Mimicry and neodarwinism

Say what? In what way are bees generally cryptic as opposed to aposematic?Superfamily Apoidea has lots of aposematic species - they're really some of the classic examples of it. Those Eristalis species usually mimic those bright, contrasting color patterns. As an aside, one of my favorite cerambycid (longhorn beetle) genera, Neoclytus, has a number of species that mimic wasps as adults, like this N. acuminatus:

You still haven't supported this statement. They do, in many species. You say that the European honey bees you're familiar with are cryptic? We are talking about Apis mellifera here, right? With the classic yellow and black stripes on the abdomen? Like this one: Also, that first picture of Eristalis tenax you linked to (although oddly, you seemed to indicate that the link was for a honey bee) wasn't exactly typical of its patterning. Here's a dorsal view, showing a typical (and aposematic) patterning of that species, yellow and black: I'd love to see these cryptic honeybees you're talking about!

I was so interested in your statements about bees that I didn't even see this until I read WK's response.Please, please start a new thread about how mushrooms don't exist for evolutionary biology!Or, you save yourself the embarrassment and actually look it up. Try doing a search at scholar.google.com for "fungus evolution."

Yes, but you said "honeybees." Of course, every population of any type of organism will both experience both a different selective environment and have a different history of mutations for selection to act upon. Where's the big mystery? I disagree; that picture does not show off the aposematism very well, but it's still there. The fact that you found a picture of them in a relatively low-light situation against a brown background does not negate the fact that they have the yellow-and-black striped abdomen that is instantly recognizable by anyone.And in any case, particularly by the standards you're using to evaluate honeybees, I could give many examples of wasps that are not aposematic.

You have to take off the quotes when doing a google search, or you end up searching for that exact phrase. Without the quotes, you get well over 30,000 hits.Remember, the statement you're defending is this one, from Message 88: {Edit: By the way, with regard to morphological diversity of mushrooms, you seem to be working on the assumption that within the evolutionary model, the different appearances of fungal fruiting bodies must serve some special adaptive function or purpose. In some cases that may be true, but it is not necessarily the case. Are you familiar with the term, "spandrel?"}Edited by Belfry, : Marked addition