
A fungus with over 20k sexes - fanf2
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2017/11/06/fungus-genders/
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appleflaxen
Serious question; I hope it makes sense: What makes these "sexes" and not just
"individuals"?

To elaborate a bit: when I read the description, it sounds like a person could
make the same claim about humanity: "there are billions of sexes: John, Jane,
Tim, Judy, Juan, Maria, etc etc"

How is this different? Or equivalently, what makes a "sex" a "sex" if it's
just variability within the sex chromosome, but every individual is able to
create progeny with 25% (?) of other individuals.

To me, that sounds like 4 sexes.

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mac01021
> what makes a "sex" a "sex" if it's just variability within the sex
> chromosome, but every individual is able to create progeny with 25% of other
> individuals?

I haven't read the article yet (looks like it's been DOSed by traffic from
Hacker News?), but your criterion would be met in a population of 201 entities
(numbered from 0 to 200) where each entity X can procreate with entities in
the range [X-25 ... x+25] (mod 201, of course). That would arguably yield 201
distinct sexes, where each individual is sexually compatible with 25% of the
population.

~~~
olympus
If a mapping between compatible sexes existed such as in your example, it
would be more useful to think of sex as continuous spectrum rather than a
discrete collection.

~~~
mac01021
Perhaps. But only because the mapping I've defined has so much symmetry.

Instead of the range [X-25 ... X+25], assign to each sex a random one of the
200-choose-50 (4.6 * 10^47) possible groups of partners sexes with size 50.

It would be impossible to completely describe the set of sexual
compatibilities without simply enumerating them, and therefore necessary to
treat the sexes as a set of discrete entities.

~~~
olympus
That's why I wrote "such as in your example."

I think that if each individual was randomly compatible with some subset of
the population, we don't have 200 sexes, we have one sex and a 25% fertility
rate.

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xelxebar
This is about the model species _Schizophyllum commune_. I found the OP
article left me wanting to know more. The wikipedia page for _S. commune_
links to a fascinating, in-depth page by an enthusiast:

[http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/feb2000.html](http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/feb2000.html)

Also, there's this database with more pretty pictures and some distilled
information:

[http://www.mykoweb.com/CAF/species/Schizophyllum_commune.htm...](http://www.mykoweb.com/CAF/species/Schizophyllum_commune.html)

I hadn't realize how unique some of the fungal genetic systems were!

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Symmetry
My understanding is that the main reason for different sexes in Fungi is to
figure out whose mitochondria go on to populate the child after the nuclear
DNA is combined. Having mixed populations of mitochondria inside a cell would
provide an incentive for competition among them, which would be a Bad Thing.
Otherwise they fungi could just do away with sexes entirely for a further,
much smaller, increase in the number of potential partners.

See _Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life_ by Nick Lane.

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mar77i
It strikes me as oddly cool for a fungus to find a cryptographic solution for
their mating. And they still preserve some definition of a "collision".

~~~
drvdevd
You mean roughly: fused_hyphae = (A+B) ^ (C+D)?

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reading-at-work
I laughed for an unreasonably long time at "it must make for a wild singles
night"

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OzzyB
OT: The Joe Rogan podcast recently had Paul Stamets on who talks at great
length about fungi and it's benefits -- truly fascinating stuff.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPqWstVnRjQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPqWstVnRjQ)

~~~
hourislate
That segment about how the fungi slime reorganized the Tokyo Subway System
into a more efficient system was fascinating. Curious whether you could use
this in someway to design everything from Circuit Boards to Software. One of
my favorites so far.

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fs111
The writing style is horrible.

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_0ffh
Q: There are lots of techniques to preserve genetic diversity in EA/GA, like
e.g. niching. Does anyone know if this specific thing has ever been tried?

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vanderZwan
Could you elaborate what EA and GA stand for the uninformed but curious, like
me?

~~~
Someone
Evolutionary algorithms/genetic algorithms
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm))

~~~
_0ffh
Thanks for hopping in while I was offline! (upvote)

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theonewhocanfly
The site has malware, to be precise it pops up an ad which says your Android
is infected

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cpach
Alternative link: [https://www.popsci.com/fungi-
sex](https://www.popsci.com/fungi-sex)

~~~
_0ffh
Well the Discovermagazine article at least gets right that this is about
genetic diversity. The writer for Popsci butchers that into sexual diversity.

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alkyon
Being gay would be especially challenging for that species.

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rainbowmverse
I'm sure there's plenty of bicelium.

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marchenko
Fungus Tumblr must support _a lot_ of tags.

~~~
_jal
Imagine how complicated the "about me" pages for OK Fungus are.

