In symbiosis (strictly speaking, endosymbiosis ), two or more different types of organisms start living together as a single organism, where natural functions are divided among them. From the Free Dictionary (linked): “a type of symbiosis in which one organism lives inside the other, the two typically behaving as a single organism. It is believed to be the means by which such organelles as mitochondria and chloroplasts arose within eukaryotic cells.”
Evolution News and Science Today describes the idea as “little more than a hunch” but one worth pursuing:
Homing pigeons return home from unfamiliar release points. Sea turtles and salmon cross oceans unerringly to feeding grounds and back home again through murky sea water. Butterflies cross thousands of miles to specific trees they have never seen before for overwintering. Even cows generally align north and south. One thing that unites these disparate creatures from different phyla and families: the ability to sense and align with the earth’s geomagnetic field. Where did they get this ability? How does it work? Hearing has ears; seeing has eyes, but this “sense without a receptor” has been a mystery for half a century. Now, some scientists think bacteria may have shared their technology with animals, but testing that possibility is a work in progress.
Evolution News, “Magnetic Navigation May Be a Gift from Bacteria” at Evolution News and Science Today:
They could all have been/be in contact with magnetotactic bacteria:
The magnetosomes, usually arranged in single file, are attracted to magnetic fields, including the earth’s magnetic field. They align with the field and feel the pull. The whole bacterium responds by aligning with the resultant magnetic moment and travels in that direction. The mere presence of magnetite inside a bacterium, however, does not guarantee a response. As with every other functional entity in life, bacteria have genes and proteins that construct these biominerals and arrange them in magnetosomes with tight controls. It’s not a simple process. The authors believe that unrelated MTB shared these genes, located on “Magnetosome Islands” (MAI), by horizontal gene transfer. Even so, the coupling of magnetic-sensitive organelles to cellular motion in the bacteria is not well understood.
Evolution News, “Magnetic Navigation May Be a Gift from Bacteria” at Evolution News and Science Today:
Paper under discussion (paywall)
Endosymbiosis and horizontal gene transfer are definitely not the whole story, it seems:
In Illustra’s documentary Living Waters, the exquisite navigation equipment of sea turtles was showcased. The turtles can determine both the strength and angle of a magnetic field line and move precisely at the angle needed to reach their feeding grounds without visual cues. When in the vicinity of a target, they can incorporate other cues, like smell and vision, to get there. Years or decades later they can remember how to get back, often arriving within meters of the beach where they were hatched. The feat implies the existence of far more than symbiosis with bacterial partners aligned with compass points. They must have the ability to build a magnetic map in their brains and store it in memory, then run the route forwards and backwards.
Evolution News, “Magnetic Navigation May Be a Gift from Bacteria” at Evolution News and Science Today:
But hey, it’s a start towards a reasonable explanation and way better than classic Darwinism.
Probably an unnecessary hypothesis. We know how the magnetic sense works in some animals. It follows the same basic pattern as the balance sense in everything from shrimp to humans. Balance uses little pebbles, made by the body, embedded in a gel with hair-cell neurons sensing the motion. The magnetic sense (where known) is generally similar. Magnetized iron particles pushing on some kind of pressure-sensitive neurons. The electromagnetic wave sense in mud-dwelling fish is also similar.
Since this mechanism is widespread in many senses including magnetism, there’s no reason to assume symbiosis in the cases where we don’t yet see the mechanism. It’s possible that bacteria may be enlisted (or encysted like mitochondria) to MAKE the particles, but unlikely that the bacteria are doing the sensing.
of semi related note,
As to Einstein’s childhood fascination about the toy magnet, i.e. that there must be, “something behind things, something deeply hidden”, from that childhood fascination about the toy magnet, the following article states that “It was a fascination that ultimately led him (Einstein) to challenge contemporary concepts of magnetic fields and to develop an entirely new formulation of gravitational fields.”
Of related interest, Einstein was never able to unify his field equations of gravity,,,
,,, Einstein was never able to unify his field equations of gravity with electromagnetism, i.e. the electromagnetic field, into a “unified field theory”
In short, Einstein was never able to explain electromagnetism and therefore Einstein had failed to explain the “something behind things, something deeply hidden” that the young Einstein knew must exist from his childhood fascination with his toy magnet.
As to the overall belief of Einstein of seeing everything as fields, and Einstein subsequently, for decades afterwards, unsuccessfully trying to find a “unified field theory”, a theory that would unify electromagnetism with gravity, John Wheeler, (a scientific giant in his own right), comments, in his life in physicst, that he himself moved from believing that “Everything is particles’ to then believing that “Everything is fields’ to finally and ultimately believing that “Everything is information’
John Wheeler went on to state that,, “All things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe… Observer-participancy gives rise to information.” Wheeler succinctly summarized this idea as ‘It from bit”.
The interesting thing about holding ‘everything is information”, as Wheeler did, (and as many leading Quantum Physicists still do today), is that Christianity ‘predicted’ that ‘everything is information’ thousands of years before it was discovered by quantum mechanics.
As Anton Zeilinger has stated, “the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: “In the beginning was the Word.””
In fact, as far as quantum mechanics is concerned, Zeilinger has gone on to state that “we cannot operationally separate the two. Whenever we talk about reality, we think about reality, we are really handling information.” and also reiterated his belief that “This reminds me of the beginning the bible of St. John which starts with “In the Beginning was the Word”.,,,
This is interesting thing in this is that, number 1, as Christians have been pointing out to atheists for decades now, (if not pointing it out to them for centuries), science is impossible without assuming theistic presuppositions.
For instance, as Paul Davies pointed out, “Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way.” and as Davies also pointed out “science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.”
Of course many of today’s scientists completely ignore the Christian foundation that modern science itself is dependent upon, (Indeed many of today’s scientists think of Christianity as little more than a ancient superstition), but, much contrary to whatever today’s scientists may be predisposed to believe about Christianity, allowing Christianity ‘back’ into modern science ‘surprisingly’ provides us with a very plausible, empirically backed, resolution to the much sought after ‘theory of everything’.
In short, Christianity offers a solution to the number one problem in physics today, where Einstein himself, (as well as many, many, other brilliant minds), have, after decades upon decades of concerted effort, failed to find that solution to the ‘theory of everything’.
Namely, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”. Here are a few posts where I lay out and defend some of the evidence for that claim:
To give us a small glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ’s resurrection from the dead, the following recent article found that, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”
Verse:
Might I apologize to News for taking the issue of magnetism, and magnetic navigation in particular, so far afield from what she originally intended in her OP. 🙂
Semi-OT but important in terms of sensory design and purpose:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/goby-fish-fins-sensitive-feel-touch-fingertips
Fish fins look like fingers, and it turns out that they have pretty much the same neural connections and sensory abilities as primate fingers. Another obvious example of LIFE IS PURPOSE, another hard case for random mutation.