Superorganism Fact or Fiction

[foodchain]

Now not to talk about highly social species of life, such as ants, just more or less hypothesis put forward that life on earth or even the earth is a collective organism.

 

Personally I think many of them happen to be romantic ideas obtained simply from the study of life overall. For instance, in the case of reproduction, if life were simply nothing more then DNA, why is reproduction so important, or more or less it would seem the cell has at least as much importance as DNA holds, the same with RNA, as life cannot function without any of those, and thus it would go extinct.

 

Personally from the concept of ecosystems, or ecologies and the relationship life in general has within such might it be easier to simply suggest it may be a product of symbiosis, or even just patterns of life as wrought through evolution? To relate the importance a species of insect has in the tropical rain forests of south America to say a species of reptile in the deserts of Arizona, is there any real direct consequence to each other from the existence of such species?

 

I think as found in ecology that an organisms environment consists of variables that include what’s living and of course the abiotic elements also. In this I am sure begins relationships, obviously predatory animals don’t simply exist without prey. I just think that many aspects of the superorganism as put forward by some happen to be over the top romantism overall. Basically there has to be a limit to the scope on a population of an organism or a specie, is the scope of the superorganism more applicable maybe at levels overall higher then maybe the species or the genus level, maybe even family? As such is maybe the idea of the superorganism maybe just an abstraction of a reality to evolution not thoroughly defined yet? At what level can life in general be reduced to as still have a chance for survival, such as if life to the bacteria level were made extinct, could life still survive, or if winter was 75% of the years climate on earth, would life survive?

 

I would like to go on but I think this is fine enough as is.

[Realitycheck]

Not romanticism, classification. Just a big cell that doesn't know anything more than a little one, but realistically, you are right, as the superorganism doesn't require sustenance, despite it's internal liveliness.

 

It's ALL about economics. Supply, demand, availability, surplus, competition, waste, scarcity, disaster ... from the deserts of Arizona to the rain forests of South America. We can come up with lots of fancy math here.

[foodchain]

Not romanticism, classification. Just a big cell that doesn't know anything more than a little one, but realistically, you are right, as the superorganism doesn't require sustenance, despite it's internal liveliness.

 

It's ALL about economics. Supply, demand, availability, surplus, competition, waste, scarcity, disaster ... from the deserts of Arizona to the rain forests of South America. We can come up with lots of fancy math here.

 

See that’s the thing, its not about finding real roots or anything close to in some regard or to deal with probabilities as much as the term itself. For instance, animals specialized to use trees, well, you then you would need the tree right? So you have a more simple cause and effect going on there, in a very general sense. So basically you cant simply account for just biotic factors, as with the tree. So does the superorganism then account also for the sun and solar system? Its a very ambiguous term is all, and in that is where I find the romantism in my opinion. I can easily see the term superorganism to be applied to very social organisms, though I think social behavior can come about at very specific conditions, and then be completely lacking during other times, such as with reproduction in certain species. In general the term to me applies direct consequence of relationships evolutionary speaking, again with animals adapting and holding a morphology that represents such relationships, such as with fish for instance, and adaptations by certain fish to share relationships with other living things, or abiotic elements in a giving environment.

 

Its where you draw the line on scope, and if different aspects to a specie applies different degrees of scope, such as non functional vestigial structures. The superorganism though could be used in my opinion to apply maybe the dependence life has on itself via evolution, but even then comes to conditions I would expect to exist from the fact that a specie does not come about primarily experiences an omni environment like totality of the earth and all its features living or not. So in essence would it be fair to say that maybe a word like biosphere is better suited for use overall, as it does not apply nearly as much ambiguity to life?

 

I like you economics example very much also.