Re: How do cockroaches or invertebrates adapt to other environments for ex. CO2

Hi Benjamin,

Has your teacher asked you to do a report on adaptations or evolution? This is not really clear in the question.

Your question has revealed a common misconception about the workings of evolution, which I am going to try to explain.

I am willing to bet that in your class there is a range of athletic ability. Some students will be able to run extremely fast and others only slowly. Now suppose a new animal appears in town called a STUDENTEATER which eats children and can run at speeds of 12mph. Any of your fellow classmates, who cannot run faster than 12mph, are going to be eaten! Now consider those faster colleagues of yours who are still alive. Did they suddenly increase their running ability when the studenteater came to town or could they run that fast beforehand?

None of the students still alive actually adapted to the new creature. They were already equipped with the right muscles.

Carbon dioxide is poisonous to many creatures. Only those cockroaches who are already equipped will survive to produce offspring in the next generation. If the cockroaches do not possess an adaptation that allows them to survive the level of carbon dioxide that you expose them to, they will all die. Your question assumes that creatures naturally possess the equipment to deal with changing environmental conditions. I am afraid that this is often not the case. Even allowing for the increase in greenhouse gases, I doubt the range of carbon dioxide levels ever made a direct difference to cockroaches.

In all honesty, I think the title of your report is too ambiguous and too broad ranging. I would go back to your teacher for some advice on how to make your report more focussed and manageable.

1) Chose one organism (invertebrates is simply too large a range)
2) Purposely choose an example for which there is a lot of information
3) Decide whether your report is about how animals evolve; or an animal's adaptations, which enable it to survive and prosper in a particular environment.

A report on adaptations to an environment is considerably easier to write:

a) Write about the environment
b) Write about the natural history of the organism
c) Write about the adaptations which enable the organism to maintain its lifestyle in the given environmental conditions.

I hope this is of some help to you.

Richard Kingsley