Evolution of Fitness in the Pitcher-plant Mosquito, Wyeomyia-smithii

9305584布拉德肖·达尔文的健康是通过高存活率、快速发展和多产来实现的。理想情况下，生物体会在出生当天产生大量后代，每个后代都有很高的存活概率。显然，生物体没有实现这一理想；相反，生物体的生命周期是快速、安全地发展生殖年龄与所产生后代的数量和质量之间的折衷。猪笼式蚊子似乎绕过了这一妥协：快速发育的蚊子既不容易过早死亡，也不会减少繁殖力。布拉德肖博士的计划是，确定能否进化出能够更快、更安全地发育和繁殖力更高的蚊子。与正常蚊子相比，在良好条件下达到达尔文适合度高的蚊子在压力条件下生存和繁殖的能力可能较差。如果这一命题被证明是正确的，那么现实世界中的健康代表着在理想条件下最大化健康收益和在不利条件下最小化健康损失之间的妥协。%这样的研究可能表明蚊子生命周期的哪些部分是适应不利条件的僵硬的，从而使敏感发育阶段能够更有效地针对生物或化学控制。***

9305584 Bradshaw Darwinian fitness is achieved through high survival, fast development, and prolific reproduction. Ideally, an organism would produce a large number of offspring, each with a high probability of surviving, on the day it is born. Clearly, organisms do not achieve this ideal; rather, the life cycle of organisms is a compromise between fast, safe development of reproductive age and number and quality of offspring produced. The pitcher-plant mosquito appears to circumvent this compromise: fast developing mosquitoes are prone neither to early death nor to reduced fecundity. Dr. Bradshaw's plans to determine whether evolution of a mosquito that is capable of faster, safer development and higher fecundity could occur. Mosquitoes that achieved high Darwinian fitness under good conditions may be less able to survive and reproduce under stressful conditions than are normal mosquitoes. If this proposition proves to be true, then fitness in the real world represents a compromise between maximizing gain in fitness under ideal conditions and minimizing loss to fitness under adverse conditions. %%% Studies such as these may indicate which portions of mosquito life cycles are adaptively rigid in response to adverse conditions, allowing more effective targeting of sensitive developmental stages to biological or chemical control. ***