Is it a wasp?

 

My son saw this insect and wanted to know what it was. I took one look and said, "wasp." I took a closer look and started to have doubts. I did some searching and found that this is a black soldier fly, aka a privy fly. They are known to hang out around bathrooms, port-a-potties and places with animal waste. They are also known for being confused with wasps. There are things you can look for to tell the difference. 

The head

The head of a fly and the head of a wasp are slightly different. Flies have larger head to body ratio than wasps. The wasp head looks more sleek, while the fly has these large bulky eyes. The first link below is a fly head, the second is a wasp head. 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Musca_domestica_Portrait.jpg

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Face_of_a_Southern_Yellowjacket_Queen_(Vespula_squamosa).jpg

The halteres

Another feature that makes it seem this is a fly is the number of wings it has. This specimen has a single set if wings, which can be inferred from the presence of a haltere (a stub of a wing) that is below the folded wings. Wasps have two sets of wings and no halteres. Flies have a single set of wings and a set of halteres (a vestigial structure of their double-pair-of-wings evolutionary past. 

The real final evidence that convinced me was how much this guy (or gal, though I suspect this was the male because there was a larger specimen three feet up from this one) looked like the pictures from this website: http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/livestock/black_soldier_fly.htm .

I had a great time trying to puzzle this one out. It's a great example of biomimicry. 

Extra credit: explain why biomimicry is beneficial to a species and give examples. 

I knew it! A clone army.

I found this article. Read it. A clone army... of clams.

This is a very special case where an organism clones itself using parts normally used for sexual reproduction. This clam has both male and female parts (a hermaphrodite). The clam fertilizes its own egg with its own sperm. Now if this were it, the clam would simply be self-fertilizing, similar to some flowering plants. The mix of genes from egg and sperm would be producing different combinations of genes in the offspring. In other words, they would not be clones.

To get around this, the clam ejects the eggs genes. So now we have the sperms genes only in this fertilized egg. Only sperm genes get passed on. This cuts down the variety of genes, but is still not producing genetically identical clones. When sperm are made, there is genetic recombination that goes on in the process. This creates combinations that make each sperm genetically unique. Is this genetic recombination happening in these clams?

Another way that these clams get new gene combinations is by capturing genes from other species of clam. The process requires the clam to first fertilize another species' egg (no barriers against this?) and then eject the other species' genes. Sometimes, however, some of the genes are thought to be kept and integrated into the clam genome. New genes, hurray!

I have two questions about this clam and will give extra credit if anyone can find the answer:

1. What is happening during meiosis when this clam makes sperm, is there genetic recombination (crossing-over)?

2. How does the clam deal with the problem of conserving (keeping) the same number of chromosomes (haploid sperm to diploid zygote) if they are getting rid of the egg genes every time?

Happy Hunting!

Convergent evolution

Lizard fossil provides missing link to show body shapes of snakes and limbless lizards evolved independently

We have talked about convergent evolution and here is another example. There are snakes and then there are legless lizards. Some thought they were closely related since they are both legless, but this new evidence shows that having no legs has evolved in these two groups independently. How can this occur? How is this an example of convergent evolution?

What is to thank for the evolution of the mammal brain? Thank the fact that you smell!

We've been talking a lot about evolution and there has been a little discussion as to brain evolution. New research has been done to show that mammal brains probably evolved for better smelling ability. They say that the smell centers of the brain evolved first. So, feel good about the fact that you all smell and that the history of you smelling (in your distant evolutionary past) has allowed for your well-evolved brain!

Earliest mammals sniffed their way to smarts