#yes cyanobacteria
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ANTS would NOT EXIST without Cyanobacteria!
Ants are animals, which breathe atmospheric O2. The reason there is so much atmospheric O2 today is because of the Great Oxygenation Event, unilaterally caused by Cyanobacteria. During the GOE, atmospheric O2 went from composing .001% Earth's atmosphere, to the 21% we know and love (and can't live without) today!
P.S. boyfriends would also not exist if not for Cyanobacteria, for similar reasons!
P.P.S. ants are my second favorite organism, after (you guessed it) Cyanobacteria!
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imagine if your boyfriend was like I can smell an ant. and started tracking
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foundgirlpigeon · 1 year ago
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AAAAAAA
THEY LITERALLY JUST DECIDE YES THIS ONE IS OKAY AND HOLD ONTO EACH OTHER
They hold onto each other and form a community like we do I'm totally not sobbing over this
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pockethexapod · 2 years ago
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My 4th (+ 5th, 6th & 7th) OC for Funguary! (Cornflower Bolete + Hairy Mycena + Podosepula Pusio + Pixie’s Parasol)  
Once the heiress to a bandit empire, Cornelle has since distanced herself from her selfish past to instead pursue fungiculture. When she learned of Laicha’s quest to travel the land and smite evil, she left her farm in good hands before joining the young healer’s cause. Her weapon of choice - a nutrient-rich mahogany log - can be imbued with the magical properties of her tiny home-grown friends, the Goons.
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opens-up-4-nobody · 2 years ago
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#ok. so the guy from school i visited emailed me today like: good news! we unanimously voted to extend u an offer here#so expect the formal offer in the next week. and im like uuuugh i wanna say yes so bad#bc in the us i would have more flexibility in the program than i would in the uk#and my options in the us r either to b a big fish in a small pond at this schoolor a little fish in a big pond at the other#bc this school is underfunded and a bit isolated out in the mountains but the staff r pretty great and big egos dont seem like a big issue#but if i go to the other school its like a big well funded school. the application was like 75 dollars. fuck u and really annoying#and i mean id have to live in new jersey. so in the city with city driving and prob a more high pressure school environment#and more of a chance of dealing with big egos. but like career wise im sure it would b good. assuming i don't mentally collapse#but i mean that doesnt seem as fun as spending 5 years out in the rocky mountains#like thry have fucking moose and bears! there were deer and turkeys in town!#and my dad just sent me a video of all the spring peepers singing back home and im like 😭 bc froggies and he was like i bet u could find#frogs out in [redacted city] and im like 😭 ur right. it just seems like the better choice for my poor overtaxed brain and the project is#so cool too. i want to get the cyano species as my computer background asap. and the guy is nice and apparently super supportive#and i could probably walk to hiking trails. god. i mean i have to say yes to that. i wanna say yes so bad. send me the formal offer bro#ill fucking take it before i even hear back from the other schools lol. ugh. i hate making choices#oof i am so excited to kno where im going and plan my departure. its gonna b such a pain moving tho i pray that my mum or dad can drive#with me bc otherwise the 20hr drive by myself might kill me. thats almost as bad as my initial move out here lol. the us is so big#ugh. again choices. is this the right choice? probably one of the biggest decisions of my life. the project feels so right. cyanobacteria#my algal group of choice. and hot springs. how tf do u say to no to that? i mean. id b doing that in new jersey too but with red algae#ugh. put me out of this misery lol. also as an aside. shout out to my fucking disaster brain for not being able to focus on a single thing#my boss in a meeting: so glad to have students and staff so excited to b working on this project!! me: lady i hate that im on this project#bc im just sitting in until they can get an actual student. i just do what im told but appreciate the enthusiasm lol#ay. im so tired. i wanna see the snow and mountains. and fix my head. and get outta the desert. and listen to frogs 🐸 😌#unrelated
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CHAINS would NOT EXIST without Cyanobacteria
Even putting aside the fact that humans (who breathe atmospheric O2, the vast majority of which was created by Cyanobacteria) were the inventors of chains, even this material from which the chains themselves are composed would not exist without cyanobacteria.
Why, you may ask? Because these chains are covered Iron Oxide, aka rust, which can only be created by Iron being oxidized. What does being oxidized require? Atmospheric O2, the vast majority of which was created by Cyanobacteria. In fact, literally any mineral which contains Oxygen would not exist without Cyanobacteria.
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mycoblogg · 1 year ago
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Whats the difference between lichen, moss, mould and mushrooms if they're all fungus? Aren't they all the same sorta thing?
so, interestingly, all of these groups are very different !! instead of naming the differences, let me quickly explain what exactly these organisms are.
lichen :
lichens are symbiotic organisms, meaning they are in themselves the product of a relationship between different organisms. to simplify it, lichens are big part fungus, & smaller part algae (protista) or cyanobacteria (monera). these different forms of life together create lichen, which grows on trees, rocks, leaves, mosses & sometimes other lichens !! to read more about lichens, check out @/lichenaday's blog :-)
moss :
mosses are actually not fungi at all !! they are small, flowerless plants. they grow on trees & in soil. :-)
mould :
mould is a type of structure that fungi can form - it is entirely fungal. it reproduces through airborne spores :-) there are many different types of mould ; some are toxic, some are used medicinally, & some are saprotrophs. (note : slime moulds & water moulds are unrelated to fungal moulds !!)
mushrooms :
so, lots of people think mushrooms are a species of fungus, but they are not. "mushroom" refers to the fruiting body of a fungus ; what a mushroom is to a fungus is comparable to what a flower is to a tree - the part that reproduces !! not all fungi produce mushrooms (e.g. moulds, which do not have fruiting bodies as the entire organism is able to release spores). there are currently only 14 000 discovered fungi that produce mushrooms !! more fungi that don't produce mushrooms include mildew, yeast & lichen.
so, yes !! they're all quite different in structure, cells & function in the ecosystem.
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apocalypticvalraven · 8 months ago
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Delicious in Dungeon in The Kitchen
So... I was struck by the thought that I kinda wish some food nerd would go through the Dungeon Meshi dishes and analyze them and sort of give a "this is the real world thing they're making" run down.
And then I realized I'm a food nerd that can do research.
So.
We're gonna try this out, starting with Volume 1. I don't promise that I know everything about cooking. I don't promise I'll always be able to make the thing I'm looking at (I am broke, and I don't have my own kitchen). But I can at least look at a dish and figure out what they're doing and how to replicate it, at least sorta.
Dungeon Meshi Volume 1-- Huge Scorpion and Walking Mushroom Hot Pot
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The two main components of this dish are the Huge Scorpion and Walking Mushroom.
Walking Mushroom
Looking at the images in the manga, Walking Mushroom seems to just... be a mushroom that can walk around. There are no organs, the interior seems pretty uniform in substance...
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Like, literally, that's exactly what sliced mushrooms look like. Senshi cuts the mushroom into ~4" strips (judging by their size next to the small cabbage-like vegetable, and comparing those plants to his hand in the image of him gathering them. I am assuming dwarf hands are roughly the same size as human hands).
There's a variety of edible mushroom that is probably as close as we're going to get to the size of a Walking Mushroom, growing a cap up to 3' wide, but it seems to only grow in termite mounds in a very specific part of the African continent (please forgive my USAmerican, White education leading me to not being able to identify the specific region), so... if you can get that at all, it's probably crazy expensive (as it should be, unless you're literally getting it from the mounds or local markets yourself). Portobello or similar large culinary mushrooms are probably just fine. The Mushroom Feet are literally just mushrooms, so no worries there.
Huge Scorpion
Ok, so... there is a difference between arachnids and crustaceans. As a start, arachnids have book lungs and crustaceans have gills. Arachnid guts are different from crustacean guts, just because of environment. Hell, crustacean limbs grow differently from arachnid limbs.
That said, everything I see in Dungeon Meshi implies that, from a culinary standpoint, Huge Scorpion is a crustacean-
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So, really, it's just a big lobster. Take a lobster, cut off its legs, antennae, and the tail fluke, and you're going to see something that looks pretty similar to the huge scorpion in Dungeon Meshi.
Seaweed
Next is seaweed, which... is just a thing, but also kind of an imprecise term, I think. Basically, "seaweed" just refers to any marine algae that is multicellular and macroscopic (big enough to see). Arctic Moss seems to be a real thing which refers to a couple things- the aquatic moss Calliergon giganteum and the terrestrial lichen in the genus of Cladonia, which includes Reindeer Lichen.
Reindeer lichen is edible, in a number of ways, but it's also not seaweed. So we look at Calliergon giganteum. I cannot get an answer as to whether this particular variety of moss is edible. So... fuck it, say Senshi used Reindeer Lichen, at least we know that's edible.
"Star Jelly" is... I don't know. The main result I find when googling it is that it's the sort of general term for various slimes that show up on lawns and other vegetation, etc. Which means it could be anything from amphibian spawning jelly to who the fuck knows what.
However, one thing it could be is a cyanobacteria known as Fat Choy, a commonly used "vegetable" in Chinese Cuisine:
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Looks like jelly? Yep. Looks weird enough that you might imagine it comes from a star? Yep. Edible? Yes!
(I mean, maybe don't eat a ton of it, or get it from irreputable sources. At least some Fat Choy contains a toxic amino acid which may or may not have negative health effects, but I'm not a doctor, so all I'm saying is "be aware of this." It's an expensive delicacy, which means that it is a particularly lucrative target for counterfeiters, and China does not have strong, or strongly enforced, food safety laws).
The Hard Stuff
So that leaves "Invertatoes" and "Dried Slime."
Neither of which seem to have a good direct analogue to the real world. Well... sorta.
Invertatoes seems to refer to the plants. The name calls to mind potatoes, and potatoes do indeed grow in the ground and are starchy. It's probably fair to just use any kind of starchy tuber as the "invertatoes." Maybe cassava, since those are large enough that it's at least somewhat believable that "Fantasy Land Cassava" could look like that (although that doesn't fit the "these are normal plants that grow upside down" unless we're being really generous).
The problem is that it's sort of implied that the cabbage-like vegetable seen in the hot pot comes from the same plant, and everything from a potato plant other than the potato itself is toxic. They also don't look like that.
I literally don't know what those cabbage/lettuce-like leafy vegetables are. They're not seaweed, because the two varieties called out definitely don't look like that. They're not, so far as I can tell, the greens of any kind of starchy tuber--
EXCEPT.
So, I was taking one last look at tubers to see if I could find something that seemed to match, and I think Invertatoes could be likened to something similar to chicory. Particularly endives. I never knew endives were related to chicory (ie, "that thing that I'm aware is popular as a coffee substitute in the South, but I don't have much desire to try it, and I wonder if it even has caffeine..."), but, apparently, yeah. Endives are a member of the chicory genus.
So, yeah, lets say that Invertatoes are a sort of fantasy plant similar to the various members of the chicory genus. The trunk can be replicated with chicory root, and the leaves with endives.
That leaves Dried Slime. Dried Slime makes up the noodles in the hot pot, which implies that the noodles are gelatinous, and probably low in gluten. Senshi's explanation of the slime makes me want to think of it as a macro-unicellular lifeform, but... I'm not sure that's accurate.
While it's definitely not an accurate way to describe a jellyfish, I could definitely see a non-biologist describing jellyfish in a way similar to the way Senshi describes the slime. I could also see some fantasy terrestrial jellyfish thing hunting in a similar manner to the slime. Moreover, there are edible varieties of jellyfish, and they're processed in a manner very similar to what Senshi describes for processing slimes. And one way of preparing edible jellyfish is to thinly slice it into noodles.
Hot Pots
I... think this is using a very specifically Japanese sense of "hot pot" (which makes sense), because in Japan, hot pot can refer to a dish called nabemono, while in general, hot pot refers to a particular kind of dining in China where you get a pot full of boiling stock/broth and a bunch of raw ingredients, and you put the stuff you want into the broth at the table. Nabemono is more of "put a bunch of stuff in a pot, and cook it. Serve it boiling." Which is to say, it's soup.
Senshi puts the scorpion meat and mushroom into a pot on its own, and lets it start boiling-
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Then, while it's boiling, he goes and finds other ingredients, coming back with the invertatoes and the slime. The two are prepared simply-
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Seasoning isn't included in the ingredients, but I can understand this as a choice for presentation. We do see Senshi add something to the broth after tasting it, and I think it's fair to assume it's one of soy sauce, mirin, fish sauce, or similar. I think it's actually really interesting that we see Senshi add seasoning, but we're not told what it is-
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Because... that's cooking. You can follow a recipe, but ultimately, you need to taste your cooking and make your own decisions. Senshi lets the soup cook, tastes the broth, decides it needs something, and gives it a bit of time to let the flavors meld before serving it up.
Dungeon Meshi Lobster and Mushroom Hot Pot
So, we're looking at something like this for the "Huge Scorpion and Walking Mushroom Hot Pot"--
Lobster- ~5 lbs or more (a 1 lb lobster yields about 4 oz of actual meat, which is a single serving), cut into large slices
Portobello- 2 mushrooms large diced, 2 left whole with the caps scored
Reindeer Lichen and Fat Choy- to taste
Chicory Roots- ~1 cup, diced
Endive greens- ~2 cups
Jellyfish, thin sliced- as much as you like
Add lobster and mushrooms to water, and allow to boil. While it comes to a boil, prepare the other ingredients, then add to the water. Let the soup come to a full boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes to an hour (can simmer longer, but this will affect the texture of the ingredients. Longer simmering will result in more melding of flavors, but also degraded solid parts).
Taste the broth. It will likely need salt and acid, which could come in a variety of forms, such as kosher salt and lemon juice, soy sauce and mirin/rice vinegar, oyster/fish sauce, or something else. Go with your gut and your taste buds..
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This PILE OF SPINACH WITH A DONUT ON TOP would NOT EXIST without Cyanobacteria!
Spinach is a plant, meaning that it produces its energy through photosynthesis. Photosynthesis takes place in the chloroplasts, which are actually Cyanobacterial endosymbionts (Cyanobacteria which live inside of the plant). Without these Cyanobacteria, plants (including Spinach) would be unable to produce energy or grow.
This donut also would not exist without Cyanobacteria. Donuts contain many ingredients derived from plants, such as flour, sugar, and the jelly that likely lies at this donut's center! All plants contain photosynthesizing Cyanobacteria which produce all of their energy.
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breakfast
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plant-taxonomy-showdown · 10 months ago
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Hi! As a plant scientist, I would like to clarify things about kelp. Yes, it originated as a protist. So did all the other plants. If you ask what makes plants special, the answer could be photosynthesis. But they did not evolve photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria did! And then some protist came, ate a cyanobacteria without digesting it, and got a chloroplast (this is called primary endosymbiosis). That's the origin of the Archaeplastida clade. All plant chloroplasts are descendants of little photosynthetic bacteria.
BUT, other protists also liked to swallow things, and some of them swallowed unicellular algae that already had their own chloroplasts. They did the same thing that the Archaeplastida ancestor did, and incorporated this whole alga into their cell as a chloroplast. This is called secondary endosymbiosis, and usually such chloroplasts have 3 or 4 membranes, compared to 2 in Archaeplastida. And this happened several times! Kelps are in Stramenopila, which originated in one such event with a red alga as their chloroplast. What's interesting is that many of these groups independently developed plant-like body plan and funcionally became plants, because once you commit to photosynthesis and multicellularity, this is the best shape for your body.
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Thank you!
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anamateurnaturalist · 1 year ago
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Our Microbial Ecology professor is offering us extra credit if we can find three different kinds of lichen. My lab partners were unsure where to find lichens but the answer is simple, everywhere! The slightly more complicated answer is that they grow in the places that other plants and fungus can't grow, with rocks and tree bark being the most common. I was able to find all of these, in my own yard in about 10 minutes.
There was a colony like this one growing on the foundation of our house but I didn't want to disturb it so I was glad when I found this lovely specimen on a rock in our landscaping.
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This was also on the same rock, it isn't a great picture but you can see the little rhizones that are used to attach themselves to the rock.
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The reason lichens can grown on rocks and other inhospitable surfaces is because they are actually a symbiosis of two different organisms and there partnership is what makes it possible. Each lichen consists of mycobiont, a fungus, and a photobiont which is either an algae or a cyanobacteria. (a cyanobacteria is a kind of bacteria that can do photosynthesis.) The photobiont can produce energy through photosynthesis and the mycobiont can break down the substrate (yes, even rock) in order to get other nutrients that lichen needs to survive.
In fact here's another lichen I found on a rock in our landscaping. If you click on it to see the full sized image you can actually see the little grains of sand from the lichen breaking down the rock.
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Keep in mind that this picture was taken at high magnification, to give you an idea of scale, here's the same lichen (or at least a very similar one) growing on a cement window sill at my kids school.
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You can see how it might be overlooked as just some discoloration. If you've ever at an old cemetery, you'll see that a lot of the oldest headstones are pretty much completely yellow or orange, that's lichens.
This one was growing on a dead stick that had fallen off our apple tree. The round things are the apothecia, the reproductive structure of the fungal symbiont, that's why they often look like tiny mushrooms.
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It can be very difficult to identify lichens to species because even lichens with different symbiotes can look very similar. If you were to disregard the apothecia, the one above looks a lot like the first lichen but the fact that they are on different substrates is evidence that they are different kinds. They aren't even the same growth form the first one is lobed and this one is foliose. I do own the keys to identify them, but I have yet to actually attempt to.
Lichen are also very particular about their habitat. The population on the apple tree (left) is very different from the population on the Cottonwood tree. (right)
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Disclaimer: all of these lichens are very common in this area and were either on loose rocks in our landscaping, bark that was already peeling off the tree or on dead branches. You should never collect lichens if you aren't confidant that they are well populated and it's best not to damage their substrate to collect them
Disclaimer 2: I am not a lichen expert by any means, the information here is correct to the best of my knowledge.
If you're interested, I have turned some of these pictures into desktop backgrounds, they can be found here:
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poondragoon · 1 year ago
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Begging you to tell us also about when oxygen nearly sterilized the planet. You have a hypnotic writing style
Stop, please! I'm married!
Hokay, so, a fucktillion years ago (well, between 4 and 2.5 billion years, but at a certain point of imponderability all those big numbers look the same, so let's stick with the funny one, yeah?) nothing alive on earth had ever heard of "free elemental oxygen". They metabolized food anaerobically - by fermentation or CrP hydrolysis or maybe even simple glycolysis, as was the style at the time. The specifics are a bit conjectural, since microbial membrane proteins don't fossilize terribly well, but we have enough anaerobes kicking around to get an idea of what our ancestors probably had to work with.
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Not this kind of fermentation, but it gives you an idea of what's up. Thanks, Wikimedia Commons!
Now, breaking food down into energy is one thing, but what about getting it in the first place? Well, the best way is to borrow some energy from the environment and use it to "cook" simple chemicals into more complex ones you can break back down. Basically translating environmental energy you can't use into a form which you can. The earliest way to do this was probably a form of chemosynthesis.
I won't bore you with the details, but this early chemosynthesis would have been...weird. The important part is that the process probably took hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, broke them apart, and recombined the Choice Bits into sugar. Unfortunately, that process would have needed the Weird Earth Chemicals (energy source) and the stupid-high temperatures belching out of hydrothermal vents in order to work, and even then it was slow as hell! There was room for improvement
At some point, some plucky little microbe went "hey, if I use light to excite a pigment, I can use the electrons shot off that pigment to blast hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide apart instead of waiting on Weird Hot Slow Earth Chemicals!" This was huge. The fundamental principle was still basically the same: 12H2S + 6CO2 -> C6H12O6 + 12S + 6H20, but it was faster and easier than ever! Plus it made the earth purple!
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There's a joke about Prince in here, I just know it. Thanks, Wikimedia Commons!
But, as is the running theme...we can do better.
Around 2.5 billion years ago, a tiny, subtle mutation arose. A minute riff on the existing form of photosynthesis played out in the genome of one lineage of microbe or another. One that was terribly advantageous: instead of using hydrogen sulfide - which needs to come from marine volcanoes or other microbes' waste - as a hydrogen source, these guys could use water. You know, the stuff that's everywhere. It was H U G E. These new cyanobacteria (so-called because instead of being purple, they're...well...cyan) rapidly began to dominate the marine microbial ecosystem.
However, this nifty new metabolism had a little problem: the byproduct of mashing water and carbon dioxide into sugar was oxygen.
If you've ever seen that post about how "oxygen is secretly killing us", know that it's not a joke. Oxygen is so horrifically electronegative that it freely oxidizes (hence the name) just about anything with an even remotely positive charge. If you're alive, uncontrolled oxidation is very very bad. And in a geological eyeblink, global oxygen levels went from this:
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To THIS:
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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
This may not look like much, but if you've ever spritzed a little Barkeeper's Friend into a 100-gallon fishtank by accident while cleaning up the marine biology classroom you're interning for, you know just how dangerous a little of something can be (and yes, I still feel absolutely terrible, don't @ me). It's hard to quantify because...you know...bacteria don't fossilize too good...but based on isotopic analysis of Archaean sedimentary rock and paleontological technomagic, it's estimated that the oxygenation of the atmosphere killed off some 80% of Earth's microbial biomass. It was that bad.
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POV: you're in the Archaean and about to do a war crime.
Eventually , the descendants of the oxygen-tolerant microbes evolved the ability to harness oxygen's horrific destructive power to help them metabolize food more efficiently. WAY more efficiently. Instead of making sugar from water and CO2 and fermenting it to alcohol, they could use oxygen to break that sugar back down into water and CO2. That's an absolutely ridiculous amount of energy. Life on earth sped the FUCK UP. Everything started living, eating, reproducing, and dying at a more rapid pace than ever, but untold microbial biodiversity was lost forever.
If you take one thing away from this post or my Methanosarcina addition to the Lystrosaurus post, let it be this: If you're an organism on earth who enjoys being not-extinct, DON'T FUCK WITH THE ATMOSPHERE.
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KNITTING would NOT EXIST without Cyanobacteria!
Knitting is believed to have been invented in the 5th century C.E. in the Middle East, by members of the species Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens (including the individual who invented knitting) breathe atmospheric O2 in order to survive. Almost all atmospheric O2 on Earth was produced by Cyanobacteria. Therefore, without Cyanobacteria around, knitting would not exist!
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the-tin-dog · 8 months ago
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you're projecting, I don't know anything about defending a transphobe, I was just saying that males (inducing myself) where never meant to exist, if anything I'm pro trans because It would be the way of fixing that defect, in fact "The Y chromosome is the most gene-deficient chromosome" or in other words a Genetic disorders so yes to say that the Y chromosome is defective isn't wrong, hell to add on it to you be hard pressed to find any example of testosterone (or masculinity) being a good thing or not toxic in anyway
Right so you’re grossly misunderstanding genetics AND you don’t even know the context of the original conversation. 10/10 great reading comprehension skills there buddy.
Pretty hard to project anything when the entire conversation you decided to stir up (on anon, like a coward), wasn’t about emotions or trauma or any of the possible things that can be projected. It was about genetic science and your Inability to understand a mutation vs a defect. The Y chromosome being the most gene-deficient doesn’t make it defective by nature. It makes it *prone* to deficiencies in a way we don’t fully understand yet (if you actually read the whole article on the number one google search you pulled that quote from you’d know that). The brain isn’t defective because it’s prone to mental illness, the lungs aren’t defective because they’re prone to cancer, the Y chromosome isn’t defective because it’s prone to genetic disease.
Look dude, I don’t need someone too scared to come off anon to spout half-assed genetic misunderstandings that you got from the preview of the first google result that shows up when you search “Y chromosome defective”.
Also “I’m pro trans because it would mean fixing the defect” is literally eugenics rhetoric. Nothing is broken. You can’t “fix” genetics. Fuck off dude. The Y chromosome mutated from other chromosomes. Like literally every other part of genetics. Again, just because we aren’t Photosynthetic Cyanobacteria doesn’t make us defective.
If you knew how to read, you would’ve notice that the full article of that lazily found google preview goes on to say that the Y chromosome is NOT a degenerated X chromosome but one that contains critical survival genes.
Much like Cyanobacteria, or Mitochondria, or Lungs, it evolved into a New Thing. Because mutations and evolution are how new things get made.
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shallahi-and-snowflake · 10 months ago
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Hi you seem somewhat normal still, I saw you post something about the multiverse??
Is that why my cousin Nika - Squid? Cyan? - is acting so weird??
-@yankee-in-wyndon
Yes. Your cousin has been swapped with an alternate version of herself named Cyanobacteria, who is the Lake Empress’s Chosen.
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treddnevers · 2 years ago
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Hey I’m the op from the lichen poll thingy, I really love all the wonderful tags everyone is putting in there and so curious to learn more. Didn’t know a lot about lichen before this, can only ID like 3 of them (wanted to write species but that’s not correct I assume?), so would you care to elaborate what you mean by your tags? Would love to learn!
HELL YES. I hope ur cool w/ me posting this publicly, I take any opportunity I can to gush about lichens. For reference, my tags on that poll were something along the lines of: "do YOU challenge the foundational concept of a species in western science with your existence? well you actually do but not as directly as a lichen." I'm not going to properly cite myself here because I'm lazy so take some things with a grain of salt, but BASICALLY:
- a lichen is a symbiotic relationship between a fungi (typically an ascomycete, though there are a few basidiomycete lichens) and a photosynthetic organism (usually green algae, sometimes cyanobacteria)
- the way we classify lichens, taxonomically, is based on their fungal part, also called a mycobiont. so the species name of a lichen - let's take my fruticose friend Usnea longissima for example - refers only to that fungal part.
- getting a positive species ID on that photosynthetic partner, also called a photobiont, is a lot harder, but we know that there's some overlap between the species of photobionts that different lichen employ
- so why don't we just refer to a lichen based on the mycobiont exclusively?
- because without the photobiont, the mycobiont will not grow into a lichen in any recognizable way. a lichen is NOT a lichen if it is just the fungi species it is named for, and it is not a lichen if it is just free-living algae.
- isn't it cool that some forms of life literally cannot exist as individuals? their existence is predicated on the fact that they are in partnership, inextricably linked from what our conventions of species differentiation would consider an entirely different organism. except, wait: so are we.
- human beings literally cannot function without the bacteria, fungi, and countless other microorganisms living in our intestines, on the surface of our skin, and just about everywhere else. i believe current literature states that >50% of the cells comprising the average human body are nonhuman. your microbiome is the reason you aren't just a tube that constantly leaks out partially-dissolved food matter!
- so who's to say that humans even exist as a distinct species? from a certain perspective, a human being is just an organic scaffold that houses a community of billions of individuals.
- get out there and appreciate your local lichens!!!
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swagging-back-to · 15 days ago
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oh btw life one hundred thousand percent does exist outside of earth btw and anyone who argues against it is just laughably wrong at this point.
three simple points that prove life could be and likely is everywhere in the universe;
life is suspected to have spontaneously shot off in thermal vents through abiogenesis.
life is currently thriving in thermal vents. thousands of kilometers below the surface, without light and photosynthesis. they're chemosynthesis, the oldest bacteria; cyanobacteria
rocks are found at the bottom of the ocean that are able to produce oxygen all on their own.
oh and theres evidence for life around a billion years after earth formed, which is so insanely fast. life spawned in the worst conditions ever and thrived despite multiple mass extinctions.
yes, there's life outside of earth. i don't know why people truly still debate this shit.
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