Emerald cockroach wasp - Reproductive behavior and life cycle
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Emerald cockroach wasp - Reproductive behavior and life cycle
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Re: Emerald cockroach wasp - Reproductive behavior and life cycle
#2Re: Emerald cockroach wasp - Reproductive behavior and life cycle
#3Creepy video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxe60BcHbUA
Parasitoids have fascinating life histories. I'd thoroughly recommend the book "Parasitoids: Behavioral and Evolutionary Ecology" by Charles Godfray.
Re: Emerald cockroach wasp - Reproductive behavior and life cycle
#4I, for one, welcome our new Emerald Cockroach Wasp overlords.
Re: Emerald cockroach wasp - Reproductive behavior and life cycle
#5This is as close as is gets in real life to the movie 'Alien'. Was Ridley Scott inspired by this in some way?
Re: Emerald cockroach wasp - Reproductive behavior and life cycle
#6Researchers believe that the wasp chews off the antenna to replenish fluids or possibly to regulate the amount of venom because too much could kill and too little would let the victim recover before the larva has grown.
I don't understand either of those explanations. Do roach antenna have fluids in them? How does chopping off antenna regulate venom which is already in the roach's brain? Does anyone get this part?
Re: Emerald cockroach wasp - Reproductive behavior and life cycle
#7Researchers believe that the wasp chews off the antenna to replenish fluids or possibly to regulate the amount of venom because too much could kill and too little would let the victim recover before the larva has grown. I don't understand either of those explanations. Do roach antenna have fluids in them? How does chopping off antenna regulate venom which is already in the roach's brain? Does anyone get this part?
OK this video (which is quite good) seems to answer it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-p_4mp-RtA&p=E330837E95B...
The clipped antenna leaks roach blood. Now I'm off to bed for some sweet nightmares.
Re: Emerald cockroach wasp - Reproductive behavior and life cycle
#8> Over a period of eight days, the wasp larva consumes the roach's internal organs in an order which guarantees that the roach will stay alive, at least until the larva enters the pupal stage and forms a cocoon inside the roach's body.
Instances of 'inborn intelligence' never cease to amaze me. How in the world do the larvae know in which order to eat the organs?!
If you have an instinct that is pretty low-level (say, pulling your hands away from a hot object), you could argue that your biology has been selected by evolution to respond in a particular way to that stimulus. I can also understand adults exhibiting a higher-level of intelligence - they could have learned it from their community or from direct experience. But tabula rasa minds exhibiting complex intelligence is just mind boggling.
Re: Emerald cockroach wasp - Reproductive behavior and life cycle
#9I think I dated one of those in high school.
Re: Emerald cockroach wasp - Reproductive behavior and life cycle
#10> Over a period of eight days, the wasp larva consumes the roach's internal organs in an order which guarantees that the roach will stay alive, at least until the larva enters the pupal stage and forms a cocoon inside the roach's body. Instances of 'inborn intelligence' never cease to amaze me. How in the world do the larvae know in which order to eat the organs?! If you have an instinct that is pretty low-level (say…
Suppose you have two variations of a gene; one produces larvae that prefer the taste of a vital organ, and eat that one first. The other variation prefers the taste of a less important organ, eating that first and eating the important organ only when it has exhausted its preferred option. If the second one is on average 5% more likely to complete its growing before the roach dies and its food supply rots, the second variation is likely to displace the first.
Why would larvae eat only one organ at a time in the order of taste preference in the first place? Well if two variations of a gene exist, and one produces larvae that are not picky and damage many organs while feeding, while another produces larvae that are picky and thereby confine their damage to.one organ at a time, then if the second behavior is more successful it will begin to replace the first.
The central.message of modern Darwinism is the accumulation of small changes can lead to big evolutions. Obviously I cannot say what the exact mechanism of this instance was but what I gave are examples of the types of incremental changes that may have contributed. Your incredulity is based on a straw man argument: you ask how does the animal know what the right order is, as if that had to come all at once ex nihilo.