51 AM
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I didn't fully appreciate that the wasps are required by the fig tree for fertilisation.

Does this mean that any fig we eat (from a female tree) is likely to have had a female wasp lay eggs in it? And to have the decomposed bodies of males that have hatched inside the galls and fulfilled their life purpose inside the fig? Yum.
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Old 10-22-2014, 11:58 AM
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Here's a paragraph that I think you will understand better than I do ...

Fig wasp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Quote:
The fig-wasp mutualism originated between 70 and 90 million years ago as the product of a unique evolutionary event. Since then, cocladogenesis and coadaptation on a coarse scale between wasp genera and fig sections has been supported by both morphological and molecular studies. This illustrates the tendency towards coradiation of figs and wasps. Such strict cospeciation should result in identical phylogenetic trees for the two lineages and recent work mapping fig sections onto molecular phylogenies of wasp genera and performing statistical comparisons has provided strong evidence for cospeciation at that scale.
Could you coexplain each of those cowords?
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  #1155  
Old 10-22-2014, 05:22 PM
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I didn't fully appreciate that the wasps are required by the fig tree for fertilization.
Neither did the people who first imported the trees into the U.S. for cultivation. Until the wasp/tree relationship was figured out and the appropriate wasp species was imported to the U.S., most of the trees would not set fruit.

There is a mutant variety of Ficus carica in which female trees do retain their fruit until maturity, however. This phenomenon, wherein the mutant variety can produce edible fruit without being pollinated is known as parthenocarpy. Parthenocarpic trees are often cultivated in regions where Blastophaga psenes does not live. But since the parthenocarpic trees do not produce seeds (at least, not when Blastophaga psenes is absent), the trees must be grown from cuttings of other parthenocarpic trees.

Many fig-lovers, however, consider figs from parthenocarpic trees to be of inferior quality, since these figs don't have seeds. The seeds of a "real" fig (i.e. one pollinated by wasps) give the fruit its crunchy texture and impart a "nutty" taste that figs from parthenocarpic trees lack.

So, if you visit fig orchards in California in June, you may notice little brown bags tied to the branches of the trees, covering the trees' developing syconia. These bags contain fig wasps, and ensure that the figs will be pollinated.


Bags containing pollinating fig wasps attached to the branches of fig trees in California.


Blastophaga psenes does live more or less wild in California now, so why do fig growers sometimes use the bag trick? It's to control pollination of the figs, and ensure that "overpollination" doesn't occur. On fig orchards, the hermaphroditic trees (the ones that have male flowers and so can produce pollen) are generally kept some distance from the female trees. The female wasps can't fly very far, and so won't reach the female trees if they're kept far-enough away from the hermaphroditic trees.

The reason the farmers don't want the figs to be overpollinated is because if too many of the female flowers are pollinated, then there are so many seeds inside that the fig splits open as it ripens.


An overpollinated fig that has split open.


So yes, if you're eating an "authentic" fig from a female tree, a fig that has seeds -- then inevitably, you're also eating the decomposed bodies of male (and female) wasps. (The female wasps remain in the last syconium they visit, where they die.) A little extra protein, I suppose.



Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeP View Post
Here's a paragraph that I think you will understand better than I do ...

Fig wasp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Quote:
The fig-wasp mutualism originated between 70 and 90 million years ago as the product of a unique evolutionary event. Since then, cocladogenesis and coadaptation on a coarse scale between wasp genera and fig sections has been supported by both morphological and molecular studies. This illustrates the tendency towards coradiation of figs and wasps. Such strict cospeciation should result in identical phylogenetic trees for the two lineages and recent work mapping fig sections onto molecular phylogenies of wasp genera and performing statistical comparisons has provided strong evidence for cospeciation at that scale.
Could you coexplain each of those cowords?
First of all, a clade is a group of species that are all descended from a common ancestor. A true clade includes the ancestral species and every species that has descended from it.

Consider the "apes," for example. Most people, when they think of "apes," think of gibbons, orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees -- but not humans. But humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor; chimpanzees are more closely-related to humans than they are to gorillas. So the "apes," as defined this way, is not a clade, since it doesn't include humans.

To be a true clade, the group "apes" must include every descendant of the original ape ancestor, humans included. Most biologists, of course, do define apes this way. I like to remind my students from time to time that "Yes, whether you like it or not, you are an ape."


Biologists construct cladograms in which we compare the characteristics of species in order to work out the evolutionary relationships between them.


A cladogram showing the evolutionary relationships between some representative vertebrates. Note that each branching point on the cladogram represents the origin of an evolutionarily significant characteristic. All descendants of the ancestor in which that characteristic evolved have inherited that characteristic. So, for instance, all descendants of the original vertebrate ancestor have vertebrae. All descendants of the original jawed vertebrate ancestor have jaws. All descendants of the original tetrapod ancestor have 4 limbs (at least embryonically). And so forth.


Now then, what the paragraph you quoted is talking about is the very close evolutionary relationship between fig trees and fig wasps. In most fig trees there is only one (or at most a few) species of wasp that can pollinate it. So, as a new fig species has evolved, a new species of wasp has evolved that can pollinate it. Thus, if you construct a cladogram showing the evolutionary relationships between fig trees and another cladogram showing the evolutionary relationships between fig wasps, they should be virtually identical. (And they are.)


But first, let's briefly discuss symbiosis. Symbiosis occurs when two (or sometimes more) species live in close proximity. There are several different forms of symbiosis, including parasitism, in which one species in the relationship is harmed by the other. The type of symbiosis we're interested in here is mutualism, in which both species benefit from the relationship.

Since two species in a symbiotic relationship are so closely linked ecologically, each species can affect the other's evolution. When two species evolve in response to each other, this is coevolution. For instance, as a parasite evolves new mechanisms to find and parasitize its host, the host species in turn evolves new mechanisms to defeat the parasite.

This, by the way, leads to what's often called an "evolutionary arms race" between parasites and their hosts. This evolutionary arms race is widely believed to be one of the main reasons that sexual reproduction occurs. Sexual reproduction allows species to evolve faster than species which reproduce asexually, and so allows hosts to (relatively) quickly evolve new defenses against their parasites. And the parasites to, in turn, quickly evolve new ways to defeat their hosts' defenses.


So anyway, the point here is that in the mutualistic relationship between figs and fig wasps, the evolution of a new fig species has been accompanied by the evolution of a new species of fig wasp that can pollinate it.



Now then, cladogenesis refers to the origin of a new clade. So cocladogenesis refers to the origin of two new clades as a result of coevolution between symbiotic species.

Adaptation is when a species evolves in response to its environment. Adaptation results in a species evolving to become better suited to its environment. Your environment, broadly speaking, is anything that affects you in your day-to-day life. That will include other species -- competitors, parasites, predators, prey, etc. In a species that shares a mutualistic relationship with another species, each species is part of the other's environment by definition.

So, with that in mind, coadaptation refers to two species adapting to each other. And so, the evolution of each species is driven, in large part, by the evolution of the other.


Radiation refers to the evolution of multiple descendant species from a common ancestor.


Radiation is the evolution of multiple "daughter species" from a common ancestral species.

So naturally, coradiation occurs when radiation in one lineage triggers radiation in another group of species. For instance, the evolution of new host species from a common ancestor might coincide with the evolution of new parasite species (descended from the original parasite species) that can parasitize them.

Or in this case, the evolution of new fig species has coincided with the evolution of new fig wasp species that can pollinate them.


Speciation is simply the evolution of a new species. So cospeciation, of course, is the evolution of two new species due to a symbiotic relationship between their ancestors. That is, as one new species evolves, it coincides with the evolution of a new, symbiotic species.



So, basically, the paragraph you quoted is saying something like this: "The mutualistic relationship between figs and fig wasps originated some 70 - 90 million years ago. Since then, the evidence strongly suggests that the evolution of figs and fig wasps have tracked each other rather precisely. As new fig species have evolved, so have new species of fig wasps. So, if you construct an 'evolutionary tree' showing the relationship between fig species, and another evolutionary tree showing the relationship between fig wasp species, they should look identical. And by our data, it seems that they do."
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  #1156  
Old 10-28-2014, 01:15 AM
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Can you tell me what this bush is? It has small, white flowers in spring and the leaves have these serrated edges that catch on everything. Seriously, I ruined a nike workout shirt by trimming hedges in it. The shirt is now covered in snags. But in the nine years I've been in this house, this is the first time it has ever produced berries. So now I'm curious.

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  #1157  
Old 10-28-2014, 03:07 AM
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I can't be sure from the picture, but do the fruits look like they have little silvery spots? And are they single-seeded drupes? Because my first guess, just from looking at the picture, is that it's a member of the genus Elaeagnus (commonly called Silverberries or Oleasters).


There are several species of Elaeagnus that can be found in your region; some are native, but some are introduced and can be quite invasive. If it is a species of Elaeagnus, then it should have clusters of 4-part, yellow-white, very fragrant flowers in the Spring. Also, the leaves, like the fruits, should have silvery-white scales.


The leaves and flowers of
Elaeagnus umbellata. Most members of the genus have those distinctive, silvery scales on the leaves.


If it doesn't have silvery scales on the leaves and/or fruit, and if the fruit isn't a drupe, but is instead a pome, like a small apple, then it's probably a member of the genus Crataegus (the Hawthorns). But from what I can see in the picture, your specimen does have the silvery scales typical of Elaeagnus, so that's my initial guess.


If you have close-up pictures of the fruits or better yet, the flowers, I could make a more confident diagnosis.
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  #1158  
Old 10-28-2014, 06:30 PM
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I've never taken pictures of the flowers, I'm afraid, but they do look like those. I will take some next Spring to confirm.
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Old 10-28-2014, 08:55 PM
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TLR, you need to start a blog. You could start with your post in this thread about seed dispersal, and your brilliant essay about light and sight that peacegirl never read. Just do it! as Nike would say. :2thumbsup: I'll be a correspondent.
Did you know that TLR has posted a whole bunch of awesome science essays right here at :fflove:?

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Old 10-28-2014, 09:27 PM
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Originally Posted by davidm View Post
TLR, you need to start a blog. You could start with your post in this thread about seed dispersal, and your brilliant essay about light and sight that peacegirl never read. Just do it! as Nike would say. :2thumbsup: I'll be a correspondent.
Did you know that TLR has posted a whole bunch of awesome science essays right here at :fflove:?

Science - Freethought Forum
While this is nice and a definite bonus for us :ff:ers, remember nobody links to us so except of us, his students (sometimes) and random people mistaking TLR as a park ranger very few humans get to experience his brilliance.
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  #1161  
Old 11-07-2014, 06:34 PM
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I am curious to know what The Lone Ranger thinks about this article, which is based at least in part on this article.

My question is motivated, apart from simple intellectual curiosity, by a discussion I was having with a friend who maintains we should all be vegetarians because eating meat causes harms to animals, who have subjective inner states just like human animals and can feel pain, fear, terror, etc. So we should eat plants only, in order to spare non-human animals subjectively experienced harms.

But what if plants also have subjective inner states? Is it possible, in some sense, that plants are conscious?

This sounds absurd on the face of it, because plants obviously lack brains and nervous systems, and typically we associate subjective mental states with those things. But what if this is just substrate bias?

But "substrate bias," I mean the assumption that inner subjective states necessarily supervene on brains and nervous systems; i.e., that the "substrate" of a mind is a brain and a nervous system. But note that if this is so, the entire project of artificial intelligence is forlorn. If it is true that minds necessarily supervene on biological brains and nervous systems, then no computer can ever become conscious. The philosopher Nick Bostrom maintains that consciousness is substrate-independent, so that AI is possible.

The ethical spur of my question is this: if it is at least possible that plants have "inner states" and are conscious to some degree, and perhaps even feel pain, and can do so because they have analogous or homologous structures to brains and nervous systems that perform similar functions and output similar results (consciousness), then what does this do to the ethical argument against harming others by killing and eating them? If we suppose that we should not eat animals because it harms them, and it turns out that eating plants also harms plants, because plants have to some degree subjective experiences, it seems obvious we must abandon our ethical notions or simply stop eating. I'm confident most would opt for the former.

These questions, I think, are not and cannot be purely scientific. They are to a great extent philosophical in nature, and turn on what we mean by a "mind." But I can well imagine that having subjective inner states, by whatever means possible, might be strongly selected for by evolution. I'm not sure science can answer this, but what say The Lone Ranger?
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  #1162  
Old 11-07-2014, 06:44 PM
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Vegetarian diets kill more animals.
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  #1163  
Old 11-07-2014, 10:58 PM
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Default Re: A Question For The Lone Ranger

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Michael Pollan, [...] "a whacko."
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argued that the sophisticated behaviors observed in plants cannot at present be completely explained by familiar genetic and biochemical mechanisms.
That's pretty weak. "We can't explain it right now, therefore God animal-like senses"?

---

I'm not going to disagree that plants have senses (this is trivially obvious) and sometimes communicate with each other (which is observed. The New Yorker article has examples). And I'm prepared to get over my substrate bias. Signalling via xylem and phloem and pheromones rather than neurons is plausible. It's quite possible that certain species of tree are sharing information and plans with each other and singing more complex songs than whales.

But these observations don't even make a step towards establishing "subjective inner states" or sentience or consciousness. It doesn't show that the most complex plant is more "sentient" than an amoeba. (Actually, we'll need to set aside any "movement bias" as well - moving in response to a stimulus is pretty animal-centric.)

--

Some questions the plant neurobiologists (yuk) should answer:
Do plants have a sense of self?
Do different plant species have different levels of sentience?

--

Some questions the rest of us should think about, if it's given that (some) harm to plants should be avoid in our diet:
- Is it OK to reduce the world's population of certain plants by not planting, irrigating or feeding them, since we aren't going to eat them any more? (Same question for sheep and pigs and chickens and so on.)
- Is it OK to eat the fruit or seeds of a plant if we sow a proportion of the seeds?
- If it's not OK to do this, should we remove or exterminate the animal species that normally do this?
- Is it OK to eat the flowers, stems, tubers etc of a plant where they don't die and will grow more naturally?
- Etc.
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  #1164  
Old 11-07-2014, 11:37 PM
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"It is somehow hearing what is, to it, a terrifying sound of a caterpillar munching on its leaves."
Warning bell, 'terrifying' suggests an emotional state, however none can be shown. It was shown that plants react to certain vibrations by emitting certain chemicals. This no more shows the plants are intelligent than phototropism and it would be like saying plants turn towards the sun because they get joy from their rays.

IMO these articles suggest the exact opposite, not that plants are conscious but that things we might think are connected to being conscious are not. The ability to react and adapt to the environment has been shown in practically all life forms including basic fungi and bacteria. It seems like a very loose definition of intelligence that would make a number of man made robots intelligent beings as well.
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  #1165  
Old 11-08-2014, 04:49 AM
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Default Re: A Question For The Lone Ranger

If I can weigh in as a microbiologist myself who is interested in many of the arbitrary distinctions biology makes like species or an organism or life, I have actually discussed the learning plant mimosa pudica with some other scientists. To me, the plant is definitely learning. I think many biologist types took exception to the word learning cuz that belongs to us and somehow involves potentiation of neurons. I think such people are clearly wrong and when they describe the plants actions without using the word learning that are making a stupid semantic argument. Also, I'm probably doing a disservice to their arguments here.

I think the article is doing the opposite. They see plants doing an action which is similar to a human like responding to a sound with a whole lot of human baggage to the point of absurdity.

In both cases, the people are making the same sort of mistake, they think of some thing as it occurs in a human and apply it in it's totality to a plant. It makes both groups argue absurdities. Plants don't have to learn as we do and they don't have to experience terror to respond to a stimuli. Interestingly, it is precisely that I don't hook up the human brain to learning in plants that makes it so I can say they learn.


Their list of magical plant abilities is stupid. Plants can sense water, gravity, and obstructions with their roots. I can also sense gravity. Will a drunk person not piss themselves if you dunk their hand in water? (I don't actually know if that's true, but we can feel wet. Most humans also can avoid running into shit.


It's funny, cuz I will totally argue that plants respond to the environment and don't "want" to be eaten, but it's not the same in all aspects as a human or animal.

Like would be absurd to suggest that most plants have a flight or fight response as flight ain't really an option.


"They would challenge contemporary biology’s reductive focus on cells and genes and return our attention to the organism and its behavior in the environment."

This quote from the New Yorker bugged me. I want to tell the author to go fuck himself. If plant neurobiologist are going to propose that plants can integrate complex information and respond like a complete animal can, they better have some reductive cellular proof. They better have some tired old cellular biology proof or they are quacks.

This also bugged me

"Plants dominate every terrestrial environment, composing ninety-nine per cent of the biomass on earth. By comparison, humans and all the other animals are, in the words of one plant neurobiologist, “just traces.”"

Yeah plants are plentiful but the number of species and organisms is minuscule compared to prokaryotes. Further they cave the same boring ass citric acid cycle metabolism that all of us eukaryotes have. Yeah, maybe they also have photosynthesis but they only have 1 kind of that.

I can understand suggesting plants are more important than people generally think, but we could argue rather in different ways like I just did for prokarya.
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  #1166  
Old 11-08-2014, 04:53 AM
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Default Re: A Question For The Lone Ranger

Joep,

"(Actually, we'll need to set aside any "movement bias" as well - moving in response to a stimulus is pretty animal-centric.)"

Um not really, many bacteria, archea, some fungi and a bunch of Protista are quite capable of movement and taxis :)

I am working on chemotaxis is H pylori currently :)

It is biased against the nonmotile though
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  #1167  
Old 11-08-2014, 07:02 AM
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Yeah, this has been touched on before.

I don't have time to go into too much detail right now, but I'm in agreement with the general points that JoeP, Ari, and beyelzu have already made.


It has been known for many decades that plants can communicate with each other, to at least some degree. And that they respond adaptively to their environments (including such things as predators) was never even an issue. (Responsiveness to one's environment is literally part of the definition of "alive.")


As I mentioned in an earlier post, I don't have any objection to calling the fact that plants can acquire and "remember" certain "behaviors" in response to their environments "learning." What else would you call it? And the only reason to put "remember" and "behavior" in scare quotes is because plants don't use the same mechanisms that animals do.

So yeah. Plants can learn, they can remember, and they can even be said to have behaviors. The same is true of bacteria. But it's an enormous leap to suggest that plants could have emotional states or anything resembling consciousness.


Bacteria can and do learn, at least in a sense, and they certainly communicate with each other. For example, Escherichia coli have been shown to be capable of associative learning -- if they're "taught" that warmer conditions are associated with reduced oxygen availability, they'll alter their metabolism in response to warming temperatures. Presumably, they're doing so in anticipation of reduced oxygen availability in the near future. It seems to me that by any reasonable definition, that's learning. But no one seriously suggests (to my knowledge, anyway) that bacteria might possess anything like consciousness or emotions.


In short, while I think it's fascinating that plants can learn, and that they can communicate with each other, I know of exactly zero evidence that they're capable of anything like emotional responses or consciousness.

If any plant has any sort of structure that's even close to being as complex, as massively interconnected, and as capable of processing inputs and generating complex outputs as is the "brain" of even so simple an animal as a rotifer -- I'm unaware of it. So far as I'm aware, no plant has anything that's even remotely analogous to a neuron in its functions and capabilities.


I mean, by all the evidence we currently have available, a jellyfish has vastly more "computational capacity" than does any plant. But I've never heard anyone suggesting that a jellyfish feels fear when a hungry sea turtle approaches.


Heck, if I had to guess, I'd say that the overwhelming majority of animals have no "subjective inner states." Does a honeybee have any idea at all that it's alive? I strongly doubt it. I know of nothing in its behavior to suggest that it does.

I'm not saying that consciousness (in some degree) is something that only vertebrates possess, by the way. Anyone who has spent much time observing the behavior of cephalopod mollusks knows that they're amazingly smart, and seem to possess some degree of self-awareness.



Maybe it's just that we don't know what to look for. Maybe it's just that plants are such alien beings to us that we have no idea what to look for. Maybe if we did know what to look for, we'd discover that [at least some] plants do have some degree of consciousness.

Maybe.

It would be foolish to completely rule out the possibility, in my opinion. But until and unless somebody discovers some heretofore-unknown cells/organs/mechanisms that allow a plant to process information on a scale that even remotely resembles what even the simplest of eumetazoans can do, I regard the notion that a plant could have emotions or consciousness as no more [or less] likely than that a sponge could.

In other words, while I regard it as an interesting idea, I think it's about as likely as the possibility that I'll be assaulted by Bigfoot during my next camping trip.



Quote:
Originally Posted by beyelzu
They see plants doing an action which is similar to a human like responding to a sound with a whole lot of human baggage to the point of absurdity.
This.



Quote:
The philosopher Nick Bostrom maintains that consciousness is substrate-independent, so that AI is possible.
That sounds incredibly arrogant and patently absurd to me. There's nothing magical about a brain. When you get right down to it, a neuron is a binary response system -- true, a given neuron can be simultaneously receiving 10,000 or more inputs, but it either generates an action potential in response or it doesn't. An action potential, by definition, is an "all-or-nothing" response. So there certainly doesn't seem to be any reason to think that a sufficiently complex and interconnected computer couldn't emulate a neural network and generate consciousness.

Granted, there's still a lot that we don't understand about how the interplay between billions of neurons -- many of which have 10,000 or more connections to other neurons -- generates consciousness. It gets even more complicated if it turns out (as some research suggests) that neuroglial cells are involved in signal processing by brain tissue. There may be over a trillion of those suckers in an adult human's brain.


And further granted, I haven't read Bostrom's writings, so maybe I'm misunderstanding his point. But it sounds to me like he thinks there's something almost magical about a brain -- something that a computer could never replicate. I see no reason to think that's true.


That having been said, given how complex a brain is, and how massively interconnected it is, I strongly suspect that "top down" efforts to build a true AI are doomed to fail, at least for the foreseeable future. We just don't know enough about how brains work. I think an evolutionary approach is far more likely to work.

That is, it seems to me that if you want a true AI, then your best bet is to emulate the one process that is known to have actually succeeded in generating intelligence -- biological evolution. Of course, given how fast a computer intelligence might evolve, it might prove to be a very, very bad idea to produce a true AI. Such an AI might very rapidly evolve beyond the point that we could hope to understand it.

But that's another discussion, I'm sure.
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  #1168  
Old 11-08-2014, 12:57 PM
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We just don't know enough about how brains work.
True. And we don't know what we mean by intelligence, or consciousness/sentience.
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  #1169  
Old 11-08-2014, 01:10 PM
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More here: I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat (but farm it right) | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian (2010)

Contrarily, which I've only just found, Why I'm eating my words on veganism – again | George Monbiot | Comment is free | theguardian.com (2013)
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  #1170  
Old 11-08-2014, 01:29 PM
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Default Re: A Question For The Lone Ranger

Since we don't know what we're talking about when we attribute subjective inner states or feelings to plants, and we can be mistaken if we think a vegetarian diet results in fewer animals being harmed, what are these discussions about?

Guilt?

"I don't want to feel guilty about what I eat. I do want others who disapprove of to feel guilty about what and how they eat."
Most people deal with this by ignoring thoughts of the supermarket packaged meat they buy once had feet and fur or feathers, let alone how it was killed.
And plenty of vegetarians probably wouldn’t be bothered by the reduction in animal life due to farming practices - because these animals are not killed directly by humans, let alone themselves) for food.

Does the ethical argument (as opposed to sustainability or other arguments) amount to any more than "should I feel guilty about the pain a potato feels when I pull it out of the ground, and/or when I boil it?"
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  #1171  
Old 11-08-2014, 02:05 PM
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Default Re: A Question For The Lone Ranger

At least my food is dead when I eat it.
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  #1172  
Old 11-08-2014, 02:26 PM
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Not if you eat apples. Or any fruit or nuts with viable seeds. :P
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  #1173  
Old 11-08-2014, 02:41 PM
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Ugh. Uh, hell no. My food's brown and hot and plenty of it.
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Old 11-08-2014, 03:57 PM
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Default Re: A Question For The Lone Ranger

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The philosopher Nick Bostrom maintains that consciousness is substrate-independent, so that AI is possible.
That sounds incredibly arrogant and patently absurd to me. There's nothing magical about a brain.
Isn't that what he just said? It's substrate independent - there's nothing magical about the brain. I think you read the opposite!
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  #1175  
Old 11-08-2014, 05:49 PM
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Default Re: A Question For The Lone Ranger

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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger View Post
Quote:
The philosopher Nick Bostrom maintains that consciousness is substrate-independent, so that AI is possible.
That sounds incredibly arrogant and patently absurd to me. There's nothing magical about a brain.
Isn't that what he just said? It's substrate independent - there's nothing magical about the brain. I think you read the opposite!

No, I don't think that is what he was saying, the substrate would be the brain, and being independent of the brain would make it somewhat magical in nature. I think TLR read it correctly. Bostrom seems to be saying that consciousness is something apart from the physical brain.
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