←back to thread

Size of Life

(neal.fun)
2530 points eatonphil | 6 comments | | HN request time: 0.605s | source | bottom
Show context
jphoward ◴[] No.46219833[source]
It seems to be like some of the scales slightly off?

If you are looking at the ladybird (ladybug) with the amoeba to the left, the amoeba isn't an order of the magnitude smaller - it would actually be visible by the human eye (bigger than a grain of sand)? Indeed, the amoeba seems the same size as the ladybird's foot?

Similarly, this makes the bumblebee appear smaller than a human finger (the in the adjacent picture), which isn't the case?

replies(6): >>46220196 #>>46220239 #>>46220600 #>>46221800 #>>46223021 #>>46227265 #
1. elicash ◴[] No.46220196[source]
I came to the comments to express surprise that amoebas were so large. It appears they vary wildly in size (as small as 2.3 micrometers... but up to 20 cm, or nearly 8 inches).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba#Size_range

replies(3): >>46220722 #>>46221002 #>>46227418 #
2. adrian_b ◴[] No.46220722[source]
It is not right to call the xenophyophore that is on the last row, and which can have a size of up to 20 cm as an "amoeba".

Only the next row above it, with Pelomyxa, is indeed an amoeba and one that is very frequently encountered and which usually has sizes not much less than 1 millimeter and sometimes it can reach a size of a few mm.

The true amoebas are much more closely related to humans, than to xenophyophores (giant marine unicellular living beings) or to plants.

Besides the true amoebas there are also a few other kinds of unicellular eukaryotes with shape-shifting cells, e.g. foraminifera, radiolarians and others, but already in the first half of the 19th century it was recognized that those other groups change their shapes in a different way than the amoebas, so they were classified separately, even if the term "amoeboid cell" has always been used about any cell with variable shape.

The true amoebas are related to the group formed by animals and fungi, and there are some amoebas that have a simple form of multicellularity, so it is likely that some of the mechanisms needed for the evolution of multicellularity have been inherited from a common ancestor of animals, fungi and amoebae.

The multicellular or multinucleate amoebae that belong to Myxomycetes (one of the kinds of slime moulds) can reach much bigger sizes, e.g. a diameter of up to 1 meter, because they do not have the size limitation that exists for simple unicellular eukaryotes.

replies(1): >>46220948 #
3. elicash ◴[] No.46220948[source]
Thank you for that info/correction!
4. earlyriser ◴[] No.46221002[source]
On the other side, wasps could be so tiny. like you could put thousands of them inside an amoeba volume.

"Megaphragma mymaripenne is a microscopically sized wasp. At 200 μm in length, it is the third-smallest extant insect, comparable in size to single-celled organisms. It has a highly reduced nervous system, containing only 7400 neurons, several orders of magnitude fewer than in larger insects."

replies(1): >>46223931 #
5. albedoa ◴[] No.46223931[source]
The males of dicopomorpha echmepterygis are even smaller, with wide sexual dimorphism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicopomorpha_echmepterygis

I never knew about these either.

6. selcuka ◴[] No.46227418[source]
I got surprised by that too, and while comparing its size to the next organism (Tardigrade) I learned that every member of the same species of tardigrades has the exact same number of cells [1], which was even more surprising for me:

> Eutelic organisms have a fixed number of somatic cells when they reach maturity, the exact number being relatively constant for any one species. This phenomenon is also referred to as cell constancy. Development proceeds by cell division until maturity; further growth occurs via cell enlargement only.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutely