Arts: Swiss Artist Catalogs Mutant Insects Around Nuke Plants

[The Straight Story]

Arts: Swiss Artist Catalogs Mutant Insects Around Nuke Plants


On The Simpsons, the effects of nuclear contamination are conspicuous and comedic. In nature, though, they're often subtle — and sometimes strangely beautiful. Scientific illustrator Cornelia Hesse-Honegger details these minute mutations in the so-called true bugs she collects near nuclear facilities and areas of chemical contamination. True bugs don't travel far, and they "suck the liquid from the plants they live on," she says. "So if the plant is contaminated, they take a lot of radioactivity into their bodies."

Conventional wisdom holds that nuclear power stations don't leak enough radiation to create malformed organisms. But in some locations, Hesse-Honegger discovered mutations — curtailed feelers, misshapen legs, asymmetrical wings — in as many as 30 percent of the bugs she gathered. That's 10 times the overall rate of about 3 percent for insects found in the wild. "For me, the mutated bugs were like prototypes of a future nature," she says. A selection of Hesse-Honegger's work will be shown this fall in Berlin.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/04/pl_arts_mutantbugs

[sui generis]

1. So basically she's finding non-lethal mutations

if they're alive and feeding.

The problem with the apparent ratio being three times higher nearer the plant is that she's looking at breeding adults - the mutations weren't so bad that they were unable to mature, and presumably reproduce. A single viable morphological trait mutation that can be passed along is coupled with a different one in a breeding pair, and potentially increases the rate of mutation even in the absence of external factors.

[The Straight Story]

2. I was just thinking that

No, not really ;)