Here’s a great example of evolution in action.
A previously unknown population of vampire moths has been found in Siberia. And in a twist worthy of a Halloween horror movie, entomologists say the bloodsuckers may have evolved from a purely fruit-eating species.
Entomologists working in Russia discovered a species of moths that actually feed on blood. Most people are familiar with mosquitoes, blackflies and generally the fly type creatures. However, blood feeding is pretty common in other orders as well, such as the hemiptera, anoplura and even siphonoptera (fleas…which are related to scorpionflies). So how did it evolve?
How did this particular mechanism evolve?
Many insects feed on blood and there exist many different mechanisms on how they do this.
You can see the mouthparts of the stable fly Stomoxys calcitrans here. As you can see, it’s just a slight modification of the classic dipteran M. domestica mouthparts. In S. calcitrans (and also the Tabanidae, horseflies) the fly creates a small wound by shredding peircing it’s host’s skin with it’s mandibles and then sucks it up using sponging mouthparts while blood seeps from the wound. Longer mouthparts mean deeper wounds. Deeper wounds mean more blood. Mosquito mouthparts are even more highly modified but still use the same layout, mandibles to peirce the skin and a modified labrum to suck the blood up. They’ve evolved to be a bit more stealthy, injecting painkillers with their saliva and such. Not all parts have to be in place at once.
Insects need salt to survive. One way to get this is by lapping it up off the skin of mammals…if you’ve ever had a housefly land on you, this is probably what it’s doing. Male butterflies do the same thing. If you ever pass through a group of them and have one land on you, watch what it does. You’ll see it’s probocis uncoil and touch your skin. It’s picking up salt.
Butterflies live on sugary liquids. Most get them from flowers, but some have adapted to actually peirce the skin of fruit to get the sugary liquid inside. From here, it’s easy to see how this example of convergeant evolution occurred.
Filed under: Evolutionary Biology, General Entomology Tagged: | Diptera, entomology, evolution, Lepidoptera
Are you sure that they came into being by evolutionary process? Were you there when it happened? Do you have samples of them changing into one kind of species to another. How can you prove something scientifically if it happened only once esp. if no one was there to see it happen. Are you sure that God didn’t create everything? I’d rather believe in a God who created us and takes interest in our personal lives. Who wouldn’t want to put our lives into the hands of someone we totally trust and not be able to worry.
The theory of Evolution is just that. A theory. Adaption is different from a species just forming, such as in the hopeful monsters theory. A species adapting does not prove that the THEORY of Evolution is real.
Different thoughts? Please, by all means reply.
Darwin himself even rejected his theories before he died. What does that say about evolution?