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Comment by actionfromafar | Hacker News Reader

Also, the "bugs evolve away" would need evolutionary pressure being involved. But the explanation I got was the available biomass for bugs is such that any chunk of bugs killed on the road was easily filled by other bugs eating their lunch and procreating.

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Also note that "species are evolving to adapt to XYZ" really means "everything that can't deal with XYZ is dying". If the ecosystem just doesn't have any species that can deal with XYZ, then that part of the ecosystem just dies.

> Also, the "bugs evolve away" would need evolutionary pressure being involved

I do not claim that evolution is the reason for the reduction in dead bugs, but if "go near road" has a increased risk of death due to automobiles, there absolutely is selective pressure to not "go near road". Bugs that get killed by cars don't procreate (again) after all.

I read last week about mooses avoiding certain hunting spots during hunting season.

Link in Swedish, not sure how scientific this is but…

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/mQQWbO/algarna-overlist...

Is "moose" a word like "sheep", that is it's own plural? (I honestly don't know, but "mooses" sounded odd).

My guess would have been meese. Luckily, all the information is out there.

> "plural moose or (dated, rare) mooses or (non-standard, jocular) meese" [0]

[0] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/moose

Many much moosen

https://youtu.be/CafPNEWnDhk

Yes but the pressure is weaker than one might intuitively guess. There are billions of bugs. Even near roads, very few of them are going to be hit by cars, comparatively. Near roads there often are ditches with some water or moisture, making an environment otherwise beneficial for bugs.

Also, decreased road side windshield bug smashing coincides with measured loss of insect biomass:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations

Disputing that feels more and more like disputing global warming being a thing.

> Disputing that feels more and more like disputing global warming being a thing.

There's a reason I started my comment with "I do not claim that evolution is the reason for the reduction in dead bugs". I was just nitpicking and not trying to be the devil's advocate.

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