Your Favorite Insect

[empyrean]

No kiddin.........

i like Mantis.

No butterflies please.

<a href="http://s141.photobucket.com/albums/r72/din1081/?action=view¤t=215613201067hitmedawg.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r72/din1081/215613201067hitmedawg.gif" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

[enzfan]

Dung Beetles, not that I really care for them but any insect with dung as your first name is funny.

[Frau_Blucher]

Drosophila melanogaster...if you study its development and polymorphism and still don't believe in evolution, you're an idiot. [}:)]

[reillygirl]

Lady Bugs! They are the only insect that doesn't make me run screaming if it lands on me. I really hate bugs!

[Synthpopfan]

[quote][i]Originally posted by reillygirl[/i]
<br>Lady Bugs! They are the only insect that doesn't make me run screaming if it lands on me. I really hate bugs!
[/quote]

Same as above. [;)]

[abacab66]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Blir[/i]
<br>Drosophila melanogaster...if you study its development and polymorphism and still don't believe in evolution, you're an idiot. [}:)]
[/quote]OK, I'll bite. [:o)]
I have found no evidence of evolution in my studies of the fruit fly. Once a fruit fly, always a fruit fly. Yes they can be mutated, but time has shown that the mutations were no better and usually worse off than the original and if they were left to themselves the DNA structure over a few generations generally repaired itself causing the hatching of normal flys. I'd actually say there is design behind it not chance.

My favorite, although not an insect, is the jumping spider.

[rotator]

Love/Hate relationship with the bee. I love honey, but I swell up when stung. got stung a week and a half ago, flew down my shirt and stung me on my decollage.

[plagiarism]

Anything iridescent, like june bugs or morpho butterflies.

<a href="http://s70.photobucket.com/albums/i89/plagiarismcc/?action=view¤t=250px-Blue_morpho_butterfly.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i89/plagiarismcc/250px-Blue_morpho_butterfly.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

[Bitter Almonds]

<p align="justify">For some odd reason, black widow spiders make their way into my place. I used to just step on them, but nowadays I just pick them up and toss them outside the balcony. There's gotta be some enormous nest of black widow spiders I'm not sensing here[}:)]

Check this shit out:

http://www.cracked.com/article_15816_5- ... world.html


[}:)]

[Frau_Blucher]

[quote][i]Originally posted by abacab66[/i]
<br>OK, I'll bite. [:o)]
[/quote]
Heheheh. [;)]

May I note here that speciation and evolution are not the same? I'm not sure we've established that distinction given your "once a fruit fly, always a fruit fly" comment. We see quite a lot of evolution within the genus [i]Drosophila[/i], nevermind the actual species [i]melanogaster[/i]. In melanogaster itself, there is well-documented genetic drift that is clearly associated with relatively short-term environment-dependent fitness, metabolism, coloration and other differences.

True speciation though is certainly an extreme standard that evolution ought to be held to the harsh light of. And there's certainly evidence like with the species melanogaster and simulans for example that are predominantly different by a single chromosomal translocation of a gene from chr 4 to chr 3, but I suppose God could have easily created them that way. Fair enough. However, I do also seem to recall [i]some[/i] real-time studies supporting even such an extreme thing as true speciation as well...

Disruptive Selection on Drosophila melanogaster:
Thoday and Gibson (1962) established a population of Drosophila melanogaster from four gravid females. They applied selection on this population for flies with the highest and lowest numbers of sternoplural chaetae (hairs). In each generation, eight flies with high numbers of chaetae were allowed to interbreed and eight flies with low numbers of chaetae were allowed to interbreed. Periodically they performed mate choice experiments on the two lines. They found that they had produced a high degree of positive assortative mating between the two groups. In the decade or so following this, eighteen labs attempted unsuccessfully to reproduce these results. References are given in Thoday and Gibson 1970.

Selection on Courtship Behavior in Drosophila melanogaster:
Crossley (1974) was able to produce changes in mating behavior in two mutant strains of D. melanogaster. Four treatments were used. In each treatment, 55 virgin males and 55 virgin females of both ebony body mutant flies and vestigial wing mutant flies (220 flies total) were put into a jar and allowed to mate for 20 hours. The females were collected and each was put into a separate vial. The phenotypes of the offspring were recorded. Wild type offspring were hybrids between the mutants. In two of the four treatments, mating was carried out in the light. In one of these treatments all hybrid offspring were destroyed. This was repeated for 40 generations. Mating was carried out in the dark in the other two treatments. Again, in one of these all hybrids were destroyed. This was repeated for 49 generations. Crossley ran mate choice tests and observed mating behavior. Positive assortative mating was found in the treatment which had mated in the light and had been subject to strong selection against hybridization. The basis of this was changes in the courtship behaviors of both sexes. Similar experiments, without observation of mating behavior, were performed by Knight, et al. (1956).

Drosophila paulistorum:
Dobzhansky and Pavlovsky (1971) reported a speciation event that occurred in a laboratory culture of Drosophila paulistorum sometime between 1958 and 1963. The culture was descended from a single inseminated female that was captured in the Llanos of Colombia. In 1958 this strain produced fertile hybrids when crossed with conspecifics of different strains from Orinocan. From 1963 onward crosses with Orinocan strains produced only sterile males. Initially no assortative mating or behavioral isolation was seen between the Llanos strain and the Orinocan strains. Later on Dobzhansky produced assortative mating (Dobzhansky 1972).

Sexual Isolation as a Byproduct of Adaptation to Environmental Conditions in Drosophila melanogaster:
Kilias, et al. (1980) exposed D. melanogaster populations to different temperature and humidity regimes for several years. They performed mating tests to check for reproductive isolation. They found some sterility in crosses among populations raised under different conditions. They also showed some positive assortative mating. These things were not observed in populations which were separated but raised under the same conditions. They concluded that sexual isolation was produced as a byproduct of selection.

Sympatric Speciation in Drosophila melanogaster:
In a series of papers (Rice 1985, Rice and Salt 1988 and Rice and Salt 1990) Rice and Salt presented experimental evidence for the possibility of sympatric speciation. They started from the premise that whenever organisms sort themselves into the environment first and then mate locally, individuals with the same habitat preferences will necessarily mate assortatively. They established a stock population of D. melanogaster with flies collected in an orchard near Davis, California. Pupae from the culture were placed into a habitat maze. Newly emerged flies had to negotiate the maze to find food. The maze simulated several environmental gradients simultaneously. The flies had to make three choices of which way to go. The first was between light and dark (phototaxis). The second was between up and down (geotaxis). The last was between the scent of acetaldehyde and the scent of ethanol (chemotaxis). This divided the flies among eight habitats. The flies were further divided by the time of day of emergence. In total the flies were divided among 24 spatio-temporal habitats.
They next cultured two strains of flies that had chosen opposite habitats. One strain emerged early, flew upward and was attracted to dark and acetaldehyde. The other emerged late, flew downward and was attracted to light and ethanol. Pupae from these two strains were placed together in the maze. They were allowed to mate at the food site and were collected. Eye color differences between the strains allowed Rice and Salt to distinguish between the two strains. A selective penalty was imposed on flies that switched habitats. Females that switched habitats were destroyed. None of their gametes passed into the next generation. Males that switched habitats received no penalty. After 25 generations of this mating tests showed reproductive isolation between the two strains. Habitat specialization was also produced.
They next repeated the experiment without the penalty against habitat switching. The result was the same -- reproductive isolation was produced. They argued that a switching penalty is not necessary to produce reproductive isolation. Their results, they stated, show the possibility of sympatric speciation.

Isolation Produced as an Incidental Effect of Selection on several Drosophila species:
In a series of experiments, del Solar (1966) derived positively and negatively geotactic and phototactic strains of D. pseudoobscura from the same population by running the flies through mazes. Flies from different strains were then introduced into mating chambers (10 males and 10 females from each strain). Matings were recorded. Statistically significant positive assortative mating was found.
In a separate series of experiments Dodd (1989) raised eight populations derived from a single population of D. Pseudoobscura on stressful media. Four populations were raised on a starch based medium, the other four were raised on a maltose based medium. The fly populations in both treatments took several months to get established, implying that they were under strong selection. Dodd found some evidence of genetic divergence between flies in the two treatments. He performed mate choice tests among experimental populations. He found statistically significant assortative mating between populations raised on different media, but no assortative mating among populations raised within the same medium regime. He argued that since there was no direct selection for reproductive isolation, the behavioral isolation results from a pleiotropic by-product to adaptation to the two media. Schluter and Nagel (1995) have argued that these results provide experimental support for the hypothesis of parallel speciation.
Less dramatic results were obtained by growing D. willistoni on media of different pH levels (de Oliveira and Cordeiro 1980). Mate choice tests after 26, 32, 52 and 69 generations of growth showed statistically significant assortative mating between some populations grown in different pH treatments. This ethological isolation did not always persist over time. They also found that some crosses made after 106 and 122 generations showed significant hybrid inferiority, but only when grown in acid medium.

Selection for Reinforcement in Drosophila melanogaster:
Some proposed models of speciation rely on a process called reinforcement to complete the speciation process. Reinforcement occurs when to partially isolated allopatric populations come into contact. Lower relative fitness of hybrids between the two populations results in increased selection for isolating mechanisms. I should note that a recent review (Rice and Hostert 1993) argues that there is little experimental evidence to support reinforcement models. Two experiments in which the authors argue that their results provide support are discussed below.
Ehrman (1971) established strains of wild-type and mutant (black body) D. melanogaster. These flies were derived from compound autosome strains such that heterotypic matings would produce no progeny. The two strains were reared together in common fly cages. After two years, the isolation index generated from mate choice experiments had increased from 0.04 to 0.43, indicating the appearance of considerable assortative mating. After four years this index had risen to 0.64 (Ehrman 1973).
Along the same lines, Koopman (1950) was able to increase the degree of reproductive isolation between two partially isolated species, D. pseudoobscura and D. persimilis.

A Test of the Founder-flush Hypothesis Using Houseflies:
Meffert and Bryant (1991) used houseflies to test whether bottlenecks in populations can cause permanent alterations in courtship behavior that lead to premating isolation. They collected over 100 flies of each sex from a landfill near Alvin, Texas. These were used to initiate an ancestral population. From this ancestral population they established six lines. Two of these lines were started with one pair of flies, two lines were started with four pairs of flies and two lines were started with sixteen pairs of flies. These populations were flushed to about 2,000 flies each. They then went through five bottlenecks followed by flushes. This took 35 generations. Mate choice tests were performed. One case of positive assortative mating was found. One case of negative assortative mating was also found.

Speciation through host differentiation, Apple Maggot Fly (Rhagoletis pomonella):
Rhagoletis pomonella is a fly that is native to North America. Its normal host is the hawthorn tree. Sometime during the nineteenth century it began to infest apple trees. Since then it has begun to infest cherries, roses, pears and possibly other members of the rosaceae. Quite a bit of work has been done on the differences between flies infesting hawthorn and flies infesting apple. There appear to be differences in host preferences among populations. Offspring of females collected from on of these two hosts are more likely to select that host for oviposition (Prokopy et al. 1988). Genetic differences between flies on these two hosts have been found at 6 out of 13 allozyme loci (Feder et al. 1988, see also McPheron et al. 1988). Laboratory studies have shown an asynchrony in emergence time of adults between these two host races (Smith 1988). Flies from apple trees take about 40 days to mature, whereas flies from hawthorn trees take 54-60 days to mature. This makes sense when we consider that hawthorn fruit tends to mature later in the season that apples. Hybridization studies show that host preferences are inherited, but give no evidence of barriers to mating. This is a very exciting case. It may represent the early stages of a sympatric speciation event (considering the dispersal of R. pomonella to other plants it may even represent the beginning of an adaptive radiation)

Like I say, may favorite bug! [;)]

I obviously don't mean the "idiot" comment...just trying to get a rise on a slow day. [}:)]

[Max Murdoc]

Not too keen on any bugs, I can live with them or without them but....Praying Mantis is high on my list of get the fuck outta my way!

Bugs that can turn their heads and look at you are beyond creepy. Nightmare time for me...

About a month ago I woke up in the middle of the night. I sat up wondering what woke me up...I felt what I thought was my hair brushing across my forehead and when I reached up to brush my hair away I found a centipede on my face. It was about 2 inches long. That's what woke me up.

[iposse]

Adam Ant
The Buggles

Speaking of drosophila melanogaster...between high school and college I helped out in a laboratory. We would put fruit flies of differing genotypes in test tubes (i.e. one tube would be something like "wild type x disheveled"), and then a week or so later, after they had bred, I would have to put them to sleep and then count those hundreds of flies under a microscope one by one and mark them into a logbook. It was ridiculously boring and strained my vision sifting through a pile of pin-sized fruit flies and looking for those with ten hairs on their back instead of nine, or those with slightly-less-oval eyes, or whatever.

That's part of the reason that, even though I liked science, I never really pursued it as a career.

[reillygirl]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Max Murdoc[/i]
<br>Not too keen on any bugs, I can live with them or without them but....Praying Mantis is high on my list of get the fuck outta my way!

Bugs that can turn their heads and look at you are beyond creepy. Nightmare time for me...

About a month ago I woke up in the middle of the night. I sat up wondering what woke me up...I felt what I thought was my hair brushing across my forehead and when I reached up to brush my hair away I found a centipede on my face. It was about 2 inches long. That's what woke me up.
[/quote]
If that happened to me I would never sleep again!

[Frau_Blucher]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Max Murdoc[/i]
<br>About a month ago I woke up in the middle of the night. I sat up wondering what woke me up...I felt what I thought was my hair brushing across my forehead and when I reached up to brush my hair away I found a centipede on my face. It was about 2 inches long. That's what woke me up.
[/quote]
FUCK!!!!!!! That would have freaked me out for months. That happened to me with a gecko once in Hawaii....AAAAACK!!!!!!!!!!

[Spit]

My favorite insect would have to be the dragonfly. Just like the way they look and the fact that they eat mosquitoes is not a bad thing. Like most people , I hate mosquitoes.