September 3- Adaptations

This week in lectures, we went over adaptations. More importantly, how some adaptations occur on the micro scale. Micro-evolution is an evolutionary change within a species or group of organism over a SHORT period of time.  

One really fantastic example of adaptations on a micro scale is the Soapberry bug. Or as Dr. Wiggins likes to call them, "butt bugs." 

These bugs have stake in many places worldwide- From Oklahoma to Florida. 
The cool thing about these bugs are, they used to have a long beak. This long beak was used to feed on large seed pods that were round with a larger diameter. Because of this, only soapberry bugs with the long beak could feed off this and the soapberry bugs with short beaks weren't able to. This inhibited their survival and therefore couldn't pass on their genomes. 

But miraculously, an invasive plant🍃 species was introduced to the Florida area in the 1970's. This plant just so happened to produce small seedpods. (just what the short beaked soapberry bugs needed). This meant that having a long beak was no longer a requirement for survival. Now, it was even better to have the short beak. 

In LESS than 50 years, the Soapberry bugs were able to adapt and evolve to having shorter beaks by passing on this short beak genome. This only taking about 50 years is what establishes this on the Micro scale. 

This is so crazy!! Nature is so cool.