Author Topic: Co-Evolution  (Read 20044 times)

Offline Welwordion

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Co-Evolution
« Reply #30 on: October 26, 2008, 07:00:41 AM »
Even if we did not evolve from cells having cloroplasts, its not unusual for genes etc to migrate and their are even species that consume alga in order to use the chloroplasts for energy production, the reason this is not common is like in most cases its a cost usefulness problem.
Producing chlorophyll is not without cost also you need magnesium for it , which means you need enough light  to make the effort worthwhile.
For one cellular organisms this is simple a comparision of whats more energy efficient to do photosynthesis, using other chemical energy sources or stealing energy.
For multicellular organisms its a question of design, if you are moving you consume more energy than you can produce so you need feeding mechanism with or without photosynthesis, you rely on the surplus if a much larger biomass than you(if the sun intensity would be larger on our planet maybe it would be different) However in order to make photosynthesis profitable for you you need exposed surface that stays in the sun and you need to repair the extra sun damage caused to those surfaces.
In other words you either need bare skin not scales etc or hair like ice bears etc have that channels the light inside the hair and you need to stay most of the time outside in the light.
The fact that ice bears do not do photosysnthesis is probably due to the fact that gene immigration etc is much harder to do for multicellular sexual reproducing organisms.

Offline Peksa

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« Reply #31 on: October 26, 2008, 01:22:47 PM »
I've got co-evolution going on for 2,9M cycles in my current evosim. There's been some discussion on the forum about default rates of mutation being too high for stable evolution, so I've set it to 1/32 of normal rates and tweaked mutation probabilities a bit so that DNA should build up instead of shortening. Despite little mutations and slooow evolution, there's been intersting co-evolution. Veggies have moved constantly, moved away from bots, shot info-shots that interfered with hunting (stored 0 in .dx) and bots have managed to overcome every time. At the moment veggies use shell for defence. As for bots, I've pretty much managed to evolve Animal minimalis to C. Circumgirans again

The sim's got alga minimalis and animal minimalis with body/energy management. Animal minimalis has got 900 some generations and 80 mutations.  It's maybe a tad too little, but I want to see how it turns out. Veggie maxpop is at 20000 to allow natural population control, which has worked great. Total population has varied from ~1000 to ~6000. Costs are nearly F1 and veggies get 8 nrg/cycle/kilobodypoint.

The only problem is that the sim is really slow to run, from 0,5 to 3 cycles per sec on my computer and I'm in the army (There's compulsory military service in Finland) at the moment, so I can only run it on weekends. That combined with very slow evolution it gets a bit boring at times. I plan on running the sim as much as I can until my patience runs out. With so small mutation rates devolution shouldn't be a problem so in the long run there should be some nice evolution. I hope.

The sim's attached.

Offline jknilinux

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« Reply #32 on: October 26, 2008, 02:05:23 PM »
First of all, endy, there is no "chloroplasts vs. mitochondria." Plants have both.

And what's still weird? Pollination?

Welwordion-

Yes, nothing is without a cost, but movement doesn't magically turn photosynthesis from producing tons of energy to being a drain on resources. In fact, photosynthesis used to be too efficient- the reason plants use a green pigment instead of something that better absorbs yellow light is because the first photosynthesizers did use a different pigment- it was purple, which is great at absorbing yellow light. However, having soo much extra energy apparently made evolution stop working on them- they didn't need to move, they didn't need to evolve period. In the meantime, the green photosynthesizers continued evolving, since they had to to make up for their energy loss, and now all complex plants are green, while the purple bacteria are stuck in hot springs.

And, even though plants have found horribly inefficient forms of movement, that doesn't prevent them from contributing to their survival. If you gave evolution a few billion more years, plants would evolve to run, but it's just a huge evolutionary leap for them now. In fact, by their very nature, they have cell walls, which they'd have to lose first in order to move efficiently, but I don't see why they'd want to lose them in the first place- just one example of why they're stuck in their local minima.

Anyway, I don't see how genes could go from plants to animals... And even if they did, the animals wouldn't get the chloroplasts, since chloroplasts replicate on their own and basically still act like "bacteria" inside the cell, so to get chloroplast DNA you'd have to look at the chloroplast, not the nucleus.

Ikke, Peksa-

Almost forgot to say, Thanks for the sims!

I'm working on a sim where bots can only sexrepro and cannot move with conventional forms of movement (.up, .dn, .sx, .dx) and am already seeing amoeboids that move only using ties- they find a plant, grow like crazy until they kill it, then explode into a cloud of "spores", or single-celled bots, that wait until they hit a plant, and the cycle starts over again. Although the amoeboids can move a little on their own, like from one plant to another nearby one, they aren't that good at it yet- they mainly move using spores. Once I see where this goes, I'll look at yours. Thanks again!

Offline Peter

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« Reply #33 on: October 26, 2008, 03:06:38 PM »
Quote from: jknilinux
Yes, nothing is without a cost, but movement doesn't magically turn photosynthesis from producing tons of energy to being a drain on resources. In fact, photosynthesis used to be too efficient- the reason plants use a green pigment instead of something that better absorbs yellow light is because the first photosynthesizers did use a different pigment- it was purple, which is great at absorbing yellow light. However, having soo much extra energy apparently made evolution stop working on them- they didn't need to move, they didn't need to evolve period. In the meantime, the green photosynthesizers continued evolving, since they had to to make up for their energy loss, and now all complex plants are green, while the purple bacteria are stuck in hot springs.
Most light from the sun is red. So green is the best color to have. Why would you need yellow light for fotosyntesis?
The reason green won, is becouse it is better at absorbing the red light.
If plants really would get more energy if they where purple, they would get purple.
Cyanobacteria do use something more from the light-spectrum, I could be wrong. Do you mean that one.

Quote
And, even though plants have found horribly inefficient forms of movement, that doesn't prevent them from contributing to their survival. If you gave evolution a few billion more years, plants would evolve to run, but it's just a huge evolutionary leap for them now. In fact, by their very nature, they have cell walls, which they'd have to lose first in order to move efficiently, but I don't see why they'd want to lose them in the first place- just one example of why they're stuck in their local minima.
Plants don't need to move, that's why they don't move. As long there is light, they do as less as possible in my view. The reason, to reproduce as fast as possible.
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Offline jknilinux

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« Reply #34 on: October 26, 2008, 04:05:14 PM »
Peter-

What do you mean when you say the sun is red?

Look here:
http://www.livescience.com/environment/070...rple_earth.html

The guy there presents two hypotheses: Purple bacteria absorbed yellow light the best, but were inefficient. Or, he says purple bacteria absorbed yellow light the best, and were too efficient. I think he never actually checked to see which one is more efficient, retinal or chlorophyll. Either way, purple is better at absorbing yellow light, and might have actually given too much energy to the archaea, causing their downfall. So, photosynthesis can produce tons of energy. So, it would be beneficial for animals to photosynthesize, and for plants to move. However, the evolutionary leap to go from plant to animal is too big. So, plants remain plants, and that's why they don't run amok killing animals in real life. Yet (LOL ).
« Last Edit: October 26, 2008, 05:55:14 PM by jknilinux »

Offline Welwordion

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« Reply #35 on: October 26, 2008, 07:07:14 PM »
As soon as chlorophyll(green) bacteria or bacteria eating bacteria take the advantage there would have been evolutionary pressure on the retinal(purple)
What I read out of the article  you linked to is that chlorophyll is either more energy efficient or or the retinal did have more colloteral damage involved in its energy extraction process, nothing of stoping evolution.
Of course in multicellular organism gene migration etc is far more difficult those things rather work in single cellular organims and as we can see not all single cell organsims use photosynthesis, cause not everywhere is light to be of worth for that, but multicellular organsims can either make use of plant chlorphyll or becone symbiotic with bacteria able to do photosysnthesis
and like I said the fact that we have not more species doing it is a sign its inefficient without the cost of some design alterations.
Also do not forget that only outer, surface cells are limited to do photosynthesis which reduces the energy gain per organsim quite a lot. Also do not underestimate  how much energy moving consumes.

Offline Peter

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« Reply #36 on: October 28, 2008, 01:32:43 PM »
I haven't look far into it. So maybe that retinal does absorb light better. I haven't checked it, it could be. After all no plant is black, so they're losing light all the time. Yellow light is a kinda small part of the spectrum, so I doubt sincerely if that is where they win it, if I look at the graph of the link it look like it is green light where they win.

Still that name retinal, it sounds familiair.
Ah, found it. It is a form of vitamin A. Who said we can't compete with plants, huh. We're already having the 'plant-beating' (retinal) ourself.

Anyway, it isn't the most formed type of vitamin A, that is the alcohol retinol. But it is there and crucial.
« Last Edit: October 28, 2008, 01:33:39 PM by Peter »
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Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #37 on: October 28, 2008, 03:42:45 PM »
Keep in mind that red light is low energy.  Blue and violet light is high energy.  For photosynthesis to work, it involves a metal atom and the photoelectric effect, so it needs very specific wavelengths of light.  Also, there are two different pigments involved in photosynthesis, and they absorb slightly different colors.  The net effect is that plants absorb red light and blue light, but ignore the middle energy green light in the middle of the spectrum.

Check out this.
« Last Edit: October 28, 2008, 03:44:21 PM by Numsgil »

Offline Peter

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« Reply #38 on: October 28, 2008, 04:14:23 PM »
Yes, correct numsgil.

I was just pointing out that any plant hasn't got 100% effienciency. Primary becouse it isn't black it doesn't absorb everything meaning any plant is wastefull.

Also there seems to be 5 different types, explained in the wiki-site you linked to. The other three are only used in one-cell organisms.

I've got to say this retinal and the chloroplasts fitt each other. If this site is correct why aren't there any retinal-plants. They seem to live from the green light, what the normal plants don't absorb.
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Offline bacillus

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« Reply #39 on: October 28, 2008, 11:44:47 PM »
Also, this is ignoring oddities, such as red-leaved plants which, presumably, only use high-energy spectra for photosynthesis.
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan

Offline Peter

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« Reply #40 on: October 29, 2008, 07:33:04 AM »
Quote from: bacillus
Also, this is ignoring oddities, such as red-leaved plants which, presumably, only use high-energy spectra for photosynthesis.
As far I know, that is just something strange that doesn't get them any energie. Some extra pigment that made it look red, but further completely useless.
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Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #41 on: October 29, 2008, 02:13:52 PM »
Actually I think it's a lack of pigment.  Without chlorophyl leaves look red.

Offline bacillus

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« Reply #42 on: October 29, 2008, 11:57:00 PM »
Meaning red light is not absorbed...
Leaves without any form of chlorophyll whatsoever actually look white, which is how variegated leaves form. There are plants with purely red leaves, so what you're saying is that they can't produce sugars in significant quantities.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2008, 11:58:40 PM by bacillus »
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan

Offline Peter

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« Reply #43 on: October 30, 2008, 05:47:44 AM »
If leaves drop from the trees many leaves become red, this is becouse chlorophyl dies and the red stays left. I think there are plenty leaves that have some red pigment, but normally not shown. And so I think red leaves just have more of that red pigment. Possible a little less chlorophyl but I doubt that would be much.

We're getting more and more biological here aren't we.
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Offline bacillus

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« Reply #44 on: October 31, 2008, 12:12:29 AM »
I'm afraid so  
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan