A recent study suggests that insects branched out from crustaceans | Hacker News Reader

A recent study suggests that insects branched out from crustaceans

smithsonianmag.com

96 pointsCarrok90 comments

The title should mention the 2023 year, as reference for "recent".

As explained in the article, this is actually old news.

There has been more than a decade since it is well known that the hexapods a.k.a. insects have evolved from within a certain group of crustaceans, which includes the water fleas.

The 2023 research paper linked in the article has only provided stronger evidence for this.

The main implication of this discovery is that the myriapods (e.g. millipedes and centipedes) are much more remotely related to insects than it has been believed in the past and they have adapted to a terrestrial life completely independently and much earlier than the insects (the invasion of the land by major animal groups has happened in the order myriapods, then arachnids, then hexapods a.k.a. insects, then tetrapod vertebrates, by a coincidence in decreasing order of the number of legs).

I'm so used to seeing the "fish crawling onto the shore" cartoon of evolution that I assumed the branching always went that way - land creatures are branchoffs of sea creatures. But surely this is oversimplified - are there examples in the other direction, where a branching occured in land animals and one branch then returned to the sea?

Marine mammals.

I think all marine mammals fit this, right?

Yes. And for a non animal example, there's sea grass, which evolved from land grasses.

And for an animal but non-mammal example, there are penguins.

Sea snakes, as well.

And sea turtles, and I guess iguanas are a kind of sea lizard.

> iguanas are a kind of sea lizard

Only the marine iguanas, but yes.

Also salt-water crocodiles (the largest living reptile).

Mangroves are aquatic trees that evolved from regular land trees.

Sea grass is a monocot but belongs to a different order (Alismatales) than true grass (Poales).

Thanks for the correction. Interesting

Whales are the first example that springs to mind.

Whales.

https://baleinesendirect.org/en/discover/life-of-whales/morp...

Also ichthyosaurs' ancestors were terrestrial reptiles, though the whole branch is now extinct.

Sloths (formely): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassocnus

There are also lots of extinct examples like Ichthyosaurs, Mosasaurs, Plesiosaurs

Modern examples are saltwater crocodiles, sea turtles or sea snakes

Not an animal, but many marine algae descend from freshwater algae, possibly because the last Snowball Earth event may have wiped out the marine algae by covering the oceans with ice (while freshwater algae survived in structures like cryoconites, tiny freshwater puddles that form on glaciers).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0R3FVTLvT0

(People who know their taxonomy will notice that I'm conflating algae and cyanobacteria, mea culpa.)

Time for the aquatic ape hupothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis

Hippos come from the whale branch. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whippomorpha

Hippos don't come from the whale branch, but they share a branch with whales. From wikipedia:

> It is unknown whether the last common ancestor of whales and hippos led an aquatic, semiaquatic/amphibious, or terrestrial lifestyle

However, whales are a great example of a clade that went land -> water in their evolutionary history.

> Hyraxes have highly charged myoglobin, which has been inferred to reflect an aquatic ancestry.[20]

Interesting thing about the evolution of Hyraxes is that it is likely to be an example of a Hard Polytomy - as in Hyraxes, Elephants and Manatees split off simultaneously

I knew that Hyraxes were related to elephants, And I've seen rock hyraxes in the wild many times, but TIL the term "Hard Polytomy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytomy

Sea mammals.

I strongly suggest reading Neil Shubin's "Your Inner Fish" which explains a bit more on how different bits etc evolved if you're interested in the topic.

Makes sense: a coastal cave is a great environment where an organism can experiment with moving from water to land.

This article also nicely highlights how some scientists can just make stuff up, subsequently overturned when someone finds a fact-based way to evaluate their erroneous conclusions. See also archeology.

For a fairly science focused article I was a little surprised they referred to "bugs" in the casual / technically incorrect manner, as covered here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect#Distinguishing_featur...

As a lay-person who likes to read about bugs, I've come to expect the qualifier "true" to connote something special about bug's "mouth parts".

“Bats: Bug Scourge of the Skies!“

I suspect crustacean allergies are actually arthropod allergies. I haven't seen much research on this though.

It's an allergic reaction to tropomyosin, which is found in shellfish and cockroaches.

I recall an anecdote of an entomologist who studied cockroaches in particular claiming to have developed a shellfish allergy from her work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropomyosin

If this were a sci-fi movie, it would be because the cockroaches were sentient and trying to protect themselves.

I suspect arthropods are way too diverse to fall under a single umbrella of "is_allergic". Millions of years of evolution can produce very radically different things for our bodies to worry about. Just the fact that there are no marine insects (completing their lifecycle within an ocean) tells us something about how different their biologies, and therefor allergenic "surface" are. Poison pathways from venom can target completely different systems in a humans.

Almost no marine insects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halobates

Re lifecycle:

> The coastal species lay their eggs close to the water surface on rocks, plants, and other structures near the shore, while the oceanic species attach their egg masses on floating objects such as cuttlebone and feathers.

I know of Halobates, they live on top the ocean, not in the ocean. I.e. they have no adaptations to breathe in salt water. There are many other species like this that are restricted to tidal (flies, parasitic wasps, etc.) or costal areas and nowhere else, but again, not under water.

Even their nymphs?

Right, they are not underwater. Hemimetaboulous insects like Holobates look like baby adults when they are born, and undergo multiple "partial" metamorphosis. In this case their wings are almost non-existent. They will go through multiple molts, gradually looking more like the adult. Holometabolous insects (e.g. beetles, wasps, butterflies, flies) are the ones with radically different body plans, often exploiting different niches, the larva could be aquatic, the pupa and adult terrestrial. Some more "basal" insects (dragonflies, mayflies) also have different body-plans at different stages, though instead of "larva" we say "imago", and things like that, for those lineages.

Okay but they both have exoskeletons that have many shared proteins. Allergies are just a protein check.

People with shellfish allergies are generally advised to avoid eating crickets for this reason.

There is a tree-dwelling shrimp.

https://www.metafilter.com/201489/A-shrimp-that-dwells-in-tr...

There seem to be a lot of semi-terrestrial shrimp. The article mentions "beach-hoppers" or "sandhoppers", which are this long list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talitridae

Woodlice - e.g pillbugs / roly-polies - aren't shrimp, but they are crustaceans, probably evolving from something like a trilobite.

I'm surprised to learn anyone thought otherwise.

The previous theory, it seems to me, is that crustaceans and insects were separate -- that is, they shared a common ancestor, but each is a clade. The new idea is that insects are slotted inside the larger tree of crustaceans, and are more related to some crustaceans than to others.

whoa whoa whoa I was told everything evolves into crabs[1]:

[1]: https://xkcd.com/2314/

This seems so obvious

Biology was always a mystery in college, but I have also felt that this was obvious. They look very similar for heaven's sake! My paranoid self thinks shrimp, crabs and lobsters are labeled differently from bugs, so people can eat them without being repulsed.

Compared to the alternative that, IIRC, insects are closer to myriapods? Crustaceans aren't the only crunchy animals, even after this reorganization.

[stub for offtopicness]

[flagged]

I try to avoid having any bugs, sea or land.

Honestly if they taste like shrimp, I'm down. Shrimps are delicious.

I might try roasted palm grubs. I don't know where you can find them in the US.

Please point us at the land-bugs with a taste profile like shrimp / lobster / crab / other edible crustaceans enjoyed by humans.

There is a pretty meaty cockroach, maybe with enough butter it would be like a lobster tail

Madagascar hissing cockroaches are probably in the 30-40 size

30-40mm?

Shrimp are sold by the count per pound. 30/40 is a common size.

https://fultonfishmarket.com/blogs/articles/shrimp-sizing

Lobster tasting good is a construct. 200 years ago lobster was the lowest peasant food that nobody with the money to buy other food would touch.

>Lobster tasting good is a construct.

I'm not really sure what this even means. I enjoy the taste of lobster, and the fact that it is no longer peasant food doesn't play any part in that.

The fact that it is no longer peasant food doesn't consciously play any part in that.

I ate lobster maybe 100+ times (and enjoyed it) before I learned that it used to be peasant food.

I think what the parent comment is saying is that, lobster was likely introduced as an elite/rare dish to people in the current century increasing the appeal

That is exactly the point they are trying to make... that you enjoyed it BECAUSE you thought of it as a delicacy and not as peasant food.

I think the point is a little overwrought, really... while our expectation is part of what makes it taste good, it doesn't completely change what we think... there are a lot of foods that are considered delicacies that a lot of people don't like.

>that you enjoyed it BECAUSE you thought of it as a delicacy and not as peasant food

When I was a child, I didn't even know the word "delicacy" let alone have any concept of whether what I was eating was a delicacy or not.

Like I said, I disagree with the person's overall thesis, just pointing out what they were trying to say.

Does that mean JD Vance will consume it? :)

I think the point is that given the right social dynamics, some bugs that already are edible today could probably be considered fancy and tasty in a century or two. I might be the wrong person to ask though because I already find pretty much all seafood nauseating.

As usual, there's a (somewhat) related xkcd for this https://xkcd.com/1268/

Therefore with the right preparation some bugs might become delicacies.

I think lobster tasting good is mostly about the amount of butter used.

Really, though, a lot of it has to do with food preservation technology - lobster only tastes good fresh, and goes bad very quickly (which is why you will often see them alive in tanks at the grocery store, and they are often cooked alive). Before we had the tech to either keep them alive before cooking or refrigerate immediately, they didn't taste very good.

No, we cooked it like shit. It gets rubbery and unpleasant real quick.

It was also wildly abundant.

I think this is sort of a myth. There was a relatively brief period of time in the US when lobster was considered poor people's food, but in the rest of the world and the rest of history it has generally been very popular and often associated with the upper class.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster#History

I also think it's pretty common for historical "peasant" foods to be popular today, like tacos or potatoes for example. If anything, "poor people love it but rich people won't touch it" is probably evidence that the thing not tasting good is a social construct.

Poor people have an incentive to find ways to make unwanted (aka cheap/available) food taste good, this simple fact is responsible for peasant food all over the world being generally amazing and why even a lot of upper class dishes have some origin as a lower class food.

I’m in Texas and we’re pretty well known for brisket and fajitas which are sourced from fatty/undesirable cuts of beef.

I've always been surprised how good the "bad" cuts become when cooked long and moist to convert the cartilage to gelatin.

Palm grubs?

The colder temperatures of their new environment might have made them tastier to us. Also, salt.

I find shrimp from the cold north sea (Pandalus Borealis) a lot more tastier than the much larger shrimp found in more temperate seas.

I think the biggest problem is how small land-bugs are. They don’t have a large chunk you meat you can yoink out and grill; you have to eat the shell.

Shrimp are mostly tasteless though, aren't they? If you bite into a shrimp and really pay attention to the taste, you'd notice that it's not really a "taste" that you're feeling, but mostly the soft texture giving the illusion of tastiness.

And the fat. there's some shrimp with a lot of fat. Which is really just a platform for other great flavors

Shrimp taste. Go net some shrimp, filet them alive and eat them, guts removed. Report your finding.

Why do they have to be alive while you filet them?

Shrimp and lobster are really just delivery devices for butter, garlic, lemon, etc.

I've seen people claim that they actually do taste very similar if you can isolate the insect's muscle, but usually insects are eaten with their exoskeleton, which changes the flavor.

Is there insects with a similar tail muscle of a shrimp? The muscle is evolved to push water in order to create propulsion. The only thing that I can think f that seems similar would be snakes.

Smithsonian funding must really be drying up if they have to assault me with 40 pop up ads per sentence

"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."

It's not that these things aren't annoying—they of course are. But that's actually why we have that guideline.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Is this part of an "eat bugs" marketing push?

"Bugs are just miniature lobsters". If anything, makes me not want to eat crustaceans.

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