Eggs – BioQuakes

Photo Credit: digicla

Why can’t I drink alcohol but a mere fruit fly is able to, you ask? Well unless you wish for wasps to lay their eggs inside you I suggest you drop that argument.

A new article explains what is going on. Fruit flies eat a lot of yeast (which as we know from our studies breaks down sugar and in the process produces alcohol). They do this because a certain kind of wasp actually lays its’ eggs inside of a fruit fly, so that when the eggs hatch the baby wasps can eat the living fly and eventually leave the body when they are grown. Beware because things get more disgusting than that…

To prevent such malicious murder, the flies have a trick of their own. They consume so much yeast that they are considered “drunk”. The alcohol smells so bad to the wasps that not only do they choose to not lay their eggs within that particular fly, but any eggs they do lay meet a very violent end.

Here is where things get worse. In a study done by Dr. Schlenke, wasps were allowed to lay eggs in two flies. One fly was perfectly sober, and one was fed food that had 6% alcohol in it. As I’ve said, more wasps layer their eggs in the sober fly, and less in the drunk fly. However, the eggs that did get laid in the drunk fly did not meet an honorable end. Dr. Schlenke found that 65 percent of the eggs inside of the drunk fly not only died, but died because all of their tiny inside organs had shot out through their anus. At this point I wish that I was not writing about this article, but the show must go on.

It was also discovered by Dr. Schlenke that if a fly ate the alcohol ridden yeast before being violated by the wasps, it made no difference. Such a discovery lead scientists to ponder whether the flies realized the deadly wasps inside of them and so chose to eat the yeast then, in order to kill off the parasite. Further experiments with flies showed that the flies do indeed seek out the alcohol as a self medication to kill off the wasps inside of them.

Smart flies right? Can you believe that this is what fruit flies have to put up with? Or that little tiny flies can get drunk off the alcohol produced by yeast? I, for one, will take a drinking age of 21 any day instead of having tiny wasps live inside me. But thats just me, what do you think?

Photo Credit: Me

Have you ever heard of twin telepathy? Ever wished that you could communicate telepathically? Well, Australian River Turtles have their own form of telepathy. Female turtles dig a hole in the sand of a beach to lay their eggs. They then cover the hole with sand to protect against predators and leave their eggs to mature. The baby turtles mature on their own without the help of a parent, obviously they develop a special bond because the eggs wait until everyone is ready to hatch.

When the eggs are in the hole in the sand, the eggs on the bottom are colder in temperature than the eggs above them. Therefore, the eggs on top mature faster than the eggs on the bottom. However, if some eggs mature faster than others, then why do all of the eggs hatch at the same time? The answer is that they wait for each other. The turtles communicate with each other while they are still in their eggs through the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the hole. When the eggs on top are more mature, they breath more, raising the level of carbon dioxide in the hole. The increase in carbon dioxide triggers a metabolic response in the underdeveloped eggs; it speeds up their metabolism. Ricky-John Spencer in Sydney, Australia believes that this communication can be attributed to evolution because if all of the turtles hatch and head to the ocean together, they have a lesser chance of being eaten by predators. Therefore, the eggs that hatched in a batches or around the same time had a higher chance of living than the eggs that hatched at all different times.

BioQuakes

AP Biology class blog for discussing current research in Biology

Tag: Eggs

No Drinking Age for Fruit Flies!

Turtle Telepathy

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