Posted by
m0t0r1zed on Wednesday, June 04, 2008 11:16:00 AM
Read an article on yahoo - "Stupid flies live longer: study"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080604/sc_afp/switzerlandscienceanimal
Based upon experiments, scientists at the University of Lausanne speculated that an increase in neural activity was detrimental to life span.
I haven't read the actual journal article, so maybe they left out some key information. However, with the info given in the yahoo article, I don't like this study. The process of applying selection pressure for any characteristic may have a detrimental effect upon viability. In other words, if they had also selected for stupidity or wing size or flight time or hairiness, etc. they all might have had an average negative trend for lifespan.
Instead of two groups, they should have used three groups - with the third group selective for stupidity. If the stupid group resulted in an increase in lifespan, then it would have added more credibility to their argument. My suspicion is that the stupid group would have also suffered a decrease in lifespan, and the control group would have still had the highest lifespan.
... And if the researchers had selected for both lifespan and intelligence, they probably would have been able to produce smart, long-lived flies. But it's all just off-the-cuff conjecture on my part after a quick read, so I could be wrong, of course. There are probably more things that I haven't considered.