[ExI] evolution problems

[Darin Sunley]

One thing that's always puzzled me about the standard abiogenesis
narrative: how do unicellular creatures evolve into multi-cellular
creatures with tissue differentiation, that also use gamete cells for
reproduction that contain the DNA of all of the tissue types?

It's easy to see how you can go from unicellular creatures to colony
creatures with tissue differentiation. And it's easy to see how you go from
unicellular creatures reproducing via fission to unicellular creatures
reproducing sexually.

The problem seem to be that, once you're a multi-cellular colony creature
with differentiated tissues, it's very hard to see how you get the DNA from
all the subspecies back into a single subspecies of gamete cell.
Conversely, it's also difficult to see how, if you're a unicellular species
that reproduces sexually, how to you accumulate and absorb other species
for tissue differentiation?

Summing up, it's easy to see how one feature (tissue differentiation) or
the other (gametes) evolves, but I've never heard an even remotely
convincing narrative about how you end up with both features in one species.

Speculation: however it ended up happening, I strongly suspect it's the
single innovation that caused the Cambrain explosion. And given how late
the Cambrian explosion was in our planet's prehistory, it may have been a
seriously difficult hump for evolution to get over. And may therefore be a
prime candidate for the Great Filter.



On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 1:27 PM, Henrik Ohrstrom <henrik.ohrstrom at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Bats and moths have evolved together, probably starting with normal sounds
> for both and escalation and arms race as the logical result.
> If it was a case of intelligent design we would se the usual signs of a
> design committee, inside out retinas, brains rotated and mirrored, air and
> fluid pathways crossing each other and so on.
> /Henrik
>
> Den fre 14 sep. 2018 19:59Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> skrev:
>
>> On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 12:25 PM William Flynn Wallace <
>> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Here's what I don't get about evolution:  a tiger moth developed the
>>> ability to make ultrasonic clicks, which just so happen to interfere with a
>>> bat's ability to locate them.
>>>
>>> Doesn't that seem suspicious to you, like someone is messing with the
>>> system?  random mutation is random, right?  'Just so happens'  - seems like
>>> a huge coincidence to me.
>>>
>>
>> Not at all. Probably started with some mutation that caused minor, mostly
>> ineffective clicking, but was effective enough to slightly enhance its
>> owner's chances of reproducing. Over time, those moths whose clicking was
>> more effective out-competed the others, and the "skill" was refined.
>>
>> -Dave
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