Re:Repurposing the cadaver of a spider to create a pneumatic...
by freemint on Sunday July 31, 2022 @03:57AM
(#32294058)
> Ants and bees build hives after all. Trees build, well, trees.
Yeah but those ants or bees are not competitors with each other, neither are cells in a tree. All organism you described have a strong separation between reproductive parts and the ones which build infrastructure.
Re:Repurposing the cadaver of a spider to create a pneumatic...
by eru on Sunday July 31, 2022 @04:17AM
(#32294155)
Yes.
Similarly to how the cells in your bones and muscles don't reproduce.
This is one of the ways biology can work. And it's not in contradiction to what I wrote. Just the opposite.
Though to go a bit deeper: plenty of other creatures derive advantages (and disadvantages) from trees. But for making the biology work, the advantages to the tree genes just have to outweigh the disadvantages to the tree genes.
Ants and bees build hives after all. Trees build, well, trees.
It's just that for biological systems, it's relatively easier to build legs than wheels. And as you suggest, wheels need more infrastructure to be really useful. So even if you could solve the free-rider problem completely (which you can't), it would still cost biological systems more.