Dr. Palmer
I found this article on worms building up pesticide resistance. I wonder if we are seeing evolution working at incredible speed, or an ability of the worms to protect themselves.
http://www.theecologist.org/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=2034
Here's my input: This phenomenon is not due to random mutations following the exposure to the pesticide, which the writers of this article are implying allows for these nematodes to survive. Rather, evolution is a population effect, or a change in the overall dynamics of the population. Those nematodes that did not have that special "je ne sais quoi" certainly died off, leaving a greater percentage of nematodes that were better equipped to survive and reproduce. Hopefully this helps.
Posts
Since there are millions of nematodes in a squarefoot of dirt and millions of cultivated acres of farmland in the U.S. alone I think that something along these lines is expected.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious what sort of chemical pathway exapation options are open for an organism with not even protonephridia. I mean, do they have some ability to combine toxins with things like uric acid? Or are they just oxidizing these things away with peroxisomes? Hmmm.
I really don't know enough biochemistry. I haven't even taken intro chem