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Yeah, I saw that news, pretty cool. I guess more nerves aren't necessary for success as a species?
Amazing preservation of details in Chinese fossils of that period. OTOH, as poorly-preserved as such details generally are, hard to say whether this is a surprising feature in ancient animals or not?
Yeah, I saw that news, pretty cool. I guess more nerves aren't necessary for success as a species?
Amazing preservation of details in Chinese fossils of that period. OTOH, as poorly-preserved as such details generally are, hard to say whether this is a surprising feature in ancient animals or not?
It kind of goes with an evolutionary theme that doesn't get much press: simplification (of organization if not of gene-coding) as a part of adaptation. You can sort of see what's happening with the organism: genetically/developmentally, you can just have all the same nerves in each segment, but while that is simple in terms of gene-operation, its not efficient for animals in that not all segments need all the nerves and ganglia.
As you (I think) point out, that doesn't seem to hold true for genes, where organisms seem to carry all kinds of redundant and apparently useless cruft around?
As you (I think) point out, that doesn't seem to hold true for genes, where organisms seem to carry all kinds of redundant and apparently useless cruft around?
Yes, but as usual, sometimes things are more complicated. The basic trend seems to go: genetic simplicity to genetic mess (though perhaps not developmental mess since the genes have to be regulated -- even the mess has to be switched off at some point) and structural adaptation (often toward simplicity such as loss of segments or specialization of segments). BUT iirc the regulatory genes also tend to go into progressive meta-segmentation so you get the strange case of the genetically rather streamlined human geneome with a kind of meta-hox-gene regulator system running it.
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