Biological complexity: how big is the bush of life? (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 14, 2020, 16:01 (1684 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: “The discovery of the massive gelatinous string siphonophore—a floating colony of tiny individual zooids that clone themselves thousands of times into specialized bodies that string together to work as a team—was just one of the unique finds among some of the deepest fish and marine invertebrates ever recorded for Western Australia.”

dhw: Now this really is worth a new comment. You could hardly have a better description of how multicellularity works. All multicellular bodies are collections of cells that clone themselves thousands of times into specialized bodies that string together to work as a team. I have called them cell communities. My pet analogy has always been ant colonies, but maybe the siphonofore is even better. Thank you for this intriguing article.

DAVID: These are simply single celled organisms clumped together, which again you have again exaggerated into one of your woolly hopes about out individual cell intelligence. Stromatolite mats are exactly the same, examples of a degree of simple cell cooperation for simple tasks.

Do you deny that our own body consists of single cells clumped together into specialized groups which cooperate as teams?