Mimicry and neodarwinism

In the absence of any reference to get the details on this from the best I can do is speculate. If the patterns of mimicry on females do confer a fitness benefit while male patterning is less important then the selecitve pressures on females to maintain certain patterns of mimicry would be stronger than constraint on males to maintain their patterning. Consequently the regulation of pattern development on the male could be allowed to change, it really depends what forces of selection are acting on male patterning, i.e. predation, sexual selection, etc....TTFN,WK

First I would like to close this: Talkorigins also admitted, that photos of moths were staged:Icon of ObfuscationBut I can glue as well dead moths on the tree trunk, photograph them and presented them as support of my conception, that there are no changes in population of moths.But if you think that it was done with noble aim to persuade pupils
into believing in darwinism I have no intention to quarrel about this. Nice reading, thanks for links. Suchantke is a brilliant observer and even though Goethes opinions seems to be outdated, the true is much more complicated.
There are many prominent scientists - biologist professor Zdenek Neubauer from Charles university Prague for instance - that share same opinion, that to underestand living world, we need more that reductionism, the modern darwinisic approach. But it is more philosophy.But on my opinion darwinism is also philosophy. Do not deceit yourself - many of their strongest advocates are hypocrites - if there will be another idea which to support would be more lucrative they will do it. Marxism is also outdated naturalistic theory from 19 century like darwinism, unproved, yet some of us were taught "scientific communism". People, who taught it are now experts on democracy, criticizing Russia... You are right. Mimicry cannot be explained - my opinion - by neodarwinistic play of mutation and selection. But I did claim nothing about supernatural yet.
Anyway you mentioned it before: what remain us to be in this case a right scientist is imagination. And today we are referred only to this imagination ( using Batesian, Mullerian concepts or better combination both of them) to underestand every puzzle of mimicry.
Using your brackets : if theory {T} is darwinistic {D}, that all imagination based in it {I} must be true too.

MartinV, Why not?As a predator, wouldn't a slight enough similarity to something benign to enable a slight advantage to gain a food item? Why wouldn't this similarity be reinforced by RM&NS? As prey, wouldn't a slight similarity to a non-food item or a harmful thing give a slight advantage to not being eaten? Why wouldn't this similarity be reinforced by RM&NS to look more like the non-food item, or harmful thing?Mimicry, after all, is merely camouflage. Poor camouflage is better than none at all, & I fail to see why you express such incredulity at camouflage getting better by RM&NS. Put another way, I fail to see why a slight advantage can't be turned into a greater one by further mutations that increase the level of mimicry. So what better explanations do you have for the known mechanisms of RM&NS increasing differential reproductive success by appearing more & more like something else as time goes by?Mark

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Please do -- you haven't yet, you did not answer the question, nor, it does appear, did you read the site you linked.See Message 121 for a fuller evaluation of your base assertion. I'll take failure to answer on that thread as taking the third option listed. So you agree that it is philosophy and not science. Good. There is absolutely no problem with using philosophy to extend your world view of reality beyond what science can show. Or religion, or faith, etc. etc. etc.But it is a mistake to think that philosophy IS science. Yawn. Your opinion. SNORE. For it to be more than opinion you need to provide something more substantial than assertions of deceit and hypocricy.You can start by answering Message 121 with integrity. Are you really that clueless? Not just about evolution but about science in general?If a theory is {true} then it will be validated by test after test after test. If a theory is NOT{true} then it will (eventually} be invalidated by a test -- although it may take a while to get to the critical test.Nowhere is there any claim that what science can imagine is {true} -- that is left for the realms of belief and fantasy, not science.When science gets to the point where there is insufficient data, the best it can say is "we don't know" or "we think this may be an answer, let's test it" -- and this holds for evolution as much as it holds for any other science. You are conflating Batesian and Mullerian theories on mimicry with all of mutation and natural selection (sexual and survival), a logical error.But, if it is the case -- that mimicry cannot be explained "using Batesian, Mullerian concepts or better combination both of them" -- then the answer is that we don't know what the specific mechanism is, and most especially we don't know if ruling out Batesian and Mullerian concepts rules out ALL mechanisms of mutation and selection.To claim otherwise is to base a conclusion on an absence of information, and that is NOT science.And still your failure to be able to imagine how mimicry can occur by mutation and natural selection is no obstruction to it happening naturally. Then you are down to the wire: either (1) some other as yet unknown natural mechanism hitherto totally unsuspected is behind it, or (2) it is supernatural (by definition = not natural).Either present evidence that (1) is in fact what you are arguing, including for good measure some preliminary description of the mechanism and a discussion of how it can achieve the desired result,ORAdmit that your conclusion (whether explicitly stated or not) is that the mechanism involved -- in the absence of evidence one way or the other -- is supernatural.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : last lineEdited by RAZD, : poyt

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You assume that accumulation of little changes ("more and more like") would have led to the startling resemblance of different species. Yet your assumtion contradicts not only to opinions held by anti-darwinists, but even darwinists themselves - I have given in my first post link to Nijhout tretease on Papilio dardanus. He also assumes that first inital step of mimic toward its model would have been a big one, otherwise there was no selection advantage for mimic. Afterwards only small changes proceeded - "tuning" - to the model. As far as I know, this is well established darwinian explanation of the phenomenon of butterflies mimicry - but it is certainly in conflict with Darwins idea of small changes.There are many questions, which escaped from visual field of darwinists - for instance, how is it possible that a nonpalatable butterfly mimics other nonpalatable butterfly? What is the selective advantage of this so-called Mullerian type of mimicry ?Are we sure, that every generation of birds taste every species of butterfly in order to learn, which of them are palatable and which of them are unpalatable? Are not in birds some inborne instincts to which butterfies they would better to avoid? Are we sure - because during flight we can well differentiate by observing technique of flight not only between mimic hornet moth and its model - hornet itself, but also between butterfly mimic and its butterfly model - that birds with much more acute vision cannot do the same?Why some of butterfly species are more prone to create mimetics form as others? And is there really any adavantage of mimicry at all? For instance in the same place, there live many different species of butterflies and only some of them produce mimics - other species have very specific drawnings and colous on their wings - and much more - they are palatable, living in the same area where one unpalatable butterfly mimics another unpalatable buttefly!Who once observed butterflies at meadow may agree with me, that there live and fly and sit on grass different species of butterflies with either shiny white wings or brown wings with eyes spots on them. Evidently some of them do not care to look inconspicuous, while the other butterflies mimics leaves so perfectly, that we observe them with astonishment.Yet darwinists do not care - as if they do not see these facts. They want explain everything with random mutation and subsequent selection, even though we see baffling mimic forms which evidently cannot be created by chance, while it is utmost improbable, and in many cases it is also utmost improbale that there ever existed or exists now strong selection pressure which give advantage to mimic compared to no-mimic (do not forget, that one form of Papilio dardanus females mimics nobody, look same like males - and arouses only recently, while other mimic forms are more archaic.)

Yet in other famous case of Heliconius melpomene and Meliconius erato we see, that in many different places races of these species looks different, yet - if I am not wrong - females and males looks identical.Question: is in South America different selective pressure on butterfly males than in Africa?

You seem disatisified with the traditional explanations for evolution of mimicry, but you haven't posited any alternative mechanism for their evolution. Succinctly, what is the alternative explanation we should accept if we are to abandon a Darwinian interpretation?You are seemingly discounting any possibility of coincidence in the initial stages of mimicry evolution. Butterfly color patterns have a lot of latitude for variation without directly impacting fitness. Perhaps the largest evolutionary constraint on dramatic color pattern shifts is that wing pattern is a feature important in sexual recognition and sexual selection. Otherwise, or in cases where this constraint is weak, butterflies can 'experiment' with a broad range of color patterns... UNTIL some selective force picks up on one that confers an advantage for whatever reason.To illustrate my point consider this link.Coincidences happen all the time, including coincidental resemblences.
However, only those coincidences that result in some sort of advantage are going to become a genetic fixture in a population.

My intention was to inform about curious phenomenon of mimicry which is not discussed
in talkorigin at all. About peppered moth there are plenty materials on Internet - I have
no intention transcript anti-darwinian articles and read your transcrition of darwinian claims -
if you was not eyewitness of Kettlewell team, discussion does not ineterest me a bit. Evolution - especially darwinism is not science. Do not deceit yourself, darwinism is as
much science as was once marxism. But if you claim that mimicry aroses via random mutation and natural selection and this claim has to do something with science (and not with another myth from 19 century) than give us some explanation - e.g.how is it possible that on the same place we have models, mimics and no-mimics and how natural selection here works? I only presented opinion, that RM/NS is insufficient explanation of the phenomenon. There are other scientists - Bergs and Davisons derepression of hidden genes, Heikertingers, Punnets and Grasses internal factors, Suchantkes goethians gestalten. I just want inform you, that there are many scientists, who did not and do not believe in neodarwinistic explanations and I tried to show some interesting examples from living nature of butterflies.

I think, that feromones play decisive roles in mating of insects. I do not see any point
for moth looking like hornet - trying to mate hornet may be even dangerous. Trying
to mate another species while its wings looks exactly like wings of my species is deceptive -
females that can be better distinguished by males from their models have selective advantage in mating process, do not they?

Well that's a good point.
Sexual selection adds another twist - IF it's based on physical appearance. However, as you point out, pheromones can be an important factor in mate recognition, although they are much more important in moths than butterflies. A lot of butterflies use visual signals in mate recognition, although visual behavioral displays may also be important. It is the moths, being largely nocturnal, that rely more heavily on pheromones for mate-finding.So we need to balance potential benefits with potential costs.
Mimicry appearances could not evolve if they interfered strongly with mate recognition, or without some mechanism available to prevent wasted mating efforts directed at the model species.

I am wondering how you derived this dogmatic assertion.
The scientific community (i.e. scientists from nany disciplines) are virtually unanimous in the view that evolutionary biology explains how life has changed, and continues to change.
And Marxism, as I recall, never claimed to be science.

You are correct, in Heliconius both males and females show mimetic patterning. An interesting paper has studied whether the mimetic patterns affect mate choice and it seems that by and large males prefer mates with the same mimietic patterning (Jiggins et al., 2004).There almost certainly are different selective pressures on the males in those different locations, even from within the population itself alone in terms of mating choice.TTFN,WK

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But I can glue as well dead moths on the tree trunk, photograph them and presented them as support of my conception, that there are no changes in population of moths.

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Essentially the argumment here is that because you could claim that staged phpotographs support a false claim that any claim based on a staged photograph must be false. Of course the claim here is to to with the relative visibility of the moths which is adequately demonstrated by a staged photograph - which is the only practical way of producing such an illustration. Thus your argument is refuted in both the general case and in this specific case.

MartinV, Irrelevant to the question posed. You made the following statement: I replied: You're response in no way addressed the questions put to you. In fact, your response consisted entirely of questions.Please respond directly to the original questions.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

In other words you admit you have no integrity. None. You just demonstrated that you are not interested in the truth. You can post these false bald unsubstantiated assertions all day, but as we have just seen -- you have no integrity, and are willing to post falsehoods in anything you say. You are not interested in the truth. The manners in which mimicry could arise have been discussed and you have waved them off -- not because you have invalidated the mechanisms, but because you have no integrity. And your opinion is worthless. You have no integrity and are not interested in the truth.Enjoy

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