This does bring me to my history fan theory that grass became widespread due to the mass die out of larger and slower growing (though at the time more established) pre-meteor ground flora of the day.
i know this isn't the same kind of contradictory thing but another cool thing is that leafcutter ants developed agriculture over 5000 times as long ago as humans
there should be a lot, because grasses were massive game changers. i can't think of real examples right now, though. not what my brain normally contains lol
It seems to be saying that after an initial burst of adaptation, the environmental factors that led to the grass boom might have actually slowed insect speciation. Which was something I had not considered!
Locusts, maybe?.. Specifically with this strategy of ocassional massive swarms? I should refresh my knowledge about them, maybe I just remembered them from association with grasshoppers
In Spanish we call them mountain hoppers (saltamontes). Not in the sense of "they hop and you can find them in mountains", no. In the sense of "they hop OVER mountains". Pretty badass name (and they did have mountains back then!)
widespread languages like spanish are fascinating to me, makes me wonder if it's the same name for all spanish speakers or if some regions have decided to call them something else
Another funny Spanish bug name is mariquita (ladybug). A lot of spanish bug names have a diminutive at the end (-ito/a, -ico/a...). But the ladybug went through this twice! It comes from the name María, which with the diminutive turns into marica, which then gets smallened again to mariquita!
And then I moved to the canary islands and it turns out here they call them sarantontón! Which has the augmentative (the opposite of a diminutive) -ón twice!! What is going on?
planthoppers, treehoppers, and leafhoppers, however, showed up long after the first plants, trees, and leaves, therefore making their names completely valid
alright since multiple people asked for it, here's today's reading for everyone
Song, H., et al. (2015), 300 million years of diversification: elucidating the patterns of orthopteran evolution based on comprehensive taxon and gene sampling. Cladistics, 31: 621-651.
Comments
But now what I'm curious about is... Are there any insects that evolved *because* of the relatively recent grass biome proliferation?
A hard read and quite a narrow focus (unless I haven't properly grasped the interpretation), but interesting!
That's a surprising angle to consider, but also makes sense, in a way
New topic to explore (tm) unlocked haha
Song, H., et al. (2015), 300 million years of diversification: elucidating the patterns of orthopteran evolution based on comprehensive taxon and gene sampling. Cladistics, 31: 621-651.
Plus of course the perennial, “Can you imagine how chuffed barn owls were when humans finally invented barns?”
Railway lines existed before trains.
page 18 first sentence below the table
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/43708821/million_years_of_diversification_elucida20160314-28767-1t63q4a-libre.pdf?1457950014=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3D300_Million_Years_of_Diversification_Elu.pdf&Expires=1732381248&Signature=A1RtaeZQi~hHV~BLY3FrAMvQ1E2wg0X07BUYcFBfm~Tk1FF25ihAqtM9ZN7M1QsC1yLmRxgPojF89MzoW5B4DhswjGgpM6Mt28qF6AJQKbT6yyvA5oKkkGuee25yemGOAGCYWD3LagO2JYQLQI2bs~XB0U2YOa5gSy~KRnMpM1JbqSxs5pgyX6FG1LgJV3bqCzF3ATYkdSy~h9sD5fbWRyhydEdEgRDwBeaEquM-0pWQfuhq7-ZtaiYGOCla~4dqDc43PpZFc-cb8tZ4ZGGZh0fAAqxhXEQzWIoF~M3crXzfsnYk5hTcpckbc9SfJlHEDT4sDMBMX3KqURMZFnNGLw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA