Interestingly, because their environment is replete with bacteria and their circulatory system makes them particularly prone to infection, they have developed a zero-tolerance immune system. It kills anything it finds that is abnormal.
I wonder how much impact their immune system has on their stagnant evolution. Does killing all intruders reduce the likelihood of mutations by disallowing viruses and the mutations that they bring? Does their immune system know what their DNA should look like and immediately kill any mutations that it finds?
Thank you, this was really interesting. I was trying to look up more information on “stabilimorphs” but google pulls up nothing on the term. I’m wondering what causes them to continue mutating in such a stable way. Are they simply that well adapted that they’ve fallen into a stable configuration that has no instability in any of the many dimensions available or is there something else that is maintaining their physical configuration while mutations continue to occur?
Does anyone know of a good /r/askscience-like community on Lemmy? I’ve got lots of questions about horseshoe crabs.
I’ve never read much about horseshoe crabs before. I knew they were interesting, but they’re fascinating! Here’s a good summary of some of what we know about them: https://www.earthdate.org/episodes/horseshoe-crabs-living-fossils
Interestingly, because their environment is replete with bacteria and their circulatory system makes them particularly prone to infection, they have developed a zero-tolerance immune system. It kills anything it finds that is abnormal.
I wonder how much impact their immune system has on their stagnant evolution. Does killing all intruders reduce the likelihood of mutations by disallowing viruses and the mutations that they bring? Does their immune system know what their DNA should look like and immediately kill any mutations that it finds?
The dna is not stagnated and neither is the evolution. Check out this video for more info
https://youtu.be/23thr68Xj-c
Thank you, this was really interesting. I was trying to look up more information on “stabilimorphs” but google pulls up nothing on the term. I’m wondering what causes them to continue mutating in such a stable way. Are they simply that well adapted that they’ve fallen into a stable configuration that has no instability in any of the many dimensions available or is there something else that is maintaining their physical configuration while mutations continue to occur?