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Stick insects keep evolving to have the same unknown body plans over and over again , scientist have happen upon . This evolutionary blueprint has enabled research worker to predict the critter ' next developments .
Researchers describe just 20 distinct body types that hundreds of different reefer insect specie have severally develop . These body types include the " tree lobster , " which have lobster - similar feature film ; the " barque huggers , " which coalesce in with a tree diagram ; and the " large - headed sticks , " which have monumental jaw or mandibles .
A thorny devil stick insect.
The same body types keep popping up all across the planet because many stick dirt ball parentage have colonized similar surroundings and require the same features to hold up . These similarities enable investigator to predict stick insect phylogeny , even when the critter have develop severally from one another for decade of millions of age , according to the new study published Monday ( Dec. 23 ) in the journalPNAS .
" What we ’re really diving into here is the predictability of evolution , " subject field first authorRomain Boisseau , a postdoctoral researcher contemplate stick insect evolution at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland , differentiate Live Science . " If you have a interchangeable lineage that invades a very like environment you actually can foretell where it ’s going to go . "
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A giant prickly stick insect (Extatosoma tiaratum).
When different organisms evolve standardized traits , it ’s calledconvergent evolution . Previous inquiry has highlighted a few examples of convergent development in stick insects . For case , a 2008 study issue in the journalProceedings of the Royal Society Bfound that Australia ’s Lord Howe Island joint insect ( Dryococelus australis ) — oncethought to be nonextant — severally evolved the same " Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree lobster " shape as New Guinea ’s thorny devil stick insects ( Eurycantha ) .
However , Boisseau note that nobody had conduct a large - graduated table study of convergent evolution across multiple dissimilar stick insect line of descent . To read how rough-cut convergent evolution was , the team measured and compared features from 1,359 stick worm across 212 species .
Boisseau and his fellow found that 20 body plans — out of a total of 21 — had evolved at least double in unlike regions , and that a liberal stick - like appearance had evolved at least 10 disjoined times .
" In all these country of the man it calculate like many different body forms repeatedly evolve severally , " Boisseau read .
Stick insect camouflage
Habitat was a key factor in the evolution of the body plans . Boisseau noted that joystick insects apply camo as their principal line of defense against predators , so when the predator and the habitat are similar , the same variety of camouflage is needed to survive .
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The team also looked at how closely related the different stick worm were . A pattern emerged : bind louse with the same body plan shared an antecedent , even though that ancestor looked all different . In other actor’s line , the stick dirt ball followed standardized evolutionary paths once they were separated from one another .
" They tend to basically follow the same flight , " Boisseau said . " That ’s probably come to to the fact that they ’re genetically more standardized . It ’s potentially the same genes or the same mechanisms that are re - employed in these closely related species . "
Boisseau and his fellow worker will now front more closely at the genetics of peg insects to learn what tug convergent phylogeny at the molecular story .
