Sounds like it is in fact a single interconnected organism (like Pando) and not multiple plants that are clones.
> Our genomic and cytogenetic assessments of 10 meadows identified geographically restricted, diploid clones (2n = 20) in a single location, and a single widespread, high-heterozygosity, polyploid clone (2n = 40) in all other locations. The polyploid clone spanned at least 180 km, making it the largest known example of a clone in any environment on earth.
The healine and description makes me wonder: what can be called a single organism?
The sea grass is comprised of individual plants that are each of identical DNA, ie they are clones. Does this and their proximity and continuity make them one organism?
Unless they establish that it's a single root system I wouldn't dethrone Pando just yet. From the description it's at least 9 separate seagrass beds, so I doubt it's all one system.
As a side note, I'm going to see Pando this weekend.
Richard Dawkins asks that exact question in his "Selfish Gene." For example humans cannot survive without it's gut bacterial flora. So is human a single organism without it or not? Where's the boundary? He also explores self replicating organisms (like mentioned seagrass) and explains benefits of evolution "introducing" sex based replication.
I’ve begun to think we’re only distinct from other things in the context of consciousness, which is entirely subjective and manufactured by our neurons. The further you go down that rabbit hole, the more you might realize reality as we understand it is totally illusory and not even fully shared across humanity, let alone species. It’s a trip. We are as much a part of the systems we live in as anything.
In a sense we aren’t distinct from the external world because there is no internal world to differentiate from. It’s imaginary - it exists only in our neurons, an abstraction to help us navigate reality, just impulses firing along various pathways in a brain.
I always thought that biology delineates these organisms from their relationship?
They are still clearly seperate organisms, as a human does not require a particular bacterial cell, only that at least one is present in its proper place (the same as all the other cells in the human body). Thus, the "human organism" is an emergent organism from many cells, bacterial or not, acting and interacting non-deterministically. The bacterial cell by its existence allows for the existence of the larger organism.
A baby relies on adults to survive as well, but it is not biologically claimed that they are the same organism as the adults they rely on for survival.
We all require consumption of living and dead cells to survive as well. We do not claim organic-unification with these other organisms.
If they are all identical DNA, doesn't it make them exceptionally susceptible to something that finds a weak spot in that DNA? Will we hear about the world's largest organism wiped out in world's widest reaching wipeout?
Spot on. The cavendish banana even recruited a globally present mammal species to spread its clones into all latitudes where it can grow, on both hemispheres. And it's not looking too well for it.
(now my brain is playing that song from the chiquita banana ad on loop that was based on Carmen Miranda in The Gang's All Here, as if that movie hadn't already saturated the worldwide demand for banana advertisement for decades)
In the sense that the Gros Michel [1] was the most popular banana until 1950 when most of the cultivar were destroyed by the Panama disease. The Cavendish also has this problem [2].
It might if this "something" is persistent or widespread enough to affect all of the separate colonies of it; it sounds like there are individual patches that are spread out over many kilometers.
> The sea grass is comprised of individual plants that are each of identical DNA, ie they are clones. Does this and their proximity and continuity make them one organism?
Probably. The top paragraphs in [1] talk about precisely that.
I wish I knew precisely where in the Blue Mountains the supposedly largest fungi resides... I live near that area, hunt for mushrooms there, and it has never been my observation that there is anything unique about the terrain or conditions that would be particularly beneficial for mass fungi growth.
I think most people in this area have a pretty general idea where it is... While I am at best an amateur mycologist, where drdec below has me angry at his/her sarcasm is that as a human being, no, it isn't at all obvious why the world largest fungi would end up here rather than say in the WA / OR / BC cascades, or for example in the Olympics in Washington State. Those areas certainly have more of the mushrooms that we prize for human consumption, have longer seasons in which those fungi are available too (I'm hypothesizing due to moisture). Remoteness could be a factor (IE: less human contact), but those areas have plenty of very remote terrain as well. Further, I think it is a really interesting question as we contemplate the effects of climate change in these areas.
You expect some enormous sea monster but all you got was some kind of immortal sea weed. Trees have this thing as well. Many tree organisms are 100 000 years old. There's also some kind of distinction between tree organisms and tree individuals. Tree individuals don't get to be that old.
The author has a master's in science writing, so it's surprisingly sloppy.
They did it again too: "The clone is about 1.5 orders of magnitude larger than the largest fungi [770 hectares] and the longest sea animal [120 metres]." It's over 3 orders of magnitude longer than that animal, and closer to 1.4 orders of magnitude larger area than that fungus.
But also, it's not a single connected organism anyway (emphasis mine): "a single polyploid clone spanning more than 180 km in fragmented, near-shore meadows".
The paper explains a little more the meaning of the 180km figure: "a single polyploid clone spanning more than 180 km in fragmented, near-shore meadows". So this seems to be the distance between the farthest two clone instances. It sounds like the clone instances were originally connected but became disconnected in time.
I think the Washington DC comparison comes from this line: "We used the total estimated area of P. australis meadows in Shark Bay (200 km2 pre 2010/11 heatwave [43])" compared to a DC area of 176km².
I don't think that means it was ever all connected at once though. Each meadow could expand and split over time.
Yes, the 200km² vs. 770 hectares is what I used to get my 10^1.4. It's unrelated to the 180km distance the author puts in the DC comparison sentence though.
The plant in the linked article is 180 km across though. Measured in square kilometers it might be a lot more. You can't make a comparison across different dimensional units.
A correct comparison here would've been to the distance between DC and Philadelphia, or similar.
Sounds like it is in fact a single interconnected organism (like Pando) and not multiple plants that are clones.
> Our genomic and cytogenetic assessments of 10 meadows identified geographically restricted, diploid clones (2n = 20) in a single location, and a single widespread, high-heterozygosity, polyploid clone (2n = 40) in all other locations. The polyploid clone spanned at least 180 km, making it the largest known example of a clone in any environment on earth.