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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 09/23/2006 : 03:11:28
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14961305/
Facinating stuff.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Randy
SFN Regular
USA
1990 Posts |
Posted - 09/23/2006 : 03:47:16 [Permalink]
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| Jiminy Crickets! |
"We are all connected; to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically."
"So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson |
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JohnOAS
SFN Regular
Australia
800 Posts |
Posted - 09/24/2006 : 20:04:51 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dude
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14961305/
Facinating stuff.
Very cool.
I'm left wondering if this trend will ultimately lead to their demise, albeit much more slowly. Perhaps the serenading gene is still present, but only activated under certain developmental conditions, or maybe the predators will evolve to find other, more abundant prey thus allowing the few remaining serenaders (I'm fairly certain that's not a word) to do their job.
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John's just this guy, you know. |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 09/25/2006 : 00:08:23 [Permalink]
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It is just as likely, John, that another adaptation will occur allowing the cricket mates to find each other in some different way. It only takes a few successes with rapidly reproducing creatures. The offspring inherit the gene and the competition of those without it is nil.
Then it's the flies turn to adapt and so it goes. |
| Edited by - beskeptigal on 09/25/2006 00:08:39 |
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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2006 : 23:37:33 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
It is just as likely, John, that another adaptation will occur allowing the cricket mates to find each other in some different way. It only takes a few successes with rapidly reproducing creatures. The offspring inherit the gene and the competition of those without it is nil.
Then it's the flies turn to adapt and so it goes.
They have another strategy - the silent males congretate around the few remaining singers. Dr. Marlene Zuk (MP3 Format) thinks they could gradually go extinct or the population of "singers" may go into a stable oscillation since the few remaining singers will have much better mating success. |
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
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Starman
SFN Regular
Sweden
1613 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2006 : 00:18:00 [Permalink]
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I'll will summarize what the creationist answers will be:
Loss of information! Devolution! No new information! Still a cricket! Only micro evolution! All this is caused by Adam eating fruit all those years ago! You will burn in Hell!
Later the crickets might lose the information on how to not produce the song.
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"Any religion that makes a form of torture into an icon that they worship seems to me a pretty sick sort of religion quite honestly"
-- Terry Jones |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2006 : 02:03:32 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Ghost_Skeptic
quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
It is just as likely, John, that another adaptation will occur allowing the cricket mates to find each other in some different way. It only takes a few successes with rapidly reproducing creatures. The offspring inherit the gene and the competition of those without it is nil.
Then it's the flies turn to adapt and so it goes.
They have another strategy - the silent males congretate around the few remaining singers. Dr. Marlene Zuk (MP3 Format) thinks they could gradually go extinct or the population of "singers" may go into a stable oscillation since the few remaining singers will have much better mating success.
Seems like freeloading off the remaining singing "sucker" crickets will only pay off until all those saps get eaten.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 10/06/2006 03:40:12 |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2006 : 04:17:17 [Permalink]
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In due course, the crickets will develope another courting stratedgy, possibly pheromones, possibly a different song. And the parasitic flies will adapt, likely after a considerable population drop-off of their own. They might even change hosts. This is not speciation nor even leading up to it, but a simple adaptation to a change in enviornment. I think that the flies were too successful and their population was out-running the supply of male crickets, and nature will put a stop to that sort of thing, one way or another.
Good article. It's the first I've heard of such selective attacks on crickets.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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