DailyDirt: The Tree Of Life

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Mon, Feb 11th 2013 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Biology is a messy science. Nature doesn't lend itself to nice, orderly categories for people to understand. The tree of life is really tangled, and it's probably a bad analogy to start with. As we learn more about genetic analysis and find samples of ancient DNA, scientists are starting to reconsider some evolutionary processes. Here are just a few fascinating studies.

A single-celled organism in Norway doesn't quite fit the label of being an animal, plant, fungus, alga or protist -- but it is a eukaryote because it has a cell membrane. This microorganism isn't easily classified, and it might be our oldest living ancestor. [url]
Biologists are finding about 2,000 new marine species every year, but there are an estimated 700,000 to a million marine species living in the world's oceans. It's going to take a while to document all these organisms, and hopefully, we'll be able to do it before more species go extinct. [url]
Evolutionary biologists might need to re-think their understanding of how early animals developed. Previously, animals with a mouth and anus were classified as either protostomes or deuterostomes, depending on how they grew... but a recently-studied protostome throws a wrench into the naming conventions and how biologists look at the largest branch of animals in the tree of life. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: biology, dna, evolution, nature, organism, protosome, species

5 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 11 Feb 2013 @ 5:39pm

is there an evolutionary tree for viruses?
where do viruses fit on the tree of life?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 11 Feb 2013 @ 6:01pm

What about cataloging all the species before they evolve into new species? Remember, evolution is also about change, not just extinction.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 12 Feb 2013 @ 5:16am
  
  Re:
  "What about cataloging all the species"
  
  I was unaware this was not being done.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Feb 2013 @ 6:02am

Please stop using the shortened links.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Pat, 12 Feb 2013 @ 7:09am

A Eukaryote has membrane bound internal structures
Love your site, but some bio stuff is off once in a while(Like the Watson and Crick entry from last year). Eukaryote have internal compartments, like rooms, for specific functions/proteins. Bacteria, by your definition is a eukaryote(which it is not). Recently, bacteria have been found to contain microcompartments (Like eukaryotes except made out of proteins) however, they are not considered eukaryote as they lack lipid membrane bound complex structures. I'm tired so... Science*rainbow*
[ link to this | view in chronology ]