On Mushroom Individuality

This paper is an application of the principles of individuality found in Guay and Pradeu (2016a) to illuminate biological individuality in mushrooms. I begin with the distinction between logico-cognitive individuals and ontological individuals (Chauvier 2016), and then I argue for genidentity (Lewin 1922, Guay and Pradeu 2016b) plus material continuity, as a minimum conception of ontological individuality in biology. Of the many materially-continuous genidenticals found in fungi, only those with functional roles in biological theory, either evolutionary or physiological, warrant consideration. Given numerous ways that theory picks out materially-continuous genidenticals in fungi, I argue for a pluralistic account of mushroom individuality

Multi-orbital frames through model spaces

We characterize the normal operators $A$ on $\ell^2$ and the elements $a^i \in \ell^2$, with $1\le i\le m$, such that the sequence $$\{ A^n a^1 , \ldots , A^n a^m \}_{n\ge 0}$$ is a frame. The characterization makes strong use of the pseudo-hyperbolic metric of $\mathbb{D}$ and is given in terms of the backward shift invariant subspaces of $H^2(\mathbb{D})$ associated to finite products of interpolating Blaschke products

Species in the Age of Discordance: Meeting Report and Introduction

In 2017, three interdisciplinary workshops were held on whether and how biological discordance might impact our views on species. Though the prompting focus of these workshops was genealogical discordance, the precise sense of ‘discordance’ was left intentionally ambiguous. This was to encourage an examination of the question from many different perspectives and to foster connections across disciplines. Participants included philosophers, historians, and other social scientists, alongside a range of biologists representing microbiology, population genetics, phylogenetics, invasion biology, herpetology, and ecology, among other areas. Here, context is provided for those workshops and to help motivate why biological discordance generates useful interdisciplinary research problems, along with brief summaries of the workshop papers included in this special issue

On Mushroom Individuality

This paper is an application of the principles of individuality found in Guay and Pradeu (2016a) to illuminate biological individuality in mushrooms. I begin with the distinction between logico-cognitive individuals and ontological individuals (Chauvier 2016), and then I argue for genidentity (Lewin 1922, Guay and Pradeu 2016b) plus material continuity, as a minimum conception of ontological individuality in biology. Of the many materially-continuous genidenticals found in fungi, only those with functional roles in biological theory, either evolutionary or physiological, warrant consideration. Given numerous ways that theory picks out materially-continuous genidenticals in fungi, I argue for a pluralistic account of mushroom individuality

On the ontology of vernal orange slime

This article considers the ontology of vernal orange slime (VOS), a phenomenon of microbial succession that arises in spring sap flows, and argues that it is an evolutionary “song”, a kind of unit of selection described by Ford Doolittle and Austin Booth. The sparse literature on VOS is reviewed, component fungal species are reported, the role of structure is considered, and objections that VOS is merely a symbiotic collective or holobiont are answered. Vos is instead presented as an evolving periodic process, repeated year after year, each instance developing as a cascade of overlapping holobionts

On the ontology of vernal orange slime

This article considers the ontology of vernal orange slime (VOS), a phenomenon of microbial succession that arises in spring sap flows, and argues that it is an evolutionary “song”, a kind of unit of selection described by Ford Doolittle and Austin Booth. The sparse literature on VOS is reviewed, component fugal species are reported, the role of structure is considered, and objections that VOS is merely a symbiotic collective or holobiont are answered. Vos is instead presented as an evolving periodic process, repeated year after year, each instance developing as a cascade of overlapping holobionts

Chance in the Modern Synthesis

The modern synthesis in evolutionary biology is taken to be that period in which a consensus developed among biologists about the major causes of evolution, a consensus that informed research in evolutionary biology for at least a half century. As such, it is a particularly fruitful period to consider when reflecting on the meaning and role of chance in evolutionary explanation. Biologists of this period make reference to “chance” and loose cognates of “chance,” such as: “random,” “contingent,” “accidental,” “haphazard,” or “stochastic.” Of course, what an author might mean by “chance” in any specific context varies. In the following, we first off er a historiographical note on the synthesis. Second, we introduce five ways in which synthesis authors spoke about chance

Approximation by crystal-refinable functions

Let Γ be a crystal group in Rd. A function φ:Rd⟶C is said to be crystal-refinable (or Γ-refinable) if it is a linear combination of finitely many of the rescaled and translated functions φ(γ−1(ax)), where the translationsγ are taken on a crystal group Γ, and a is an expansive dilation matrix such that aΓa−1⊂Γ. A Γ-refinable function φ:Rd→C satisfies a refinement equation φ(x)=∑γ∈Γdγφ(γ−1(ax)) with dγ∈C. Let S(φ) be the linear span of {φ(γ−1(x)):γ∈Γ} and Sh={f(x/h):f∈S(φ)}. One important property of S(φ) is, how well it approximates functions in L2(Rd). This property is very closely related to the crystal-accuracy of S(φ), which is the highest degree p such that all multivariate polynomials q(x) of degree(q)Fil: Molter, Ursula Maria. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Matemática; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Investigaciones Matemáticas "Luis A. Santaló". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Matemáticas "Luis A. Santaló"; ArgentinaFil: Moure, María del Carmen. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Matemática; ArgentinaFil: Quintero, Alejandro Daniel. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Matemática; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin