John VandenBrooks of Arizona State University in Tempe examined how changing levels of oxygen in the atmosphere may effect the size that insects grow:
Experimenting with giant insects -- what could possibly go wrong?
Link via DVICE | Image: Warner Bros.
The team raised cockroaches, dragonflies, grasshoppers, meal worms, beetles and other insects in atmospheres containing different amounts of oxygen to see if there were any effects.
One result was that dragonflies grew faster into bigger adults in hyperoxia.
Experimenting with giant insects -- what could possibly go wrong?
Link via DVICE | Image: Warner Bros.
Except they're not experimenting with growing giant insects, they're experimenting with what happens with insects in high oxygen atomospheres. By the sound of it, if the treacheal tubes decrease in size with the increase of oxygen, those insects are ill-suited to life on Earth as it currently is, thus, they're extinct.
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about freakin' time.. i was beginning to think that i would go my entire life without seeing a house sized ant...
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Add some radiation to the mix..(they no doubt tried this as well) tweak a few genes...add a few hundred more eyes to a yellow jacket with a thorax/abdo combination the size of a cigar with some neurotoxins from Monsanto for repeated injections....
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Them! movie rocked. :)
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