Cross Phyla Fertilization !!!

(to go in Biological Evolution Forum)This 2004 December article in our local paper mentions:
(from:Page Not Found - Vancouver Is Awesome)

quote:

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But there are even weirder things going on in the deep. In her book Acquiring Genomes, the respected microbiologist Lynn Margulis cites the observation of sea urchins fertilizing the eggs of a sea squirt named Ascidia mentula. Not only did the fertilized eggs survive this bizarre coupling, but they developed fully parental larvae, according to Margulis.

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Here's the weird part. Not only are the mating pairs from different species, they're from different phyla. One is from the Echinodermata phylum (Echinoderms are spiny sea creatures that include starfish and sea urchins), the other is from the superphylym Chordata. (Chordates include all the backboned "megafauna," such as tigers, alligators, elephants, sharks, condors, etc.) This is far weirder than a man mating with a mouse. It's more like a rhinoceros getting jiggy with a petunia and plopping out rhitunias. Bear in mind that the definition of species, according to the concise Oxford, is: "a category in the system of classification of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding."

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This is a very surprising result. I think it can be taken two ways: one does, indeed, suggest a problem with our understanding of evolution. The other suggests that even across phyla we are closly related and thus supports the common descent of all living things.I haven't been able to find anything on this yet to confirm it. That is one thing I would like comments on.The other is some explanation from the biologists here as to what is going one.Further information on this topic
Sorry, no page could be found at this address (404) - Learning LinkTalking about sequential chimera (and perhaps -- I haven't finished it yet explaining this a bit).To me this is a significant modification of the current neo-Darwinian paradigm. It adds the possibility of a major source of variation (
"sharing genes") that could compliment or supplant mutations.If we also accepted some of the concerns of the ID'ists about things suddenly springing into place this could offer another mechanism other than co-option.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 01-27-2005 17:45 AM

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Though I feel as though the writer for your local paper overstated the case a bit: Checking out the DevBio account on the site you link, it is obvious that the result has not been confirmed, and that Margulis feels it needs to be confirmed: And: It may be misleading from the DevBio site, but it appears that Williamson published his experiment in a non-peer-reviewed book in 1991 - surely this sort of result would be confirmed in the past dozen or so years?The description is also giving me serious flashback regarding another anatomist, J.A.Davidson, aka Salty, who argued with several of us that Daphnia never mate sexually, despite decades of genetic and other evidence. Why? Because he knew that Daphnia didn't mate sexually based on some anatomical studies he did in the 1950's and wasn't familiar with the genetic analysis used (plus all the geneticists were liars).

Yes, I'm trying to find some references to the bibliography since it appears the paper is from around 1999.

Where did you get 1999 from? It looked like a couple of books from 1991 to me... perhaps the finding was a bit controversial for a peer-reviewed journal without follow-up experiments - which I'd also love to see.The 1999 Hatta paper listed on the DevBio bibliography discusses interspecific (but still intragenic) crosses, which is nothing ground-breaking in of itself.A PubMed search reveals a few sea urchin papers listing Williamson as an author, but not anything like the cross-phyla experiment.

Page Not Found - Vancouver Is AwesomeIt seems our local boy is a "confusionist". That is, he is confused about it all.Of course, this is because he doesn't have his facts right.

Fungal rib0some introns in Lichens give me the same thought. My feeling is that we just dont PERCEIVE organisms as they 'deceptively/competatively/evolutionarily ARE. By thinking in terms of the statistical physics of sources and sinks under niche constructability gives me a differnt thought than a rigid difference of genotype and phenotype relied on. But then I would need be quantitive correct and that I have not shown even myself.