The predator's role is to protect the prey population from weak individuals.

The predator's role is to protect the prey population from weak individuals.


If you take your prey from the wrong place in the population, that thing can refine non-wanted abilities in the prey.

The bats and insects are in an arms race. They are a good example of the relationship between prey and predator. Just like all other predators and prey, bats and insects are in a race. However, the new research challenges this evolutionary model. 

Or does it? Before we start to talk about evolution and the evolutionary arms race, we must understand the predators and their role in the prey's community. The purpose of the predator is to keep the prey's population at a certain level. But the predator's other role is to keep the prey population clean from unwanted genomes.


"Researchers challenge the idea of an arms race between bats and insects, suggesting that the barbastelle bat’s quiet calls are inherited from quieter gleaner ancestors, not as a direct adaptation against insect hearing." (ScitechDaily.com/Stealth Echolocation: How Evolutionary Twists Made This Bat a Silent Assassin)


The relationship between prey and predator is an interaction. If a predator becomes too dominant, that causes it to eat all its food. And if prey can create the ultimate escape methodology, that means predators die of hunger.

If a species becomes too dominant, that thing causes another threat. The viruses and bacteria can use individuals with weak genetic backgrounds as gatekeepers, which allows those parasites to enter the population.

One of the predator's purposes is to remove individuals with weak genomes from the population. Weak individuals are the gate that allows viruses and bacteria to transfer into that population. If some population becomes too dominant, genetically weak individuals can also survive, which causes a situation where some viruses and other parasites start to use some individuals' genetic weaknesses to slip into the population.


When a predator selects its prey, it must avoid redefining the targeted population. If certain abilities become too common, the predator will not get food. And in some other cases, the problem is that if a predator becomes too dominant, that prey population ends. And the predator must look for new prey, or it will die of hunger.

If the prey turns into a difficult target, their number increases. And if we think that all insects are consumers, the problem with them is that they are also "predators". They eat other insects or plants. And if there are too many plant-eating insects, that causes a situation where those insects eat too many trees or grass. In that case, the insects will not get food. And they die of hunger.

The question is: is there some kind of mechanism that denies the arms race between prey and predators? The answer is in the last chapter. If we think that the predator would want to deny the non-wanted advances of its prey. It should select its prey by using a method that denies the prey the ability to transfer non-wanted genomes forward in their family trees.

Insects are not easy prey. Their generational variation is very fast. The lifetime or lifecycle of some insects is only a couple of days. And that means the evolution of those things can be very fast. If predators find a weak spot in prey's defense, that means that non-wanted things for predators will become more common faster than those predators can answer for that advance.

This is one of the reasons why predators seek out old and sick animals. The philosophy behind this kind of behavior is simple. The sick and old animals are in lockers. They will not transfer their genomes forward. And they will not have descendants. If predators choose their prey roughly, that makes it possible for the best escapers can avoid the hunter.

This thing causes genetic enrichment, which enriches abilities that make those prey avoid the prey. If that refinement happens at the wrong point in the population, that thing causes a non-wanted advance in the prey population.

https://scitechdaily.com/stealth-echolocation-how-evolutionary-twists-made-this-bat-a-silent-assassin/

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