[HN Gopher] World's largest organism found in Australia
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World's largest organism found in Australia
Author : dotsam
Score : 133 points
Date : 2022-06-01 09:31 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I for one welcome our mutant hybrid mega organism sea grass
| overlord!
| Timpy wrote:
| It's seagrass, if you want to save a click.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Ah cool they found your mom
| hp48fan wrote:
| "reach across more than 180 kilometers--an area the size of
| Washington, D.C."
|
| Wasn't aware the DC is a line. How can I take Science mag
| seriously when its journos and editors ignore (at least two!)
| glaring units error? As it stands an amoeba is larger than this
| grass since an amoeba has breadth in two extra dimensions.
| mkl wrote:
| The author has a master's in science writing, so it's
| surprisingly sloppy.
|
| They did it again too: "The clone is about 1.5 orders of
| magnitude larger than the largest fungi [770 hectares] and the
| longest sea animal [120 metres]." It's over _3_ orders of
| magnitude longer than that animal, and closer to 1.4 orders of
| magnitude larger area than that fungus.
|
| But also, it's not a single connected organism anyway (emphasis
| mine): "a single polyploid clone spanning more than 180 km in
| _fragmented_ , near-shore meadows".
| bagacrap wrote:
| The paper explains a little more the meaning of the 180km
| figure: "a single polyploid clone spanning more than 180 km
| in fragmented, near-shore meadows". So this seems to be the
| distance between the farthest two clone instances. It sounds
| like the clone instances were originally connected but became
| disconnected in time.
|
| I think the Washington DC comparison comes from this line:
| "We used the total estimated area of P. australis meadows in
| Shark Bay (200 km2 pre 2010/11 heatwave [43])" compared to a
| DC area of 176km2.
| mkl wrote:
| I don't think that means it was ever all connected at once
| though. Each meadow could expand and split over time.
|
| Yes, the 200km2 vs. 770 hectares is what I used to get my
| 10^1.4. It's unrelated to the 180km distance the author
| puts in the DC comparison sentence though.
| bergenty wrote:
| DANK_YACHT wrote:
| They're probably referring to the diameter of a circle. The way
| it's written is unclear, but not necessarily an error per se.
| mkl wrote:
| I don't think so, as Washington DC is nowhere near 180km
| across. Or did you mean some other circle?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| FWIW, it's a single omitted word: D.C. is 177 square
| kilometers.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| The plant in the linked article is 180 km _across_ though.
| Measured in square kilometers it might be a lot more. You can
| 't make a comparison across different dimensional units.
|
| A correct comparison here would've been to the distance
| between DC and Philadelphia, or similar.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Oh, yeah that kills my sympathetic interpretation.
| coward123 wrote:
| I wish I knew precisely where in the Blue Mountains the
| supposedly largest fungi resides... I live near that area, hunt
| for mushrooms there, and it has never been my observation that
| there is anything _unique_ about the terrain or conditions that
| would be particularly beneficial for mass fungi growth.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Maybe it's good that it's not publicly known? If you find it,
| please don't post it on HN!
| coward123 wrote:
| I think most people in this area have a pretty general idea
| where it is... While I am at best an amateur mycologist,
| where drdec below has me angry at his/her sarcasm is that as
| a human being, no, it isn't at all obvious why the world
| largest fungi would end up here rather than say in the WA /
| OR / BC cascades, or for example in the Olympics in
| Washington State. Those areas certainly have more of the
| mushrooms that we prize for human consumption, have longer
| seasons in which those fungi are available too (I'm
| hypothesizing due to moisture). Remoteness could be a factor
| (IE: less human contact), but those areas have plenty of very
| remote terrain as well. Further, I think it is a really
| interesting question as we contemplate the effects of climate
| change in these areas.
| drdec wrote:
| Sure it's difficult for you to see, but trust me, it's obvious
| to a fungus.
| john567 wrote:
| You expect some enormous sea monster but all you got was some
| kind of immortal sea weed. Trees have this thing as well. Many
| tree organisms are 100 000 years old. There's also some kind of
| distinction between tree organisms and tree individuals. Tree
| individuals don't get to be that old.
| m463 wrote:
| > There's also some kind of distinction between tree organisms
| and tree individuals
|
| Now if the Ship of Theseus used wood from that tree organism...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
| xiande04 wrote:
| I didn't expect a sea monster at all. Actually, I expected a
| fungus.
| m463 wrote:
| I can't help but think discoverability for a fungus would be
| much lower.
| emsy wrote:
| Headline said Australia, so I expected it to be deadly.
| sophacles wrote:
| Fungus is a pretty deadly kingdom overall, even the fungi
| from the rest of the continents too.
| V-2 wrote:
| My thoughts went towards the coral reef, esp. with Australia
| in the headline.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Many tree organisms are 100 000 years old.
|
| Fascinating list of longest-living organisms, including aerobic
| microorganisms that are in quasi-suspended animation and over
| 100 million years old:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organis...
| wanderingstan wrote:
| The researchers actual report:
| https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2022.053...
|
| Sounds like it is in fact a single interconnected organism (like
| Pando) and not multiple plants that are clones.
|
| > Our genomic and cytogenetic assessments of 10 meadows
| identified geographically restricted, diploid clones (2n = 20) in
| a single location, and a single widespread, high-heterozygosity,
| polyploid clone (2n = 40) in all other locations. The polyploid
| clone spanned at least 180 km, making it the largest known
| example of a clone in any environment on earth.
| pavlovskyi wrote:
| I wont click but it sounds like best prepared ,yo mama joke'
| canjobear wrote:
| I came here to see if there was already a highly-downvoted yo
| momma joke
| simpleuseriam wrote:
| xiande04 wrote:
| hehehe <_<
| dsoftware234 wrote:
| artie_effim wrote:
| ...and of course it wants to kill you :)
| anakaine wrote:
| The healine and description makes me wonder: what can be called a
| single organism?
|
| The sea grass is comprised of individual plants that are each of
| identical DNA, ie they are clones. Does this and their proximity
| and continuity make them one organism?
| noisy_boy wrote:
| If they are all identical DNA, doesn't it make them
| exceptionally susceptible to something that finds a weak spot
| in that DNA? Will we hear about the world's largest organism
| wiped out in world's widest reaching wipeout?
| p1mrx wrote:
| This sort of thing has probably happened many times in
| Earth's history. Homogeneity works great until it doesn't.
| usrusr wrote:
| Spot on. The cavendish banana even recruited a globally
| present mammal species to spread its clones into all
| latitudes where it can grow, on both hemispheres. And it's
| not looking too well for it.
|
| (now my brain is playing that song from the chiquita banana
| ad on loop that was based on Carmen Miranda in The Gang's
| All Here, as if that movie hadn't already saturated the
| worldwide demand for banana advertisement for decades)
| iAmAPencilYo wrote:
| Not looking well in what sense?
| nickspacek wrote:
| It might if this "something" is persistent or widespread
| enough to affect all of the separate colonies of it; it
| sounds like there are individual patches that are spread out
| over many kilometers.
| 323 wrote:
| That "something" can a physical factor like temperature
| rise or acidity change. Temperature rise is known to have
| killed some large corals.
| [deleted]
| pilaf wrote:
| > The sea grass is comprised of individual plants that are each
| of identical DNA, ie they are clones. Does this and their
| proximity and continuity make them one organism?
|
| Probably. The top paragraphs in [1] talk about precisely that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_organisms
| mkl wrote:
| But it sounds like it doesn't have continuity (emphasis
| mine): "a single polyploid clone spanning more than 180 km in
| _fragmented_ , near-shore meadows".
| dan_hawkins wrote:
| Richard Dawkins asks that exact question in his "Selfish Gene."
| For example humans cannot survive without it's gut bacterial
| flora. So is human a single organism without it or not? Where's
| the boundary? He also explores self replicating organisms (like
| mentioned seagrass) and explains benefits of evolution
| "introducing" sex based replication.
| lkuty wrote:
| According to Buddhism, there is no boundary. Between a human
| and the "external" world. This point of view is very
| interesting.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis is more or less the
| scientific equivalent of this.
|
| think systems theory of life, planet, rock, gas, organism,
| etc.
| whatisjmg wrote:
| triter_than wrote:
| It's not clear to me whether this clonal colony is like Pando
| (shared root system) or is just clones next to each other.
|
| In the latter case I personally wouldn't call it one organism.
| Otherwise you clone a sheep and get a "double sheep" when they
| share a pen?!
| [deleted]
| jboggan wrote:
| Unless they establish that it's a single root system I
| wouldn't dethrone Pando just yet. From the description it's
| at least 9 separate seagrass beds, so I doubt it's all one
| system.
|
| As a side note, I'm going to see Pando this weekend.
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(page generated 2022-06-01 23:02 UTC)