Insect biology question

 

Having decided to try and make a quick fortune, Seren decides to do some mineral prospecting in the outback in Western Australia. She sets up a semi-permanent camp and notices some writhing wormlike things where she regularly throws out her dishwater. Given that she’s in the middle of a bone-dry desert, another one of her co-workers insists that this is proof of spontaneous generation of life from dirt. Seren, explains to this companion what is going on here. How does she explain this? Hint: Agreement of spontaneous generation as the diagnosis is NOT the correct answer. While vocabulary matters, you need to explain the phenomenon and not simply name it.

One day Seren comes across an old mine. Anticipating the possibility of booby-traps that could result in her flattening by a giant rolling boulder, Seren carefully enters and finds a very deep underground aquifer. She manages to pull up a bucket of sediment from this deep lake and fines similar wormlike things writhing around in the organic sediment, only these wormlike organisms are bright red. Explain from both a physiological and ecological perspective why these insects are bright red (e.g. what makes them red and why they would need this given where they live).

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