Emerald cockroach wasp - Reproductive behavior and life cycle

Suppose you have two variations of a gene; one produces larvae that prefer the taste of a vital organ, and eat that one first. The other variation prefers the taste of a less important organ, eating that first and eating the important organ only when it has exhausted its preferred option. If the second one is on average 5% more likely to complete its growing before the roach dies and its food supply rots, the second variation is likely to displace the first.

Why would larvae eat only one organ at a time in the order of taste preference in the first place? Well if two variations of a gene exist, and one produces larvae that are not picky and damage many organs while feeding, while another produces larvae that are picky and thereby confine their damage to.one organ at a time, then if the second behavior is more successful it will begin to replace the first.

The central.message of modern Darwinism is the accumulation of small changes can lead to big evolutions. Obviously I cannot say what the exact mechanism of this instance was but what I gave are examples of the types of incremental changes that may have contributed. Your incredulity is based on a straw man argument: you ask how does the animal know what the right order is, as if that had to come all at once ex nihilo.

The comment thread on this article is over 200 posts. Mostly a heated creationist vs evolunist debate, but there is some interesting reading in there. It is hard not to ponder how such a complex set of behaviors came to be through natural selection alone. However, one comment that I found particularly on point is posted below:

"I have a suggestion for how this evolved. The initial sting to the cockroach would obviously make the cockroach's escape part of its brain light up like crazy. If the wasp then goes to find the most active part of the cockroaches brain, i'd imagine this would be the escape area. I believe there are simple rules which build up to create complex systems. These simple rules, like the active neuron sensor, help to create shortcuts to how a creature evolves. If you look at the recent darpa challenge, involving the teaching of a car how to drive across unfamiliar terrain, it managed to convince the team it was working by using just the rule of keeping the grass equally distant on the right and the left. It hit a bridge and swerved so the guy onboard had to grab the wheel! But the point is simple rules can lead to complex seeming actions." Posted by: Rob Levy | February 4, 2006 4:28 PM

OK this video (which is quite good) seems to answer it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-p_4mp-RtA&p=E330837E95B...

The clipped antenna leaks roach blood. Now I'm off to bed for some sweet nightmares.

I don't have state-of-the-art knowledge of biology, but you'll note from the article

While a number of venomous animals paralyze prey as live food for their young, Ampulex compressa is different in that it initially leaves the roach mobile and modifies its behavior in a unique way.

This suggests to me that the ancestors of this wasp would simply paralyze the roach and lay eggs inside, and this behaviour evolved from that.

The ant's first mistake was attaching it's head with a membrane...

Obviously ants are one of the most successful creatures in the world, but a membrane!? Wow.

I believed that Alien was inspired by The Voyage of the Space Beagle, but Dan O'Bannon (the screenplay writer) denied it: "I didn't steal Alien from anybody. I stole it from everybody!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)#Origins

So long as their stingers remain unable to penetrate the human skull or spinal cord, we're safe. Once they figure out how to do that though, every man for himself!