Re:Body-painting protects against bloodsucking insects
by your-nanny on Sunday January 20, 2019 @10:01PM
(#18957296)
we tend to underestimate the evolutionary impact of parasites and disease. Mosquitos are a major vector; could very well be the mosquitos
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Body-painting protects against bloodsucking insects
by londons_explore on Monday January 21, 2019 @04:21AM
(#18958953)
I can't imagine it would take long for mosquitoes to evolve to specifically gravitate towards stripes...
Re:Body-painting protects against bloodsucking insects
by your-nanny on Monday January 21, 2019 @02:45PM
(#18962982)
Well it's hard to know what fitness terrain lay between the present phenotype and that one, so it's necessarily obvious bthat such an adaptation would occur. Nor is it obvious that stripe attraction is more adaptive. Could be hidden costs I'm not cognizant of. In any case, we were speaking of the zevras adaptation, not the mosquito's. If true that mosquitos are not attracted to striped things, it doesn't matter why zebras have stripes. What matters is the cost to mosquitoes presently incurred by missing out on all that zebra. Indeed, one wonders why mosquitos haven't adapted to the zebras stripes already...
Re:Body-painting protects against bloodsucking insects
by PavlikPaja on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @12:26PM
(#18980297)
It may be hard for their tiny brains to distinguish stripes from other things that are not animals.