Mimicry: Please help me understand how

Completely unsupported assertion based on ignorance. You seem once again to be unaware of the wealth of research in the field, in this case that which looks into the relationship between cold shock and heat shock and their effects on gene expression. Its strange since your reference directly discusses several examples. What? That link is to an explicit discussion of how genetic research can help explain 'deep secrets of life', if you have to be melodramatic about it.You seem to have totally failed to pick up the point of the article, which is that the different phenotypes are the result of the interaction of the environment and the genotype.Waddington's 'Genetic Assimilation' posits that since there is the capacity for variation on the basis of environmental factors then when there is a consistent environmental factor affecting the phenotype that phenotype will be selected for on the basis of the genetic complement which has the correct interaction with the environment to produce it. The alternative form of 'Genetic assimilation' is when the re is a genetic component for the development of an environmentally stimulated characteristic, the example given in the article you link to is callus development, elements in the pathway of that environmental response can be altered so the characteristic manifests in the absence of the environmental cue.all you seem to have just done is illustrate my point, just giving references is pointless if you haven't read and understood them, and if reading that Gilbert article lead you to believe it was discussing the limits of developmental genetics then you have severe reading comprehension problems.TTFN,WKP.S. That is a great article, one of the clearest explanations of genetic assimilation I have come across.

Your responses are sometimes very instructive. Unfortunatelly it is not the case of your latest post. You focused your attention on "genetic assimilation" instead of "phenocopies" I wrote about. It is a little bit inaccurate to claim that the article supports your ideas. We are discussing non-darwinian explanation of phenomena of butterfly mimicry. As you may have noticed from the article - you have read it so carefully obviously, because you denigrated me - mainly three names were mentioned there:1) Waddington
2) Schmalhausen
3) GoldschmidtNo one of them can be called a "neodarwinist". If you like I will quote you some opinion about neodarwinism from Waddington and Schmallhausen (malgausen - even in Russian language if you like. His work is not very known, even though very interesting). Goldschmidt was a prominent saltationist, there is no doubt of it. So I don’t see reason for your enthusiam that those three great scientists with their experiments should support your neodarwinistic views.I don't see a point why you has written so long about "genetic assimilation" and calluses. It has nohing to do with phenocopies I wrote about. If you have had read the article more carefully (instead of denigrating my reading abilites) you may had been noticed this sentence:

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In this experiment, Waddington took advantage of an experimental phenomenon that is the converse of genetic assimilation: the phenocopy

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You can read - "converse of genetic assimilation". I agree. But I was not writing about genetic assimilation. The article in no way support you neodarwinistic explanation of secrets of life - even if you think it does.---Btw. one would say that all genetic assimilation stuff is an interesting way how to apply neodarwinism to facts that support lamarckism. Such experiments would support more "inheritance of acquired traits".
Many scientists support such view before 2WW - but it was not the case of mentioned Goldschmidt - but after 2WW such experiments are almost not done anymore.
But this is another story.Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.Edited by MartinV, : thoughts about lamarckism added.

Just re-read the last paragraph. Clearly the fixation of the phenocopy is also considered a form of genetic assimilation, although it is 'converse' in its acquirement to the initial example, the callus which Waddington. I addressed the fixation of the phenocopy first in my post before the callus example.One form is the change of the underlying genetic developmental mechanisms to stabilise a previously transitory environmental response, the other is the selection of a genetic background which maintains a particular phenotype, resembling the phenotype of some other species, in the presence of a constant environmental factor.Neither of these phenomena does anything to undercut the importance of genetics, they simply emphasise that the genetics must be studied in the context of their interactions with an organisms environment, a perfectly neodarwinian approach. Well I didn't say that, I said that the article doesn't present anything which doesn't support my neodarwinistic views, certainly not the experiments it discusses. One single phrase doesn't counter my point, that would actually require some reasoned argument. Why don't you try that instead of appealing to authority? I don't require Waddington, Goldschmidt and Schmalhausen to agree with me, I don't even require Darwin to agree with me. I have the benefit of a wealth of experimental evidence and genetic evidence which none of those scientists had so I can draw my own conclusions.TTFN,WK

One would say the more resemblance to an unpalatable model the more survival advantage of a mimic. One would suppose that most of the mimics are perfect ones. This is obviously not the case. The most mimics are imperfect. Either we are living in the period of "evolution in action" or another force explaining mimicry should be reconsidered:

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...consideration of the evolution of mimicry has been mostly confined to the evolution of good mimics, despite the obvious fact that most mimicry is of rather poor quality (Getty, 1985), and such poor mimicry is widespread in many Batesian mimetic systems (e.g. salticid spiders: Edmunds, 2000).

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What a mess governs in darwinian explanation of the above mentioned fact! I have written in my previous thread that even if mimicry in insect realm is known more than 150 years there is no plausible explanation of it yet. There are many neodarwinian "armchair" theories that contradict each other essentailly. It is very bold to presume that neodarwinism has explanation of mimicry.

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...More untested theories are not really a priority. Ideas about mimicry have been produced for at least 130 years, and the debris from them lie all around in the literature. Mimicry suffers more than most fields from a surfeit of armchair theorizing, often completely divorced from reality...

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Check it yourselves in modern summary of the phenomenon of mimicry. Birds are sometimes not mislead by mimics (Dlusski experiments) as selectionists so boldly claim:http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/...6/01/ImperfectMimicry.pdf

That is true. But sometimes, birds ARE mislead by mimics.You seem to believe that darwinists think that mimicry provides immunity from predators. This is obviously not the case.I have not studied the matter in any detail at all, so I am at great risk of oversimplifying this, but to me it seems very obvious.I'm not sure exactly what your problem with mimicry is. Do you not believe it works? Of course there will be examples of mimicry not always protecting a specimen, but that doesn't mean it never works. Even if it only works 1% of the time, there will be positive selection pressure.

Perhaps you should read the above mentioned article. The article mentioned Franz Heikertinger only in flight and he deserves more I would say. Franz Heikertinger was an Austrian entomologist who refuted selection as source of mimicry. I agree. It seems to be obvious at the first glance. But the problem is that the matter is very complicated. I addressed many problems here and at closed thread Mimicry and neodarwinismhttp://EvC Forum: Mimicry and neodarwinism -->EvC Forum: Mimicry and neodarwinism So why imperfect mimics are not improved by natural selection even more? The only force working against "positive selection pressure" is "kin selection", something very dubious as you can see from the article.

Well, a simple answer would be "because the selection pressure isn't big enough". But more to the point, what makes you say mimics aren't being improved? For all we know some species are well on their way to achieving perfect mimicry, they simply haven't got there yet.I must admit I haven't had time to read the article properly yet. It's 42 pages so I will need time to sit down properly (plus I'm pretty unfamiliar with a lot of the jargon).

But he cunningly disguised this so that no-one noticed it.

Why one "one" suppose that? Was "one" dropped on "one's" head when "one" was a child? As is, of course, the case. Nice rhetoric, shame about the facts.You remember facts? Those things real biologists like so much?You know, biologists? The people who get out of their "armchairs" and study biology, as opposed to the people who sit on their lazy arses posting lies and gibberish on Internet forums. If you believe that "selectionists" claim that mimicry is always successful, then you appear to have mistaken a stupid, clumsy, ugly straw man of your own construction for "selectionists".Which proves, I guess, that mimicry need not always be perfect. If you can mistake the idiotic garbage you've made up in your head for anything connected with mainstream biology, then obviously a resemblance need not be 100% ... or 50% ... or 1% ... in order to deceive a sufficiently myopic and dull-witted animal.

I agree with you.Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.

I don't like the way Dr. Adequate is responding to my posts. Does he obey the EvC rules?I suppose a man who describes insect predators as "myopic and dull-witted animal" which are probably responsible of stunning leaf-insect mimics that such a man does not have any right to call my reasoning " the idiotic garbage you've made up in your head".Thank you for your response.

Upon review, I would suggest that Dr Adequate tone down the sarcasm and improve the level of substance in his replies.Any replies to this message should go to the "General discussion..." topic, link below. You may get a 24 hour suspension if you reply in this topic rather than that topic.Also, to Martin: Other admins may think otherwise, but my opinion is that your complaint should also have gone to the "General discussion..." topic, complete with a link back to the message(s) in question (important!). That topic is for discussion of admin actions, but (IMO) it is also for discussion of admin inactions and to point possible problems out to the admins. Besides, there the complaint won't get buried and not noticed.Adminnemooseus

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That does not seem to have any relevance to anything I said. You raise the point that most mimicry is not perfect which I agree with. That is nothing to do with the fact that mimicry is more than just having similar colouration and the challenge to explain other mimics with 'transformation rules' rather than natural selection.

Have you presented a specific example of this?

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