I hear folks saying bugs are dying off because of changes in the environment, but shouldn’t bugs be some of the best equipped to handle changes? I imagine they reproduce faster than humans, and so I’d think their genes could adjust faster as well. You’d think we’d be having a worse time than bugs as the environment changes?
In: Biology
Human adaptability hasn’t been limited by evolution for a long time. Our brains let us adapt to new environments in a very short timespan. We are evolutionarily adapted to live in an African climate, but with clothing and fire we can live almost anywhere on earth. When you include modern technology we can even live in space.
Adaptation takes time. It would be hard for a bug to adapt to climate change like seems to be happening right now. Humans on the other hand do not need to adapt. We have the ability to build habitats that protect us from most weather extremes. For the most part, in the modern era, weather itself is not going to kill off humanity. At least not for a while.
Bugs don’t have AC or the ability to grow crops. Basically tools are op as shit and allow us to adapt to practically any environment and bugs don’t have them.
Also lots of bugs are hyper specialized meaning a slight change could completely ruin their entire life plan.
In theory yes. the issue is if the environmental pressure is killing the bugs faster than the replacement generations adapt.
So if you get a generation every year with bugs, there will be adjustments every year. The question is if the pressure that is killing them is something that the bugs already have in their “tool box” of adaptations, and just have those elements breed true.
Or if it is some kind of pressure that cannot be adapted to (or is very very difficult to adapt to), like eating bug poison.
Why would the genetic adaptability of humans matter?
The worlds insects are NOT trying to survive from changes in the human genome. The issues they have are not caused by changes in human DNA.
They are trying to survive from radical shifts caused by the actions of humans that have taken place due to our technology improving and our population exploding. Both things have nothing to do with the rate of change of our DNA.
purely from an evolution standpoint yes, they would evolve the ability to adapt to issue x faster than a human but youre talking like hundreds of years vs tens of thousands of years. issues are arising faster than evolution can keep up
Yes, and they are, but we’re changing stuff so fast that they haven’t been able to catch up.
Fruit flies do, in fact, adapt quite quickly and have very short generational lifespans; they are used in experiments for that reason.
Both can be true. Some bugs don’t adapt and go extinct. Others adapt and live. Not every dinosaur adapted, but the ones that did wake me up every morning, chirping outside my window.
Adaptation is a result of mutation, and genetic mutations are random.
A human is born with a third arm not because it needs one, but because a mutation caused it to have one.
Does the human find the third arm helpful or a hindrance? If the third arm is helpful, it could lead to them having more children with a chance to also have a third arm. Over the course of generations, there’s a far-off chance that most people will wind up having have a third arm.
If the third arm is a hindrance — so much so that the human doesn’t have children — then that genetic mutation dies with it.
When an insect is born, does its body scan the environment and decide to give it an ability that will allow it to thrive? No, it’s built based on its inherited genetics, and a chance mutation may or may not help it thrive in whatever circumstances its born under.
You have to always remember, that mutations/adaptation happens in utero. No one is born and then their body decides to spontaneously grow a third eye to help it avoid their contemporary predators.
Mutation is a completely random luck of the draw, and it happens inside the womb (or inside an egg).
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