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dictyNews Volume 41 Number 24
dictyNews
Electronic Edition
Volume 41, number 24
November 6, 2015
Please submit abstracts of your papers as soon as they have been
accepted for publication by sending them to dicty@northwestern.edu
or by using the form at
http://dictybase.org/db/cgi-bin/dictyBase/abstract_submit.
Back issues of dictyNews, the Dicty Reference database and other
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Abstracts
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The Evolution of Evolution: seen through the eyes of a slime mold
John Tyler Bonner
BioScience--to be in December 2015 issue
All eukaryotic organisms evolved through the aegis of natural selection
but there is a big difference in how this occurs depending on the size
of the organism. In unicellular microorganisms, which at one time in
early earth history were probably the only living eukaryotic forms,
natural selection plays a relatively minor role, but with size increase,
first made possible by the invention of multicellularity, selection plays
an increasingly central role in evolutionary change. This has come about
because larger forms isolate themselves from their environment and become
self sufficient. On the other hand, microorganisms are at the total mercy
of changes in their immediate environment. These differences have had some
interesting consequences. For instance extinctions, as in dinosaurs, are
common among mega-organisms, and living fossils, such as the horse shoe
crab, are rare. This is in sharp contrast to microorganisms where we find
living fossils to be common.
Submitted by John Bonner [jtbonner@princeton.edu]
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[End dictyNews, volume 41, number 24]
