MazeResearchOnline

Return to MazeResearchProgram

A study on the interplay between energy and matter transformation: The effect of elevated temperatures on the leaf morphology of Vitis vinifera var. Merlot

Download Article: Grape Leaf Study

Keywords: causes in ontogeny, complexity in leaf development

Abstract:

This investigation explores the relationship between increased energy levels and leaf morphology. It tests the idea that the causal agent of development is the dissipation of energy into transformed matter.

The energy under which leaves developed was modified by increasing temperatures in grape cordons through wrapping them in clear plastic sleeves in the early spring. At the higher temperatures, and energy levels, there was a small but statistically significant decrease in leaf size and a change in organization the leaves. The decrease in leaf size may be due to a reallocation of resources, either to greater shoot growth as a previous study demonstrated or to the appearance of more vectors of development in the leaves, i.e., the appearance of more developmental subsystems. The leaves that grew under the higher temperature regime were more complex, perhaps indicating that the grapes on those same vines may produce more complex juice, another expression of more developmental subsystems.

The change in organization in these leaves that developed at higher temperature argues that the causal agent in plant development is energy dissipation and the concomitant transformation of matter, the latter expressed in the appearance of more growth vectors.

The effect of species models on estimates of within-lineage variation in integration.

Download Article: Species Test Study

Keywords: Species models, within-group variation in integration

Abstract:

Species may be modeled as comprised of individuals, populations or a virtual code. A virtual code can be understood as general potentials that appear as actualizations within specific environmental, both internal and external, contexts.

In the present work, the degree of within-lineage variation in integration was not strongly model-dependent. However, the relationship among model-dependent estimates of such variation and within-lineage phyletic variation were not equal.

The strongest relationship was between within-lineage variation in integration, when species were modeled as a virtual code, and within-lineage phyletic variation.

The second strongest, and only other statistically significant relationship, was between variation in integration when species were modeled as a virtual code and as a collection of populations.

The last result argues for a strong ontogenetic and microenvironmental effect on the expression of features in an individual. If species were a virtual code they would evolve by incorporation of all attributes, ontogenetic, environmental, genetic, into that code until it becomes unstable and bifurcates.

Species as a virtual code, an approach which explicitly incorporates developmental change into evolution, is a virtual, i.e., non-material representation of species as information systems; thus if one wished to stress the material, this study could be seen as empirical documentation of species as information systems.

The Virtual Mode: a different look at species

Download Article: Virtual Species Concept

Abstract:

We commonly employ two strategies in our attempts to understand organisms as they exist in present time and over time; we describe them within their singularity and plurality.

Singularity focuses on the individual within its differentiation as a reasonably discrete and finite form of matter which occupies a certain space at a certain time. Pluralities are aggregates of these individuals. This approach enables us to describe and examine both the unique attributes of the individual and the common attributes of a collection of such individuals.

We can define the latter by an historical overview of the development of these common properties or as their statistical average. These tactics provide us with a comprehensive delineation of both individual and species properties. However, with reference to the latter, the descriptive approach has no capacity to provide us with an explanation of the formative generation of continuous or novel properties.

Despite our increasing powers of description, from the macro to the micro levels, we have difficulty grasping the dynamic operations underlying these comprehensive descriptions. This opinion piece explores this failure.

-- MishtuBanerjee - 19 Oct 2004