Gonochorism is a fancy word for the sorts of individual sexes that humans have: ‘there are two sexes and each individual organism is either male or female’.

What struck my attention:

Two papers from 2008 have suggested that transitions between hermaphroditism and gonochorism or vice versa have occurred in animals between 10 and 20 times.^[15] In a 2017 study involving 165 taxon groups, more evolutionary transitions from gonochorism to hermaphroditism were found than the reverse.

Also interesting: in humans and most species, sex is (almost entirely) genetically determined, but that isn’t always true; ‘for example, alligators use temperature-dependent sex determination during egg incubation.’

I really wish humans had the (non-medical) option of sequential hermaphroditism; I would love to try changing sex!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonochorism

This is an absolutely fascinating and highly accessible article on the massive proliferation of known microbial species (and melting pots of quasi-species) as we become (slightly) more able to detect them.

The most prevalent organism on Earth, a free-swimming ocean microbe called Pelagibacter ubique, was only identified in 1990, and not successfully cultured until 2002. A class of bizarre microbes that make hydrazine (rocket fuel) as a metabolic intermediate turned out to be responsible for half the ocean’s nitrogen production, even though scientists until the 1990’s were skeptical that their brand of metabolism was even possible. These organisms, the annamox bacteria, were not identified until 1999. The list of these things is endless.

Microbial Dark Matter and the Search for Life on Earth

He had a floor you could eat off of, if you didn’t mind dirt.

Runaway sexual selection is a beautiful thing. Their calls are what got me interested, but their appearance is a real bonus.

Colossal:

Con/struct is the latest body of work from Cape Town-based artist, designer, and photographer Justin Plunkett who uses his own original photography to digitally construct fictional landscapes and structures. He shares via an artist statement:

Con/Struct is an exploration into the themes of empowerment and imagination. Plunkett, using his own photography, has created new juxtaposed environments that encourage questioning and exploration: inviting the debate around how marketing- induced aspiration and perceived value can empower but can also corrupt, how it can be both perverse and create beauty. At the same time, at the core of his work, he honours and applauds ingenuity and the creative spirit.

Con/struct: The Fictional Urban Architecture of Justin Plunkett — Colossal

This is roughly twice as old as the oldest previously known proto-language (which among other things carried calendrical information about animal mating and birthing seasons). It’s mind-boggling to me that humans used abstract marks to carry information for tens of thousands of years before inventing true written language. Although I imagine the notion of ‘information’ would have been quite alien, which is part of why it was such a difficult leap.

The signs often occur in patterns — such as line, line, line or cross, cross, cross — which is not common in spoken language, according to the researchers. Some of the artifacts were discovered almost 100 years ago, but ongoing excavations are constantly unearthing new ones. Over the years, scholars have interpreted the markings to mean many different things, including hunting tallies, moon calendars, fur patterns or simply decoration.

“When I first had the result on screen, I could not believe it,” Bentz recalled about the moment he first looked at the computer analysis and saw a match between the older Stone Age markings and proto-cuneiform script found on more modern tablets from ancient Mesopotamia. “I sent a screenshot to my colleague.”

There seems to be a logic to the selection of symbols, according to Bentz. “On animal figurines, like mammoths and horses, but also on tools, we have crosses,” he said, “but we never find crosses on human figurines, so somehow there must have been a kind of taboo or convention to not put crosses onto human figurines.” Other studies have suggested that crosses could signify ritual killings, he added, so perhaps that’s why they weren’t found on sculptures of people.

Symbols found carved into 40,000-year-old German artifacts may be precursor to writing | CNN

Rainfall patterns are changing in many places. Individual trees adapt to the patterns they experience, so while the changes are hard on older trees, younger trees are better equipped for the new normal.

Trees experiencing drought alter their leaves, wood and roots in ways that prime them for continued dry conditions. Wood under drought might have smaller cells that are less vulnerable to future damage, and roots might increase relative to leaf area. These structural changes persist after the drought has passed and continue to influence the tree’s growth and ability to tolerate stress for many years.

Known as “legacy effects,” these lingering post-drought impacts represent an ecological memory of past climatic conditions at the tree and forest level. Knowing that trees hold a persistent memory of past dry phases, researchers wondered whether they might also show structural changes in response to past wet periods.

Eleven years after summertime irrigation started in Pfynwald, scientists stopped irrigating half of each plot in 2013 to address this question. The formerly irrigated trees, which at this point were about 120 years old, had experienced a lasting period of irrigation – but now those times of plenty were over.

Would the trees remember? A decade later, we found out.

Trees ‘remember’ wetter times − never having known abundant rain could buffer today’s young forests against climate change

There are some important caveats, but this seems like a significant step forward in synthetic biology (for better and for worse).

Prof. Kate Adamala and her team at the University of Minnesota have built SpudCell, a cell-like system constructed entirely from known chemical components that can perform a complete cell cycle.

The system contains 36 purified enzymes, a 90,000 base pair genome spread across nine separate DNA molecules, and a lipid membrane. SpudCell is able to grow, replicate its genome, divide, and undergo selection and competition across multiple generations.

Unlike earlier work on minimal cells that carved down living cells, SpudCell is built entirely bottom-up from individually purified, non-living components. It is the first time such a system has demonstrated a complete cell cycle.

Source: Biotic | SpudCell