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Cockroaches Evolving To Avoid Roach Motels
sciencehabit writes "Only a few years after roach motels were introduced in the 1980s, they lost their allure for an increasing number of German cockroaches. Researchers soon realized that some roaches had developed an aversion to glucose—the sugary bait disguising the poison—and that the insects were passing that trait on to their young. Now, scientists have figured out how this behavior evolved."
Use high fructose corn syrup in the roach motels instead of glucose. I'm surprised they don't do this already, since they use it in everything else.
Seriously, did the roaches actually evolve and pass it to their young, or did the specific roaches which HAD the sugar aversion trait simply avoid being poisoned and passed along said aversion to their offspring?
I'm kinda thinking it's the latter.
I'm kinda thinking that's evolution.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Darwin called it "natural selection". "Evolution", like the OP "developed an aversion", suggests something active happened - these bugs changed - rather than something passive - these bugs are the only ones left (because the other ones ate the poison).
There's really no distinction. What is called macro evolution is determined by hindsight, usually because we are only able to compare fossils separated by millions of years. By definition every organism is a member of the same species as its parents. We only place them into discrete categories for taxonomical convenience. It's not a fact of nature, it's a human contrivance to make doing (some aspects) of biology easier.
It's like natural languages. I speak English, a Germanic language. I can speak to my father and mother just fine. I can speak to my grandfather, and also converse in German with him. If my great-grandfather were still alive I'd doubtless have no trouble speaking to him, too. He could speak to his parents. They could speak to their parents, and so on. Each person in the chain can speak to and understand the people directly around them. But if you go back just a few hundred years, I wouldn't be able to easily converse with my ancestors, despite the fact that there is an unbroken chain connecting them to myself linguistically. Farther back and I wouldn't even recognize the language they're speaking as English, or German. So from microevolution comes macroevolution of languages.
So to with biology. If we had access to a fossil or living specimen of every intermediary individual from single cell to human then the very idea of species would become meaningless, lost in the smooth gradient of gradual change. You could line them all up and walk down the line and see them change, almost imperceptibly from one form into another. Every individual would look so much like his parents and offspring that you wouldn't even be able to tell there was a change at all. But you could compare every 10, 100, or 1000 individuals and see that they are in fact changing. At some point they'd be so different as to need a new name, for humans have an almost pernicious compulsion to place things into discrete categories.
Some people find it impossible to break out of this mindset. Some find that their religion even compels them not to try.
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Darwin called it "natural selection". "Evolution", like the OP "developed an aversion", suggests something active happened - these bugs changed - rather than something passive - these bugs are the only ones left (because the other ones ate the poison).
Poor wording, or poor understanding of the wording. The individual bugs didn't develop an aversion; the population as a whole became more glucose averse over time compared to previous generations. Evolution doesn't happen to a single generation, or a single individual. It is the result of passing on genetic traits to offspring. The species evolves, not the individuals. Granted, from time to time a mutation may arise and contribute to the gene pool, but that's only a statistical anomaly in the process of evolution. The big mover is selection - be it natural, or artificial.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
If I were designing them, they'd thrive on the poison in the traps. Of course, if I were designing them, the cockroaches would be the focus of the experiment. I'd throw increasingly difficult challenges at them, culminating in some moderately clever primates. Once the cockroach Alpha arises, it would be saved for future study, and the rest of the experiment would be reset. That's the problem with an intelligent designer, isn't it? One tends to believe that they're the focus of the experiment. One tends to think that they will somehow qualify for special treatment. When, in fact, all that awaits you is euthanasia and a brain dissection. And that's if you're one of the lucky ones.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Mutations are random, and most aren't improvements, aren't adaptive. Natural selection then goes to work. The mutations which are better become more numerous by virtue of being better. Detrimental changes terminate the organism's lineage by killing it outright or making it less successful at reproducing. Drop a bacterium into a pond and after a billion years I'd expect to still find bacteria or something analogous in that pond. Ignore the fact that location on the Earth loses meaning at that time scale due to plate tectonics. I'd expect to find bacteria AND lots of other forms of life all over the place everywhere I looked. This demonstrates another misunderstanding ID people have with evolution. Bacteria and humans are equally evolved. We've all been evolving for the same amount of time. Bacteria are just as old as humans, all contemporary species are. No extant species is "less evolved" than any other. You can say they are "more primitive" but what does that really mean? Compared to what?
Anthropocentrism is a vice biologists are broken of early on. Religious people often find the idea that humans aren't special, that the world wasn't made just for us, positively abhorrent. Strangely these same religions often preach humility. What a contradiction.
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You are complaining to the wrong person. Make your complaint to Black Parrot or some of the other ones up thread. He started it off with a joke post involving ID, started the thread topic, and then made the inquiry I responded to. There are other posts about it as well. Complain to them. If it is OK for them to post on it, it is OK for me to post on it. Fair is fair. If it is just a matter of viewpoint discrimination - well, sorry, but I will continue to post on running topics, but do not agree to one sided discussions.
If you're bored with it, feel free to ignore the posts. I often ignore threads in a story, or even entire stories, in which the discussion is one in which I am uninterested, or at least find to be a lesser priority.
I don't think the ID community would agree that what they do either is, or has, spirituality as a central component to the day to day work. Many of them are working scientists as well. They just hold a particular view about what the ultimate source of everything is. Drop an anvil on your toe and a physicist that ascribes to ID will tell you it was gravity that pulled it to earth, not God's will. A chemist that ascribes to ID will tell you that the anvil is made of high carbon steel with traces of scandium, not "stuff that God holds together." A physician that ascribes to ID will still tell you that the toe has to be amputated. Don't make the mistake of thinking that people that believe either ID or associated beliefs must be stupid.
I know a PhD physicist that graduated from a major research university, is the head of an academic physics department (last I knew), and believed in either ID or Creationism, I forget which. Besides his academic duties, the good doctor does solid research for outside customers and is well regarded in that particular research community. Believing that God exists, created the universe, and established creation in a particular fashion is a very remote question from trying to understand a particular problem in surface physics.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Part of the roach's success stems from its omnivorous diet. Removing glucose from its diet is likely a considerable hit on its caloric intake. If the aversion to glucose can be maintained while developing aversions to other abundant and nutritious food stuffs, like meat protein, we could bio-engineer cockroaches to become specialized eaters.
Specialized eaters are easier to control and eradicate. Furthermore, if they over specialize to the degree of Pandas and Koalas they may be bio-engineered out of existence. Personally, I wouldn't mind never seeing another cockroach again.
It isn't an idiot designer, as cephalopods have their eyes the right way around. The designer clearly can do it correctly, but chose not to do it with vertebrates. Furthermore, when looking at the way the world works, it becomes clear that the designer is evil, mad or both. All in all, Cthulhu is the best guess at a designer, given the evidence.
Complexity is usually a workaround for an detrimental mutation that happened down the line. Evolution is not a championship of the fittest and strongest, but a never ending rerouting around obstacles. The strongest and fittest stay as they are from one generation to another; the outcasts and "damaged good" specimens are pushed to the limbs of their worlds to explore neighboring niches and then evolve into them. Some of them might some day become more powerful then their former "betters", if their evolutionary path leads them that way. You can see that pattern in history of nations too. Rejects from prosperous nations gather on frontiers toughen and become able barbarians who eventually migrate back in power and seize rich lands. But first step into conquest is typically a step back.
Yes, it's always the physicists and mathematicians for some reason who hold these ideas.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that smart people can't be stupid.