Research results report that 'the more poisonous insects and fish are, the more likely it is that species diversity will increase.'
Many living things on the earth have 'poison' that harms other living things, and bees, frogs, blowfish, etc. are typical of familiar things.
Radiating pain: venom has contributed to the diversification of the largest radiations of vertebrate and invertebrate animals | BMC Ecology and Evolution | Full Text
https://bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-021-01880-z
Venom has contributed to the species diversity of insects and fishes, new study reveals
https://phys.org/news/2021-08-venom-contributed-species-diversity-insects.html
Insects and fish are known to be one of the most species-rich groups in the animal world, with more than one million confirmed insects, three-quarters of invertebrates, or 31,269. Identified fish make up about half of vertebrates. Moreover, insects and fish are also known that it is often species with poison, the insects 886 family species contained 145 family (about 16%) of 46 families in 459 family fish (about 10%) It is said that the contained species have some kind of poison.
Biologists have long been investigating the factors that promote biodiversity, but not enough research has been done on whether the widespread 'poison' in insects and fish promotes diversity. matter. So a research team at Swansea University decided to investigate the effect of 'poisonousness' on species diversity in insects and fish.
The research team first investigated the phylogeny of each family and the duration of the family, based on data from the website TimeTree, which allows you to check and compare the divergence ages between species. We then collected and analyzed data on whether the species in each family had poisons and the diversity of species in the family.
Analysis revealed that species richness in poisonous families was more than twice as high as in non-poisonous families. In insects, the median species in non-poisonous families was 107, while the median species in poisonous families was 277. For one fish, the median non-poisonous family was 18 and the median poisonous family was 40, the researchers say.
The abundance of species contained in the family was influenced by the 'time that the family lasts' and the 'diversity rate of the family itself', but when comparing the two, the 'diversity rate of the family itself' The effect of was significantly large. This result suggests that 'the high diversification rate in families containing poisons leads to abundant species diversity.'
The graph below shows the 'diversification rate of families with poison' (red) and the 'diversification rate of families without poison' (black). It can be seen that the diversification rate of the family with poison is almost twice as high.
Analysis of the occurrence of poisons in insects and fish revealed that the poisons evolved independently at least 28 times in the process of evolution in insects and 19-20 times independently in fish. .. This result is almost in agreement with the results of research conducted in the past.
In addition, while poisons occurred relatively evenly in the history of evolution in insects, the origin of poisons in fish was mainly concentrated in the Late Cretaceous and the Eocene. Dr. Kevin Arbuckle of Swansea University, the lead author of the paper, said that the diversity of Mosasaurus , a top underwater predator in the late Cretaceous, peaked in the late Cretaceous, and the diversity of whales in the Evolution. Since it reached its peak, it is speculated that the pressure from these predators may have prompted the evolution of the poison.
'Our results provide evidence that poisons played a role in creating the diversity of insects and fish, each with the highest species of invertebrates and vertebrates,' said Dr. Arbuckle. Poisons are not the only factor in promoting species abundance, but they play an important previously unrecognized role in creating the amazing diversity of insects and fish we see today. It shows what we have done. '
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