www.lesswrong.com/posts/KWdtL8iyCCiYud9mw/persona-parasitology
1 correction found
Parasitism has evolved independently dozens of times across the tree of life.
This substantially undercounts how often parasitism has evolved: a comprehensive survey found at least 223 independent origins of parasitism within animals alone.
Full reasoning
The post claims parasitism evolved independently only “dozens” of times across all life. But a large-scale survey of Animalia (the animal kingdom only) reports at least 223 independent evolutions of parasitism across 15 animal phyla.
Since 223 independent origins occur within animals alone, the claim that across the whole tree of life it happened only “dozens of times” is inconsistent with the scientific literature (it would need to be at least in the hundreds).
Note: the LessWrong post’s follow-up sentence (“Plants, fungi, bacteria, protists, and animals have all produced parasitic lineages.”) can still be true; what’s incorrect is the magnitude claim (“dozens of times”).
1 source
- Independent origins of parasitism in Animalia (Weinstein & Kuris, Biology Letters, 2016)
“Based on a comprehensive survey of the animal kingdom, we find that parasitism has independently evolved at least 223 times in just 15 phyla…”