• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Could Automobiles Breed New Species Of Insects?

A

Anonymous

Guest
i was noticing this morning that there are certain insects on a car that never seem to be disturbed by a motor running, wind convections or any other agitations that an automobile would produce. and add to that the abundance of heat(year round) and food(look at the grill and windscreen) and you have the perfect environment for an insect to thrive. now, these insects aren't big ones. the one i observed was very tiny...like a white gnat, or even smaller than that. i know cars have only been in use for less than a century and that's hardly enough time for something to adapt and evolve...but in a longer period of time, could bugs evolve into what lamprey's are to sharks? co-evolutionary existance with a moveable environment?
 
sounds feasible. And oine hundred years is a relatively long time in the evolutionary history of tiny insects.
 
Insect generations

The life span of insects varies a lot. Fruit flies have a whole new generation every 30 to 90 days. Some moths live 2 weeks but with the chrysalis stage their entire life cycle from egg to moth death is a year. Some moths have 3 generations in one year. Most other insects' life spans fall somewhere within that 30 days to one year range.

So there have been at least 300 generations of fruit flies and at roughly 83 generations of most other insects. Is 83 generations enough to "evolve" ? Is 300?

Any entomologists out there?
 
i heard Mayflys live for roughly a day or two in ther adult cycle.

so it does make sense that their evolutionary metabolism is much high than ours.
 
Not necessarily 'evolved' - perhaps just 'selected'. Meaning that a very uncommon insect has found an environment to its liking and reproduced in much greater numbers.
 
Very possible. After all, the classic evolutionary 'smoking gun' was the (mumbles unconvincingly to disguise the fact he has forgotten the name of the species) um-er-ha moth. The moths with darker colouring survived much longer (and therefore reproduced more) in the pollution ridden 18/19th century urban environment.

Does everyone follow that previous paragraph? I could probably have phrased that better. Never mind, my point being that we've already seen evidence of this kind of thing. The question would be, what advantages would the enviroment of a car provide?
 
are insects likely to evolve that fast? as you no doubt will be able to tell, i have a tenuous grasp on evolutionary theory but - If insects have found a niche that works well within the ecosystem (which dictates their evolution), but does not itself change that quickly - themselves changing individually, a mutant would not really be able to get them out of the niche, but no longer being able to fit into the niche, and thus die off?:confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused:
sorry
*failed to make any sense*
 
MrHyde said:
The moths with darker colouring survived much longer (and therefore reproduced more) in the pollution ridden 18/19th century urban environment.

It was the peppered moth, originally white with black speckles, but darker ones did indeed become more common in industrialised areas. Interestingly, the lighter ones are becoming more common again now.

Originally posted by synthwerk

i heard Mayflys live for roughly a day or two in ther adult cycle.

so it does make sense that their evolutionary metabolism is much high than ours.
They may only live a short time as an adult, but they live for months as larvae (in the bottom of ponds and rivers) so this is probably a bad example.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Originally posted by Beany
It was the peppered moth, originally white with black speckles, but darker ones did indeed become more common in industrialised areas.
This happened in the UK. From what I gather, the dark ones matched the soot on the trees in the industrial areas, blending in better; the lighter ones were picked off rapidly by birds, because of their lack of camoflauge. Darwinism in action, and observable in less than a generation.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Not to be too much of a contrarian, but the famous study that *proved* the peppered moth color change has been the subject of a number of exposes over the last thirty or so years. There was a review of a new book, "Of Moths and Men" by Judith Hooper from the salon.com website that showed up on the FT breaking news page about a week ago, IIRC.

Mind you, I'm not saying that the color selection didn't necessarily occur as is claimed, just that there is some evidence that research that was used would appear to be bogus.
 
Hey, lopaka, thanks for pointing that out, because I missed hearing about that completely. I wonder why scientists would apply bogus research towards promoting a case like this? That's almost as if they felt they had to promote Darwinism at any cost, which is kind of the opposite of what science is all about. Hm. Anyway, thanks for bringing that to our attention.
 
Back
Top