PillBug Evolution Expirement

[kclo4x]

Alright, first off since im a newbie to this seemingly wonderful biology forum i want to say that i do know selective breeding and evolution take a hella long time even if your very selective and it is hard to do, and keep from inbreeding

but anyways, i want to breed pillbugs or Armadillidium vulgare
to be able to live under water, now they already have gills and at best i got 1 to live underwater for 10hours!
and thats amazing IMO
because it was in tap water, and i belive they most likely originated from the ocean, or some other huge salty water mass

obviously they are not dieing from suffocation, after all one lasted ten hours.
so its either from absorbing to much water, and dieing from that, or something completely different!

anyways, i want to help point there breeding habits, eating habits and want to be on land, in the right direction.

i would love for seggestions!
also other possible things i could do to help them live longer under water.

Right now i am really hoping i can create a habitat that makes them want to live under water rather then on land.. how do you guys recommend i do this?


they are related to craps and shrimp, btw
and obviously the giant isopod


once again, i already kinda realize this is near impossible, well for at least the time i plan to put into this haha
but any helpful ideas i would love to hear

[supersport]

very interesting....are you seeing any morphological changes?

[kclo4x]

Just started so of course not! haha

But they did have babys, so now i have a lot

but my question is how can i create an environment that would make them live under water with natural selection

a tank with half water, half land
better food in the water and on the water
dry and little food on the land
So the ones who choose to never go into the water, simply die and the ones that like to go under water live and reproduce, and the more they go under water the healthier they are

so eventually the instincts to go into water are now dominant *is that the right way of use for the word dominant?*
and so they live underwater
and then eventually they have babies underwater, and learn how to mate and do all that stuff in the same way.. by "natural" selection

Anyways i want help
i would love any ideas seggestions, problems in my idea pointed out
thanks bye

*Damnn!!!! i had a better and more extensive write up, but it vanished haha

[mith]

Make them live longer by artificial selection? You might need something with shorter lifespans...

[kclo4x]

Not live longer. just make it so the ones who are willing to go into water will live
ones who don't die

[mith]

So think about what you're doing.

Is it comparable to training someone to swim or dive for longer periods or are you breeding for better swimmers/divers?

One of them is genetic, the other one is physiological.

[AstusAleator]

Study design is fun. As you said at the beginning of your post, this will probably take much longer than the timeframe you're willing to devote. And... there's a chance it may never happen even if you spend a thousand years on it.

The issue is really quite complex. There are an intense amount of variables to be considered. I would suggest you do some intensive research into pillbug morphology, genetics, life-history, and evolution.

It looks like you have some knowledge of evolutionary processes but you might want to make sure you concretely understand them before undertaking this, or even writing up a procedure. As mith mentioned, you need to distinguish between behavioral changes and genetic changes. Even if you can breed a pillbug that LOVES living in the water 24/7, its biology might not allow that. I have my doubts as to whether the pillbugs can really retro-adapt back to aquatic environments.

So, my advice is research. research research research.


Aside from that... just my personal brainstorm on the matter (without research) would be:
You would need a pretty large population with plenty of genetic variability to start with. So if what you have right now is one hatch from a single set of parents, you might not even have enough diversity to accomplish anything.
Get a huge population, and make the conditions such that slightly (or more than slightly) more individuals die than are born to begin with. If the population gets below a certain level, and you don't notice any individuals or families competing better than others, you might need to add more pillbugs. keep food levels constant at their designated locations though. To make such high mortality rates, you might introduce a predator on the land portion..? The idea behind this is that you're trying to select for an attribute that doesn't necessarily exist, genetically, in these bugs. So, by increasing your population, you're increasing the chance that (if it does exist) one of your individuals will posess a desired genetic trait, or that a favorable mutation or allele expression will occur. Still, it's an evolutionary crap-shoot imho ;D.

As far as distributing the food, your idea of having little poor-quality food on land, and more high-quality food in the water isn't bad. Perhaps make gradations within the water, having better food further into the water so that individuals who can forage further into the water eat better. But, if you're just using a small aquarium for this, the distance might be negligible anyway.

Again, I'd suggest considering adding a predator on the land, or at least a competitor (but it would have to be something that can't live or function in the water).

You're going to need to consider the ecology of your tank as well. How are nutrients going to be redistributed, or are they? Are you going to clean the tank occasionally? Are there other neutral species of bug, plant, or plankton you could use as a buffer to toxins etc?



ENDING THOUGHT: Look up the difference between acclimation and acclimatization. I think what you want from your study is acclimatization, but you're trying to set up a system that would acclimate.

I dunno.. anyway, have fun.

[kclo4x]

So think about what you're doing.

Is it comparable to training someone to swim or dive for longer periods or are you breeding for better swimmers/divers?

One of them is genetic, the other one is physiological.

Can bugs learn?
i think anything would be genetics

[kclo4x]

Oh btw AstusAleator, thank you very much for your awesome reply

i will research some stuff

[AstusAleator]

Of course bugs can learn. They aren't just hard-wired to do one thing, or they'd never survive. Now they might not be doing calculus in their head...

If your pillbugs could not modify their behavior, then you'd have to just dump a bunch of them in the water until a few survived. That would be the only way. Otherwise, they would never learn to venture into the water, or stay in the water for any length of time.

The point where the behavioral changes and genetic changes seperates is here:
The pillbugs that behaviorally adapt to spend more time in the water might not be physiologically (genetically) adapted to spend as much time in the water as they like. The ones that are better adapted to water (better genes) will compete better and survive longer, having more children.

so the behavioral modifications will lend themselves to the eventual (if it works) genetic shift. OR they'll all just die

Think about it this way
A group of humans one day decided they were going to become aquatic mammals and developed a colony at the waters edge. Every day they would spend 99.9% of their time in the water. They learned how to hold their breath underwater for 3 minutes! They could swim almost as fast as any fish. They could even catch food with their bare hands, enough food to survive solely in the water.

Just because they learned to succeed in the water, doesn't mean they've adapted genetically. Even if they have children and their children learn to live in the water, like them, that still isn't an indication of genetic change. Get my drift?

Of course this is a somewhat unlikely scenario because, as far as I know, they'd die off pretty quickly if they spent 99% of their time in the water, what with temperature, exposure, osmotic imablances, etc.

[Darby]

One fast-and-sloppy approach is to take all of your specimens, submerge them, and when some fraction has drowned, take the remainder as your breeding pool. Breed and repeat. You may not wind up with a population that WANTS to be underwater, but you will be selecting for greater and greater tolerance of it.

[kclo4x]

Hmmm..
i don't think a bug has a memory like if you walk in the sun you get hot
i think what they do is walk in the sun, realize they are hot and go back to were they came from... or randomly walk around till they find some shade or something well i dont know

and i think they can adapt because they do have gills... they will probably just need to get bigger and better gills and i plan on taking around 400pill bugs or something and drowning 350 of them, leaving 50 to breed and i would imagine that would help them get bigger gills along with osmosis junk... because i honestly think thats what they are dieing from not suffocation... i mean 10 hours is a long time to live underwater for not being able to breath... but then again so is 10 minutes and one lived in olive oil for that long haha


So after killing most of then you get a water resistant strain, make a habitat that kills off ones that refuse to go into the water

and now you have them water liking, and able to live in water
the problems would be eating a breeding, and that could be taken care of i believe