We don’t decide the baskets, if any, that this primordial soup decides to branch into.
Real “taxonomy” probably looks more like a web with nodes.
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flora_explora@beehaw.org 1 day agoEven for anything else, it actually is. Taxonomy is our construct that we came up with as a society to classify life. We cannot ever be “right” about it, it can just be more or less useful for us to understand life.
icelimit@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
fun fact: i have the conspiracy theory that the USB symbol:
represents the phylogenetic tree of live. there’s a big node right at the beginning which are all the bacteria that aren’t really species (as i explained in another comment in this thread) but groups that can all exchange genes with each other and are therefore “one big species” and a lot of eukaryotic species that a long time ago developed out of them which only branch out, but don’t come back.
nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Is there such a thing as real taxonomy or are there just different ways to classify life with their own pros and cons?
icelimit@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
It’s about as artificial as the concept of ‘nations’ I feel
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
Is there such a thing as real taxonomy
in the unlikely case that this is a serious question: yes, there is, at least for eukaryotes.
for eukaryotes (things that have a cellular nucleus) there are “species” which are groups of organisms that can’t produce offspring with each other. The reasons are typically (i think?) that the genetic differences between two species are too great and any offspring would therefore have such a self-incompatible set of genes that they cannot live with.
for prokaryotes (bacteria) the situation is a bit different. due to horizontal gene transfer, they can exchange genes with practically ever other strain of bacteria, as long as the environmental circumstances are right. (and the result is often viable, i.e. the resulting bacteria can live that way). as a consequence, there are not so clearly defined “species” for bacteria. however, there are still groups of bacteria that have a higher similarity to each other, so we still group them together and give them names.
flora_explora@beehaw.org 1 day ago
This isn’t generally true for eukaryotes either. In plants, hybridization is a huge thing and also polyploidy. So for some groups of plants we struggle to put them in neat boxes as well.
And zooming out to a larger view on taxonomy, plant taxonomy has seen some huge changes in the last decades with the various APG (angiosperm phylogeny group) publishings rearranging many if not most orders, families and genera of angiosperm plants.
nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Are there not distinctions between sepcies that can interbreed? I remember learning from an anthro professor there are horses for examples that literally have different amounts of chromosomes that can interbreed fine. I still don’t see how that’s not also and arbitrary distinction I guess.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
in that case we cannot ever be “right” about anything, as any thought we have is just a model that helps us get through life?
flora_explora@beehaw.org 1 day ago
Yes and it is very important to constantly remind ourselves that all our abstractions and classifications are just that. Helpful tools for us to view and understand the world. People tend to forget that and over time see their categorization as essential and natural. For example, sex and gender are both socially constructed but people forget that and then create a whole set of rules around it to reinforce that categorization including social stigmatization and infant mutilation.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
ok then two comments:
if nothing is strictly true, then that implies that the statement that “nothing is strictly true” is also not strictly true, i.e. there are exceptions which are strictly true …
jokes aside, your comment reminds me of a funny story i once read where a biologist does research on clover (you might know this one). he investigates all clover he can find and finds that they all have 3 leaves. so he calls it a law of nature that clover has three leaves.
one faithful morning, he walks out of door and finds a 4-leaved clover in the garden (which is symbol of good luck in some cultures). however, he rebukes at that and tries to sue the clover for violating the law of nature …
kinda the same spirit as what you said above. people make observations, then make these observations into laws, and if somebody breaks them, that’s their fault. instead, the model was conceived inappropriately .