House fly, mosquito share common ancestry
March 24th, 2011 - 1:20 pm ICT by IANSSydney, March 24 (IANS) Mosquito and the house fly share a common ancestry.
The mosquito branched off from the same evolutionary tree as the house fly around 220 million years ago.
Though just a few species of flies gain public attention as pests, including the common house fly, there are 152,000 named species of flies, representing around 10 percent of all species on earth.
Flies originated in wet environments. As they evolved, they adapted to feed in almost any environment on earth, reports the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The research was conducted by an international consortium of 27 scientists from six countries.
“What this research shows us is that … many different groups (of flies experimented) with ways to be a fly,” says study co-author David Yeates from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Ecosystem Sciences.
“The mosquito, March fly and common house fly are everyday members of these bursts of evolution, which occurred during unstable periods of earth’s history when dramatic environmental change created new habitats for these ‘experimental’ flies,” a CSIRO statement said.
“The really interesting thing is that living representatives of these early branching groups, such as mosquitoes and March flies, are still with us.”
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Tags: csiro, ecosystem sciences, environmental change, evolutionary tree, industrial research organisation, international consortium, journal proceedings, march fly, million years, mosquito, mosquito march, mosquitoes, national academy of sciences, proceedings of the national academy, proceedings of the national academy of sciences, public attention, species of flies, sydney march, wet environments, yeates