> Question: How does the mosquito evolve to have the behavior of avoiding > a sound that precedes their death? I believe that mosquitos do not > communicate information to each other, along the lines of "And another > thing, kiddies, if you hear a buzzing sound - duck!" So the behavior > would have to evolve by increased survival of mosquitos who recognized > the sound as indicating danger, avoided the danger, and lived to > reproduce. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but is there someone more > familiar with evolution than this old anthropology major who does know? > Jim Tibensky > *************************************************************************** You don't need any form of communication with succeeding generations. If so, nothing would have evolved since most organism can't do that... especially plants! All that Darwin said regarding "Survival of the Fittest" is that there must be some advantage to some particular mutation. If it's advantageous, then more organisms with that mutation will survive to reproduce, and the others will not. More of those genes will be passed on to the next generation, etc etc. If it's a negative thing, then it will be rapidly taken out of the gene pool. If you have hundreds of thousands of years (and generations) then it will be pretty well fixed in the population. So, a mosquito survived to reproduce... nothing more than that is necessary. More to the point, the non-fit are not reproducing. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Jul 23 2003 - 09:09:57 PDT
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