The limitations of Sexual Selection

Hi Slevesque,I just got done reading about quiet crickets. On the island of Kauai in Hawaii there is a population of crickets that are undergoing rapid change it seems for several reasons, predation and a population bottleneck.

quote:

---

Quick evolution leads to quiet crickets
December 2006, updates added June 2008 and June 2011

​

Attack of the flesh-eating parasitoid maggots!! Mutant mute crickets run rampant in tropical paradise!! The headlines may sound like a trailer for a cheap horror flick but in fact, these sensationalist sound bites accurately describe the situation on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The "flesh-eating parasitoid maggots" are the offspring of the fly, Ormia ochracea, which invaded Hawaii from North America, and the mutant crickets are the flies' would-be victims. The flies follow the chirps of a calling cricket and then deposit a smattering of wriggling maggots onto the cricket's back. The maggots burrow into the cricket, and emerge, much fatter, a week later killing the cricket in the process. But this fall, biologists Marlene Zuk, John Rotenberry, and Robin Tinghitella announced a breakdown in business-as-usual in this gruesome interaction: in just a few years, the crickets of Kauai have evolved a strategy to avoid becoming a maggot's lunch but the strategy comes at a cost...

---

quote:

---

However crickets got to Hawaii, it's clear that there weren't very many of them when they arrived. The low level of genetic variation in Hawaiian populations today strongly suggests that these crickets have experienced a population bottleneck a reduction in population size, which probably occurred when small groups of crickets invaded a new island. This small starting population size could have contributed to the spread of the silent wing mutation today. When population size is small, selection may favor females that aren't very choosy about their mates. After all, when there are only a few males to choose from, a picky female may not mate at all! If this is the case if female crickets on Hawaii evolved to be less choosy early on, and as described in the news update above, it seems they did it would have made it easier for the silent wing mutation to spread through the population. Unfussy females would accept silent partners and pass the silent gene on to their offspring.

---

I thought i would share this as it seems to be a perfect example of the the "guppy experiment" taking place in the real world. Pressure from a population bottleneck and predation have caused a rapid change in this group of crickets.I guess one of the questions is whether this change is due to the predation or the bottleneck. I would suspect it is both.Edited by fearandloathing, : No reason given.Edited by fearandloathing, : No reason given.

---

"I hate to advocate the use of drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they always worked for me." - Hunter S. ThompsonAd astra per asperaNihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione.