Okay, so Boric Acid seems about the best way to conquer the mighty cockroach. And it’s been used for over 100 years. But can we assume, yea, fear, the day will come when the bug will evolve, or ‘re-create’ not to offend any religion, so that it becomes immune to the powder? Certainly this is just a big ‘what if’ but has boric acid become any less effective than 100 years ago? Even so, hopefully this will just be a problem for our great great great…great great grandchildren.
Generally creatures do not form immunity to chemical burns. It is poisons they form immunity to. This is similar to how bleach continues to kill bacteria. The Chemicals in question cause external damage. At least that is how I have seen it explained.
Jim
Right. The situation presented is like saying that humans will become immune to fire someday. While we have in some ways like learning how to make fire retardant clothing, it would take some massive re engineering before our bodies are very resistant to fire at all and changes made to resist fire would cause other problems. Evolution doesn’t tend to do all that well in the face of those kinds of threats. It would take whole systems re-engineering built to face one type of threat and it doesn’t really work that way.
Mild Hijack:
Is boric acid useful for cooking meth or some other such illeagle activity?
10-15 years ago you could buy cheap cardboard boxes of it at any hardware store. Last time I went to buy some I went 5 places before finally finding an overpriced, small plastic squeeze bottle of the stuff.
No. It’s a cockroach conspiracy to limit its use. That’s how they’ve evoloved in response to Boric Aicd. 
Well, isn’t a species evolving into another an example of “massive systems re-engineering”? Bats and mice are rather similar - except that one can fly and the other can’t.
I doubt you can rule out anything except the inherently impossible - a species can’t evolve to travel faster-than-light. But apart from that, all evolutionary adaptation is equally likely (or, more properly, unlikely).
Regards,
Shodan
Only superficially. Bats did not, however, evolve from mice (or any other rodent); the German language aside, bats are not merely “flying mice”.
Some mutations are more likely than others. Thus, some adaptations are more likely than others. It is far more likely to reduce the number of phalanges from an ancestral state than to acquire new ones, for example (indeed, it may not even be possible to acquire new ones). It is more likely that cockroaches will adapt to poisons than to evolve mechanisms to prevent chemical burns. Evolutionary constraints tend to limit the available evolutionary paths a population can take, rending some possibilites more possible than others.
You blew it right there at the end. Adaptation by biological species is not magical. Each specific adaptation is likely based on many factors, including: the number of genetic expressions which must change, the total number of generational steps that are necessary to effect the entire change, and the absence of survival negative pressure for each generational step. There are also random factors, not subject to estimate.
Radical changes in a species are less likely than minor ones. Highly specific adaptation is likely only in highly specific environments, and dependent upon them. Also, there are chemical factors which alter the likelihood of any particular change in DNA with respect to another. In addition, the pragmatic results of any intermediate form will have survival significance along the way.
So, while moving at the speed of light is an upper limit, there are intermediate consequences, such as moving faster than the speed of sound that evolution cannot predict, and the chance of the coincidence in body structure being present in the species with the propulsive systems necessary is less likely than many evolutionary adaptations.
Tris
Absolutely not. Speciation in general represents a rather minor change in genetics.
The kind of “massive systems re-engineering” we are talking about here would be of a much greater magnitude than that.
However, the exteremely improbable might as well be impossible.
This is utter nonsense. Some adaptations and evolutionary changes are vastly more feasible and probable than others. And the possibility of particular changes depends on your starting point.
Depends on the species under comparision, ISTM. Closely related species, no doubt you’re right. But the differences between the electric eel and a lion seem to be much more on the order of a massive re-engineering.
I thought evolution was random. This sounds a lot more like intelligent design.
Do you believe an evolved higher level of resistance to boric acid burns is impossible?
Regards,
Shodan
Didn’t you read your own post? You specifically said “one species evolving into another.” Or do you actually beleive that an electric eel could somehow evolve directly into a lion?
Shodan, if you seriously think “evolution is random,” then you know absolutely nothing about the subject and shouldn’t be posting on it in GQ. Not even mutations are random; some are more probable than others. (Mutations, however, may be regarded as random as to whether or not they will have a positive or negative effect on a survival, although the vast majority or mutations are in fact detrimental.) Evolution itself most certainly is not random. And of course this has nothing at all to do with intelligent design, but rather with natural selection.
Not impossible, but very unlikely, for the reasons already stated.
Shodan, what is your point in all this? Are you simply stating that there is a very small chance that given enough time, roaches might evolve into a creature that is not affected by Boric Acid or are you trying to work your way to some other point?
If the first, the chance is vanishingly small, even with millions of years.
If the second, could you please just get to your point and we will ask for the thread to migrate to GD.
Jim
This puzzles me. Can you explain in more detail? Since organism with phalanges evolved from organism w/o them, it must be possible to acquire new ones. And isn’t the sexdactyl mutation fairly common (as mutations go) in humans?
It’s possible, it just seems to be quite difficult for tetrapod vertebrates to do. About the only ones to have managed it are some secondarily aquatic forms, such as ichthyosaurs and cetaceans.
Athough early tetrapods had quite variable numbers of phalanges (and digits as well), this character stabilized hundreds of millions of years ago. The developmental programs governing it now seem to be so ingrained they are rather difficult to change.
Well, let’s look at mammals. How many mammal species have reduced digits? It is very common, some species have only 1 digit, some have only 2, lots have 3 or 4. And of course there are species that retain the ancestral 5. But how many mammal species have 6 digits? There are plenty of mutant polydactyl cats out there, there are polydactyl humans, but are there any species where polydactyly is the norm? As far as I know there are none, even in marine mammals.
Which suggests that there is some sort of one-way ratchet that allows digits to be lost but not multiplied. Pathways that lead to loss of an organ are much simpler developmentally than pathways that lead to duplication of an organ.
I’d say that depends on the organ and the organism. Arthropods certainly have a plethora of added “organs” that led to seemingly diverse body plans that are in reality just copies of the same part multiple times.
The part about “directly” is something you put in. A “massive re-engineering” is possible, as the example of a lion and an electric eel who have a common ancestor population (a very remote one).
So would be every other “massive system re-engineering”.
That’s what I meant by evolution being “random”.
And I wasn’t suggesting that evolution is an unlikely theory, but that most mutations are detrimental. It is more likely that a given species would become extinct than that it would undergo radical mutation amounting to a complete re-engineering. This is especially so since the more common mutations (I appreciate the correction, Colibri, although not the spirit in which some of it was given - is it possible to post anything about evolution without you lashing out as if I were a creationist?) do not lead to massive re-engineering changes.
Regards,
Shodan
The issue is simply that poisons are such a heavy hammer that in order to develop an immunity, the organism’s metabolism would have to have such a drastic change to survive, that it probably would fail in other ways.
Consider alcohol. It is poisonous in sufficient dosages to most life. Then consider yeast: it’s been going along for millions of years producing alcohol as a waste product. And once the medium gets up to the sufficient level, the yeast dies. No immunity to alcohol in a simple creature (e.g., more likely to evolve – even creationists give lip service to “microevolution”) that has been killing itself for millions of years. The effect of alcohol on yeast has not evolved any alcohol-resistant yeast because high concentrations create so much disruption that the yeast cells that they cannot survive.
It’s different with antibiotics; they kill by making subtle changes in the way the bacterial cells work. When bacteria manage to survive these changes, you get antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But alcohol is different – there’s nothing subtle about it, and its very nature in inimical to life.
Similarly, Boric Acid is caustic. If it reaches the right concentration, it’s causing massive physical damage to the roach. It’s like asking if a roach might evolve that it can survive being hit with a hammer. Any survival is merely due to the fact the hammer didn’t hit him squarely, not to any inherent traits of the roach. While you may have individual variations in how much Boric Acid the roach can tolerate, but that tolerence would be primarily mechanical (i.e., a thicker skin, perhaps) But there is always a level that’s too high for any roach to survive, and if it passes its tolerance along, it’s not enough to protect it from the right concentration.
Your original post was about “one species evolving into another,” that is, speciation. I pointed out that this was a relatively minor change. You then brought in the case of an electric eel and a lion, as if this had something to do with my point.
Yes, that’s why they are rare. But as has already been pointed out to you, neither the case of bat vs. mouse nor electric eel vs. lion is as great a “massive system re-engineering” in the same sense as evolving resistance to a caustic chemical such as boric acid.
This makes no sense whatsoever.
You said nothing about mutations at all.
“Massive re-engineering changes” do not not happen via single radical mutations in any case. They happen by the accumulation of small mutations, usually over a period of millions of years.
Whether or not you are a creationist is irrelevant. You can post about evolution all you want, as long as the statements you make are accurate. You are clearly almost completely ignorant on the whole subject of evolution, on what role mutation plays in evolutionary change, and on how evolutionary change takes place in general. I get particularly irritated when someone who knows almost nothing about a subject (whether evolution or anything else) insists on inserting uniformed opinions in GQ. You just end up wasting everyone’s time. What Exit?, Shagnasty, Darwin’s Finch, Lemur866, Triskadecamus and RealityChuck have all made factual contributions to this thread. You have so far contributed nothing but misconceptions and misinformation. I suggest you desist.
This is interesting, but I think in some ways it supports the other idea. With arthropods each segment has a characteristic modification of the limb into various structure…mouthparts, legs, antennae, etc. And while the number of segments and the use of each segment varies at the higher taxonomic levels when you get down to lower levels it is very stereotyped. So all insects have 6 and only 6 legs, the mouthparts might be highly modified but they are always the same mouthparts, all decapods have–ehem–10 legs, etc.
So whether an insect mouthpart is a sucking tube or a chewer or a sponge or a borer or whatever, the various insect species always have the same segments producing mouthparts, the same ones producing legs, the same ones producing antennae.