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Mosquitoes can become attracted to insect repellant, study suggests (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 3 days ago by resipsaloquitur@lemmy.cafe to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world

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cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/49840306

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[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes, if an epigenetic mutation occurs, that is indeed passed down to offspring, I hope I didn't imply otherwise above. (Although as far as we can tell, the mutation is temporary and tends to be "corrected" within a few generations.)

All I'm really saying is that the trait acquired is not likely to have an effect in any way correlated to specific pressure that caused the mutation. For instance, exposure to a specific toxin could possibly catalyse an epigenetic mutation, but that mutation is highly unlikely to be a resistance to that toxin.

The journal article you linked seems like a great source! But I didn't see anything that contradicted what I said above.

[–] Photonic@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I reacted mostly to this part:

it doesn't work like "this organism learned something, and **that** knowledge or instinct gets passed down". It tends to be more like, this organism's body was under some specific pressure, or lived in some specific environment for an extended period, and the resulting effect is mostly unrelated and mostly unpredictable.

Where it seemed like you meant specific “learned” traits in one generation are not passed down to offspring, which is contradictory to what is commonly believed by experts. In some occasions it works like you described, but not always. I’m not an expert on epigenetics or even genetics though. And like I mentioned, a lot is still unknown, so we can’t say anything with so much certainty.

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Where it seemed like you meant specific “learned” traits in one generation are not passed down to offspring, which is contradictory to what is commonly believed by experts.

Ah, I see. No I meant literally learned, like from training, like training a dog. Sorry for the misunderstanding.