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Author Topic:   Is evolution of mammals finished?
MartinV 
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Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 94 of 213 (387656)
03-01-2007 6:40 PM


Mobbing
One of the interesting issue you somehow avoid to address too is the evolution of bats. In this case the problem of "emptied niches" is similar to that of evolution of whales. Competitors for emptied niches should be bats and birds.
There is observed phenomenon of mobbing bats by songbirds. Songbirds are often mobbing owls too. Such behaviour is hardly explainable by darwinism, because what competition we see there? I would say songbirds and other "day" birds should mobbing each other and not "night" birds/bats with which they do not compete at all (while they sleep when they hunt and vice-versa).
Surely mobbing between day/night flying animals has more to do with some more profound reasons as obligatory darwinistic struggle for survival. Animosity between day/night birds and bats show us some deeper recognition and "psychology" in animal realm.
We should take also into consideration the fact that maybe the mobbing is not the force that hindern bats to hunt during day.
Bats would have more what to feed during afternoon, when insects abundance seems to culminate.
quote:
Other studies indicate that an inadequate nocturnal food supply may negatively affect bat reproduction. The question arises therefore why do temperate insectivorous bats not fly in daylight more frequently? Four hypotheses have been advanced to explain the infrequency of daylight flying. These are overheating, competition, predation and mobbing by non-competitor species...
JSTOR: Access Check
You see these four hypothesis are darwinistic ones. The problem is more complicated and probably we should have to try to find other explanation for nocturnal predation of bats as well as for mobbing.

Replies to this message:
 Message 95 by Chiroptera, posted 03-01-2007 7:44 PM MartinV has replied
 Message 123 by derwood, posted 03-07-2007 12:47 PM MartinV has not replied

MartinV 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5828 days)
Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 96 of 213 (387699)
03-02-2007 1:30 AM
Reply to: Message 95 by Chiroptera
03-01-2007 7:44 PM


Re: Mobbing
Do you see any darwinistic explanation for the phenomenon of mobbing between diurnal birds and nocturnal birds (bats)?
Take into consideration my previous post as well as observed fact that nocturnal birds aren't thread to diurnal birds at all.
quote:
This hypothesis is particularly plausible for cases in
which the immediate threat is questionable, such as
diurnal songbirds mobbing a strictly nocturnal owl
(Harvey & Greenwood 1978). Nevertheless, predators
do sometimes catch mobbers...
http://desrolab.sbf.ulaval.ca/...C3%A9lisle_Bourque_2002.pdf
-----------
I have already presented my opinion. There is some innate hate
of diurnal birds towards nocturnal ones as well as bats. This hate has nothing to do with darwinistic competion as well as with struggle for survival. Diurnal birds see these nocturnal creatures (including bats) something like "bastards".
If you see this explanation funny give me your neodarwinistic one. I would like to read some fun too.
Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.
Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 97 by Wounded King, posted 03-02-2007 2:46 AM MartinV has replied
 Message 98 by PaulK, posted 03-02-2007 3:06 AM MartinV has replied

MartinV 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5828 days)
Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 101 of 213 (387769)
03-02-2007 3:47 PM
Reply to: Message 98 by PaulK
03-02-2007 3:06 AM


Re: Mobbing
quote:
So I find the idea that there is any inherent drive in birds to attack bats implausible.
If it is implausible than I see no reason why bats do not flight during day. I mean darwinistic reason. I underestand the fact that bats are nocturnal due to "internal forces" that are independent from "emtied niches" "struggle for survival" etc...
There are much more insects available afternoon during day that during night. If bats are not hunting by raptors as extraordinaly delicious food and if bats are not mobbing by other birds I see no darwinistic reason why should they restrict to nocturnal hunting only.
quote:
It seems that in fact they do so only rarely, even when directly competing for the same food.
If songbirds are mobbing owls I don't know from what birds "judgment" or "reason" or instict it should be. Songbirds must somehow assume that owls are their competitors in insect feeding. How they know it - do they observe owls hunting customs during night? And obviously it is not true while owls feed on mice, lizards etc, too... So they are not competitors at all.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 98 by PaulK, posted 03-02-2007 3:06 AM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 102 by PaulK, posted 03-02-2007 3:58 PM MartinV has replied
 Message 103 by MartinV, posted 03-02-2007 4:08 PM MartinV has not replied

MartinV 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5828 days)
Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 103 of 213 (387773)
03-02-2007 4:08 PM
Reply to: Message 101 by MartinV
03-02-2007 3:47 PM


Re: Mobbing
quote:
However, that's not what occurred. The K/T extinction didn't remove 75% of the individuals from each species, it removed 75%-85% of all existing species.
Nice you answered me at last. I supposed you had communicated only with Chiroptera on my issue.
I quote the fact that 85% of marine Orders survived K/T extinction. I am not any expert, but I give you an example. If nowadays meteorite kills 95% of mammalian species and yet 85% of mammalian Orders survive I will say nothing happened. It means this - there will be still some living bat species, some living whale species, some living rodent species, some living carnivora species, some living primates etc... There will be very great diversity of animals (even if 95% of species died and each Order preserved only 2 species instead of 180) that should occupy emptied niches. Because there are still left some aquatic mammals, some flying mammals, some predators, some ungulates etc... They do not have to evolve again. All basic "body plans" that are characteristic for Order survived.

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MartinV 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5828 days)
Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 105 of 213 (387776)
03-02-2007 4:38 PM
Reply to: Message 102 by PaulK
03-02-2007 3:58 PM


Re: Mobbing
quote:
How about avoiding predators ? Accordign to the same study three times as many bats were attacked by predators as were mobbed by non-competing songbirds. Surely that is a better reason. Perhaps there is less competition for their preferred food, too.
So we should suppose that predators prefer somehow bats instead of other diurnal birds. Otherwise diurnal birds would became nocturnal animals too. Using darwinistic logic.
My point is this - humans do not like bats. It's old medieval tradition that bats were nailed on entry-doors down heads (only bats, no birds). This hatred has some psychological reason. If we omit psychological reasons in nature we might lost plausible explanations as well. It's like to explain force between magnets by allmighty gravity (=nocturnal mode of life is caused by allmighty struggle for survival).

This message is a reply to:
 Message 102 by PaulK, posted 03-02-2007 3:58 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 106 by PaulK, posted 03-02-2007 4:55 PM MartinV has replied

MartinV 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5828 days)
Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 107 of 213 (387780)
03-02-2007 5:16 PM
Reply to: Message 106 by PaulK
03-02-2007 4:55 PM


Re: Mobbing
quote:
I guess that's more MartinV logic.
It's not only my logic. It's a logic of many scientists too. One of the most famous who took into consideration "psychological" motives of animals is former professor of zoology and head of Basel University evolutionary anti-darwinist professor Adolf Portmann (friend of C.G.Jung). See - if you like - my posts to professor John Davison on Brainstorm:
http://www.iscid.org/...ubb-get_topic-f-6-t-000370-p-32.html

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 Message 106 by PaulK, posted 03-02-2007 4:55 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 108 by Chiroptera, posted 03-02-2007 5:24 PM MartinV has replied
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MartinV 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5828 days)
Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 109 of 213 (387788)
03-02-2007 5:39 PM
Reply to: Message 108 by Chiroptera
03-02-2007 5:24 PM


Re: Bingo!
quote:
I was thinking that this nutty idea had a familiar nuttiness about it.
Jung said that he had to accept independent "soul" as driving force in human behaviour. Maybe Dawkins with his "climbing mount improbable" and "selfish gene" is more successful in treating mental diseases as Jung's school.

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Replies to this message:
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MartinV 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5828 days)
Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 114 of 213 (388092)
03-04-2007 3:43 PM
Reply to: Message 97 by Wounded King
03-02-2007 2:46 AM


Re: Mobbing
quote:
This isn't like mimicry where there is a whole lot of genetics available for us to explore, this is a complex behaviour requiring a sizable population of birds which about which we know little in the way of behavioural genetics and small potential in terms of manipulability of those genetics.
  —Wouded King
It's just like mimicry. It doesn't matter if we know genetics behind the phenomenon or not. Genetics explains nothing. If we know that behind developmnet of "eyspots" on butterfly wings is nucleotide chain of C-C-C-G-U-T-A-A...or if it is chain T-T-T-U-C-G-C-G...or it is C-A-T-C-U-G-G-G-... who cares? What we percieve are often perfect patterns, artifical ones. We percieve structure, forms, often beauty. Of course there are pigments, refraction of light etc... There are also genes (A-C-T-U-...) in which information is stored.
If we listen music the mechanism how music is coded on CD doesn't explain the beauty of music at all.
--------------------
More in article on Portmann:
Transcending Darwinism in the Spirit of Goethe's Science:
A Philosophical Perspective on the Works of Adolf Portmann.
Hegge Article

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Replies to this message:
 Message 115 by AZPaul3, posted 03-04-2007 4:58 PM MartinV has replied

MartinV 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5828 days)
Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 116 of 213 (388268)
03-05-2007 1:23 PM
Reply to: Message 115 by AZPaul3
03-04-2007 4:58 PM


Re: Mobbing
quote:
. then natural selection through predatory action culls out a lot of the former two leaving a preponderance of the latter. Over millennia the result is an entire species of nice pretty and useful eye-spots.
This has been already discussed on mimicry thread. We know related species of butterflies of which one possess eyspots and other do not.We also know that on the same area live and thrive species with eyspots and without eyspots. Look around on meadow in summer - you will notice very different colourfull species on the same place. It's hardly to believe (for anti-darwinist like me) that all of these gay and bright patterns are outcome of merciless struggle of life. And that they are outcome of selection. And all of them have color patterns that are best adapted to given area - patterns are so different you know. We can discern them very well, not even vision-oriented birds. You can also read on "Mimicry and neodarwinism" summary of the research that eyspots have no aposematic effect on predators.
quote:
C-C-C-G-U-T-A-A = messy pre-proto-eyespot
T-T-T-U-C-G-C-G = discernable well-formed eye-spot
C-A-T-C-U-G-G-G = Beautiful fully-formed realistic eye-spot
There is no doubt that there are genes behind eyspots. But genes cannot explain us why eyspots exist and how other animals percieved them and what is their function. So the question if eyspots are developed using T-T-T-A-G... or C-A-T-C-U-... nucleotide sequences is irrelevant. The chain of these letters doesn't ellucidate the meaning and function of eyespots. Or is there any scientific rule that we may from chain C-T-C-T-A-... somehow a priori deduce that we have to do with eyspot code? - I suppose in each butterfly species these formula of eyespots is different. Even if such formula exists (I doubt about it) does it help us to underestand how eyspots are percieved by - let say birds? How it functions in given niche?
Such information is as useless as information that this my post is coded in ASCII by 0010101000100101001110.... You will read and underestand (I hope) my text because of words you see and not because some binary codes 100111... are behind them as their technical code. Such information wouldn't help you to underestand meaning of a written text at all.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 117 by crashfrog, posted 03-05-2007 1:27 PM MartinV has replied
 Message 118 by Omnivorous, posted 03-05-2007 2:23 PM MartinV has replied

MartinV 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5828 days)
Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 119 of 213 (388295)
03-05-2007 2:25 PM
Reply to: Message 117 by crashfrog
03-05-2007 1:27 PM


Re: Mobbing
Of course. But we should be aware also of wing patterns in "mimetic rings". These rings are made by models and their different mimimcs. So there will be the same butterfly wing patterns and many different coding chains in different species. Yet identifying these nucleotide sequences in different species wouldn't help us to explain why the mimetic ring originated.

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MartinV 
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Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 120 of 213 (388306)
03-05-2007 3:27 PM
Reply to: Message 118 by Omnivorous
03-05-2007 2:23 PM


Re: Mobbing
quote:
If you have a rebuttal in another thread, you should link to that specific post: you are presenting your case here, and it is not my job to go chasing through your other posts, especially when the topic is mammals and your reference is to butterflies.
We discussed the issue more in details there. So it is not necessary to discuss it here in another examples. While coding in Nature are the same using A,G,C,T nucleotids it doesn’t matter if we discuss patterns on Zebra, Giraffe, Tiger or Butterflies. Darwinists see in each of these patterns selection. Yet other conception is self-representation (die Selbstdarstellung) of species. It is more credulous explanation, why we obviously do not observe any advantage/disatvantage of such color patterns. They are neutral as to survival as well as to mating choice. Clouding the problem by genetics have no sense. It doesn’t help us to underestand if patterns have cryptic/mimetic/no meaning. It have no sense to obfuscate discussion with claim that we do not know genetics behind the phenomenon of patterns. Even if we know it (A-G-C-G-T-...), it will not help us.
I know that it comes from an author with a particular level of mathematical and technological accomplishment.
A,G,C,T uses primitive cells as well as humans. It's same with writing here - all of us use here the same coding and same logic of let say XML. While all of us are using same de/ciphering to binary codes it wouldn't help to better underestand the meanining of the text if you study next the text also it's binary "0100101101" representation. So while "mathematical and technoligal accomplisjment" is the same throughout genes as well as internet texts it will not add any information.

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 Message 118 by Omnivorous, posted 03-05-2007 2:23 PM Omnivorous has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 121 by Omnivorous, posted 03-05-2007 5:51 PM MartinV has replied
 Message 134 by RAZD, posted 03-10-2007 2:57 PM MartinV has replied

MartinV 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5828 days)
Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 125 of 213 (388970)
03-09-2007 1:42 PM
Reply to: Message 122 by derwood
03-07-2007 12:39 PM


Re: Marine K-T extinctions and opportunity
See now this is interesting - I respond directly to one of Davison's claims and it is implied that I am unfamiliar with his arguments, yet here you are quoting/paraphrasing Davison, so clearly you are familiar with Davison's rantings/writings. So, whose claims are you arguing for - Davison's or Broom's? Because they are NOT the same.
Of course they are same. Broom and Davison state that evolution is over.
So, which is it? Did Broom claim both? Or did Broom claim no new Orders in 30 million years, and Davison claim no new Genera in 2 million years? I ask because when I referred specificially to Davison's claims, which was purportedly the topic of this thread (or at least the basis for it), I was accused of not knownig his claim.
It seems that this question doesn't give you a rest. Of course this is a great puzzle - who said what an when. If we know it exactly we should solve the problem if evolution is over immediately.
As a systematist of sorts, I see a big problem with relying on arbitrary concepts like what a group of organisms is classified as as a means of arguing against evolution.
If you think that bats, whales, rodents, elephants are arbitrary classification you should - as systematist - propose another division that would better fit into darwinistic concept. Maybe to give whales, dogs and rabits into one Order Lagocarnceta - and we could see that new Order originates just at the beginning of 21 century.

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MartinV 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5828 days)
Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 126 of 213 (388972)
03-09-2007 1:49 PM
Reply to: Message 121 by Omnivorous
03-05-2007 5:51 PM


Re: Mobbing
Do you believe an arctic animal that sheds its white winter coat too soon is unaffected by the loss of camouflage?
That's another problem of darwinism - it see only extremities in this case. Of course coloration of some species may have cryptic function. The problem is that let say such species made only 0,5% of all species. Question remains if random mutation is reason of it.
99,5% of species have "normal" coloration which is neutral. Some of them have even conspicuous color that should be explaind away using great darwinistic fancy.
So why are swans white?

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Replies to this message:
 Message 127 by Parasomnium, posted 03-09-2007 4:58 PM MartinV has replied
 Message 130 by bluegenes, posted 03-10-2007 5:32 AM MartinV has replied
 Message 131 by Quetzal, posted 03-10-2007 7:47 AM MartinV has replied

MartinV 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5828 days)
Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 128 of 213 (388998)
03-09-2007 5:39 PM
Reply to: Message 127 by Parasomnium
03-09-2007 4:58 PM


Re: Colouration of species
The more beautifully coloured the bird, the better its chances of being chosen as a mate.
And the better chance that male progeny will attract attention of some predator. It's interesting that female choice goes so often against fitness of the species, isn't it? And yet natural selection didn't select females progeny with lesser demands to gay colour of males.
So darwinistic logic is this - color patterns has some aposematic/protective meannig, or it is selected by mating process.
Tertium non datur - as Omnivorous says.
So whats the case of swan?
Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.

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MartinV 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5828 days)
Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 132 of 213 (389078)
03-10-2007 2:42 PM
Reply to: Message 130 by bluegenes
03-10-2007 5:32 AM


Re: Mobbing
They don't have to be. Swans can be aggressive and are good fighters, and the northern hemisphere ones may have developed the white colouring in order to appear larger to potential preditors. An extrovert strategy, being loud and bold. However, swan colouring could have been largely neutral evolution, as the existence of both mixed coloured and all black swans in the southern hemisphere might indicate. See link below.
Black swan - Wikipedia
Thanks for the link. It means that color of swans have no survival advantage - they can be white or black as well. Color of their plumage was not selected by "Natural selection" so in this case "Natural selection" is meaningless. It support thesis that "Natural selection" in many cases is no relevant explanation of coloration of species. Consequently "Natural selection" as explanation of evolution is in many cases only darwinistic fancy.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
 Message 137 by bluegenes, posted 03-10-2007 3:27 PM MartinV has replied
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