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Remastering your ants


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#1 Offline Lisberg - Posted April 17 2019 - 11:57 AM

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This might sound like some crazy sci-fi [censored] but...

When i was a postgraduate, i met this woman who wrote her doctoral dissertation in the affect of insects living in a more oxygen rich environment. 
Her findings was, that some beetle with a quick reproduction rate grew 15% over 20 generations, with 55% oxygen in the air. 

Now, i was wondering, if anyone of you ever tried to enhance the size of your ants, by introducing a more oxygen rich atmosphere?


Edited by Lisberg, April 17 2019 - 11:58 AM.

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#2 Offline Serafine - Posted April 17 2019 - 12:13 PM

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That would only work over several generations and most ants have a generation cycle of (at best) 3-5 years - 20 generations would be around 60 years.

Edited by Serafine, April 17 2019 - 12:13 PM.

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#3 Offline Lisberg - Posted April 17 2019 - 12:23 PM

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Are you sure? Since ants have a queen who lays all the eggs, my hypothesis that you would see an increase of size over time, with the same queen ?



#4 Offline Lisberg - Posted April 17 2019 - 12:25 PM

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Wait... i see the flaw in my hypothesis.

 

unless... the oxygen/Growth effect isn't a fact of genes, but fully environmental, that affects the eggs and onward in the development. 


Edited by Lisberg, April 17 2019 - 12:26 PM.


#5 Offline drtrmiller - Posted April 17 2019 - 12:54 PM

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Insects got smaller because only smaller insects survived the less oxygen-rich environments after the late Carboniferous and early Permian periods.  And keep in mind all these biological and environmental changes occurred in tandem over many tens of millions of years, and more importantly, about 200 million years before the appearance of modern day ants.

 

While increased oxygen levels would permit larger insects to survive, it would still take countless generations of sexual reproduction for those less prevalent genes to reappear, and then the insect would still need to survive other possible threats in the current world.

 

And because reproduction of Formicidae is so slow—with most queen ants mating only once and then living and releasing sexual offspring for decades in many cases—that is why it would eons for any genetic mutations or dormant genes to become expressed in ants, compared to other insects with much faster reproductive cycles and shorter adult life spans, like the beetles you mentioned.


Edited by drtrmiller, April 17 2019 - 1:34 PM.

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