The Coevolution of Lice & Their Hosts

eldavojohn writes "It might be an uncomfortable subject but parasites are an interesting subject when it comes to evolution. Ever wonder if pocket gophers have lice? Well, they do. And most interesting of all is the evolution of these lice mirroring the evolution of gophers. To study the genes of lice may shed just as much light on evolutionary trees as studying the genes of the actual host the lice has evolved to. The most unsettling result from these studies is that human head lice and human pubic lice (crabs) vary so greatly that they are in two separate genera. There were similarities between our pubic lice and the lice found on gorillas. Scientists came to the conclusion, which they published today in BMC Biology, is just as striking as their earlier one about head lice. But it is hardly the same. We did not get pubic lice from other hominids. We got them from the ancestors of gorillas."

Comments

another incorect assumption

[ILuvRamen]

Oh boy, here's my favorite scientific assumption about evolution! "Complicated animals with a large gene sets can evolve just the same as extremely small, simple animals!" In case you're not up to speed, only Adaptation is proven scientifically, evolution is a theory (evolution = change of one species into another completely different) Bacteria evolve in minutes because of their simplicity. Birds can change color and tiny little bugs like lice can randomly change usefully and then be more likely to live but that's way slower and less likely to happen. By the time you get to the mosquito, it's easy to see that evolution is ridiculous and impossible. A male and female mosquito would have had to evolved to have feet that stick to their prey, the big nose thingy to suck up the blood, a blood carrying pouch, and a reproductive system that requires blood from other animals within the same generation, and found each other, and had little mosquito babies that survived. Way up the complication table is monkeys turning into humans? Uhhhh I think not.

first poskt!?

[Anonymous Coward]

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