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Cambrian explosion

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jknilinux:
Well, I've noticed that almost all evosims seem to be stuck in a sort of precambrian era- none of the rapid diversification that leads to co-evolution ever seems to occur. If you look at the precambrian, there's little life other than gloop- asymmetrical MBs at best, few carnivores, few species. Sound familiar?

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to solve this issue? Maybe we can make an official list of features that can encourage speciation for DB3?

ikke:

--- Quote from: jknilinux ---Well, I've noticed that almost all evosims seem to be stuck in a sort of precambrian era- none of the rapid diversification that leads to co-evolution ever seems to occur. If you look at the precambrian, there's little life other than gloop- asymmetrical MBs at best, few carnivores, few species. Sound familiar?

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to solve this issue? Maybe we can make an official list of features that can encourage speciation for DB3?
--- End quote ---
Some suggestions:
- Patience: life evolved about 3.5 billion years ago, the cambrian explosion was a mere .6 billion years ago
- multiple habitats to allow for diversity
- have algea and animals follow separate evolutionary steps for instance by different (contradictory) metabolism genes.

Numsgil:
A couple things happened that IMO enabled the cambrian explosion.

1.  Snowball earth.  The cambrian explosion happened after a massive extinction event when the Earth supercooled and the planet was covered in over a mile of ice.

2.  Diploid DNA: at some point some life learned to merge during hard times to save resources, with both DNA strands being both in control at the same time.  This lead to...

3.  Sexual recombination, allowing safer exploration of the genomic landscape.  If one DNA strand can survive, and another one can too, combining them increases the probability of a successful novel combination while minimizing the risk of something that won't survive.

4.  Eukaryotes: eukaryotes have a far more organized structure than protists.  Centralized DNA, specialized organelles, etc.

5.  Multicellularity: once multicellular critters appeared, it sort of snowballed into massive diversification.  Apparently once you perfect multicellularity on a small scale, it scales to larger sizes pretty well.

jknilinux:
Numsgil-

I'm afraid all those were around long before the cambrian explosion, except for number 1: that might have contributed.

But even bacteria can use sexrepro, while eukaryotes, which were around long before the cambrian explosion, all are diploid and use sexrepro. Multicellularity appeared in the precambrian, in the form of ediacaran biota. However, something turned one of those ediacaran things into the first bilaterian, and after that, life had a foundation to make all known complex organisms.

So, I don't know if that works out. One idea I heard was the emergence of advanced predators- in a world of a. minimalis, there emerged a quickdraw. This didn't kill off everything, but left an area where there were very few plants, similar to moonfisher's nnbot evosim. This is where intelligent/interesting behavior evolves, and as these dead zones grew, life inside the dead zones had to evolve in a way similar to bots in the IBBleague. So, basically we need a huge sim and need to wait a huge amount of time.

ikke-

what do you mean by "have algea and animals follow separate evolutionary steps for instance by different (contradictory) metabolism genes." Do you mean to make sure that sexrepro offspring of the algae and animals will not be viable?

Numsgil:
"long" before is a relative term.  I'm saying those things had to occur before the explosion.  It wasn't a fated event, bound to happen.  It involved things that had to happen first, and then the proper sequence of events had to line up in the right order at the right time with a bit of luck.

IMO, what happened was the invention of a whole new way to structure and organize and reproduce.  The eukaryote.  But ecosystems are built like a house of cards.  The base is built from what comes before.  The old protists were filling niches and couldn't be ousted, so the eukaryotes couldn't live up to their full potential.  It took a dramatic event.  The almost obliteration of life.  Then the old ways were cleaned out and new ways could flourish.

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