Chapter 31 6.4 Origin of change

Where does diversity come from? In 1983, microbiologist Julian Adams had a clue when he was growing a colony of E. coli bacteria.He purified the medium and obtained the same fungus with exactly the same invariance.He placed the colony in a special thermostat that provided a uniform growth environment for the strains—every E. coli had the same temperature and nutrient solution.He then made these identical worms replicate and ferment.After 400 generations of fission, E. coli bred new strains with slightly mutated genes.In a constant and featureless environment, life spontaneously diversifies. Surprised, Adams pored over the genes of those variants (which were not new species) to find out what was going on.An initial bacterium undergoes a mutation that causes it to secrete the organic chemical acetate.The other bacterium underwent a mutation that allowed it to use the acetate secreted by the first bacterium.The symbiotic codependency of acetate producers and acetate feeders suddenly emerges from homogeneity, and the group differentiates into an ecosystem.

While homogeneity can also produce variety, inconsistency produces better results.If the Earth were as smooth as a shiny bearing ball—with the same climate and soils evenly distributed as a perfect spherical chemostat—then the diversity of biomes the planet would have would be greatly reduced.In a persistent environment, all variation and diversity must be driven by internal forces.Other co-evolving life would be the only limitation acting on life. If evolution can go its own way, undisturbed by geographical or geological forces of change—in other words, without the encumbrance of the body—then this seemingly conscious evolution will use the products of evolution as input for further evolution, resulting in deeply recursive relationships.On a planet without mountains, storms, and unexpected droughts, evolution would draw life into ever-tighter webs of co-evolution, full of parasites, parasites reveling in ever-accelerating co-dependencies The prosaic world of parasites (aka hyperparasites), mimics, and symbionts.But because each species is so tightly coupled to the others, it can be difficult to tell where the identity of one species begins and the identity of another dies.In the end, evolution on a ball-like uniform planet will shape everything into a super-distributed, single, giant superorganism (superorganism) on a global scale.

Polar creatures born in harsh environments must deal with the elusive changes imposed on them by nature at any time.The severe cold at night, the scorching heat of the day, and the snowstorm after the ice melts in spring all create a harsh habitat.Habitats located in the tropics or deep sea are relatively "stable" because their temperature, rainfall, light, and nutrients are all constant.Thus, the peace of the tropics or the ocean floor allows species there to forego the need to adapt by altering their physiology, and leaves room for them to adapt in purely ecological ways.In these stable habitats, we can hopefully observe many instances of bizarre commensal and parasitic relationships—parasites devour parasites, males live inside females, organisms mimic, masquerade as other organisms—and they do.

Without a harsh environment, life can only play with itself, but it can still produce mutations and new characteristics. Whether in nature or artificial simulation, more diversity can be produced by putting organisms into harsh and changeable environments. This lesson is not uninstructive for copycats of the gods who seek to create simulated behavior in the computer world.Once the self-replicating and self-mutating computer virus is released into the computer memory where processing resources are evenly distributed, it quickly evolves into a large group of recursively replicating variants, including parasitic, hyperparasitic, and hyperparasitic.A computer life researcher named David Akeley told me: "I eventually found that the way to get real life-like behavior is not to try to create really complex organisms, but to provide simple organisms with an extremely rich environment. variable environment."