For Brasier and his colleagues to maintain that even a single generation of these spiders evolved prior to insects, they must also insist that spiders came up with silk glands, spinnerettes, and the instincts required to build symmetrical webs even to the degree of coating them with sticky insect-trapping droplets—all with no flying insects around to trap as prey. With no lunch as a payoff, wouldn't that generation of spiders have gone extinct? One would think.
Kind of makes you wonder how all the web spinning equipment and instinct just happened to evolve before there was a use for it.
Oh, let me guess, it was one of those beneficial mutations just waiting around for the right conditions for it to be selected for.
Kind of makes you wonder how all the web spinning equipment and instinct just happened to evolve before there was a use for it. Oh, let me guess, it was one of those beneficial mutations just waiting around for the right conditions for it to be selected for. Mosquitoes are far older than the timeframe being discussed in the article. There are plenty of flying insects that have nothing to do with flowering plants, and preceded said plants by millions of years.
