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Author Topic:   Mimicry: Please help me understand how
MartinV 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5828 days)
Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 46 of 241 (419318)
09-02-2007 3:11 AM


See neodarwinism mimicry everywhere?
We are a little bit in scholastical dispute over mimicry. We should give some examples and express our positions more clearly.
In the previous article authors and scientists saw "imperfect" wasp-mimics almost everywhere - that's probably why it's explanation was so messy.
Another position is that mimicry is often only neodarwinian invention - Franz Heikertinger was a prominent proponent of it.
Probabaly in many cases we are facing only the fact of covergence and chance.
Darwinism often support it's view by presenting "stunning" examples
of mimics. One of them is "wasp-mimic" Trochilium apiforme - I don't know it's english name, but here is the picture:
trochiliumapiforme
Anyway we should be aware that family Sessidae is characterised as clearwing moths and involve more than 600 different species. Some of them is to be found at wikipedia:
Sesiidae - Wikipedia
See especially Bambecia chrysidiformis. I would say even having transparent wings and yellow band there is no way resemblance to wasps.
So the point is this: How is it possible that 600 different Sessidaes species are often more common and outnumber "mimic" Trochilium? Are we to accept an implausible idea that all of them are imperfect mimic of wasps? Or was there strong selective pressure on Trochylium to look like wasp, but the other species of the family have other protection? What?
So the outcome should be this one - the range, extent of different colors of Sessidae is so great that Trochylium apiforme would exists in the same coloration and shape even if there were no wasps on the Earth.
Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.

Replies to this message:
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Vacate
Member (Idle past 4600 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 10-01-2006


Message 47 of 241 (419324)
09-02-2007 4:01 AM
Reply to: Message 46 by MartinV
09-02-2007 3:11 AM


Re: Mimic S. myopiformis?
We should give some examples and express our positions more clearly.
I am still unclear of your position.
- Do you think that there are no mimics?
- There are mimics but predators are not fooled?
- If there are 600 species of moth one should be colored/shaped like a wasp simply based on variety? Does this apply to all species that number 600 or greater?
- Is the wasp example fundementally the same idea you would use to explain the leaf mimicing insects?
- Why do we call them leaf mimics if not for being fooled? Do you think this could be some type of advantage to them?
I re-read all your posts on this thread and I simply cannot understand your position.

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 Message 46 by MartinV, posted 09-02-2007 3:11 AM MartinV has replied

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Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 48 of 241 (419438)
09-02-2007 6:39 PM
Reply to: Message 46 by MartinV
09-02-2007 3:11 AM


Re: See neodarwinism mimicry everywhere?
In the previous article authors and scientists saw "imperfect" wasp-mimics almost everywhere - that's probably why it's explanation was so messy.
You haven't really explained what was messy about Gilbert's explanation, assuming that is the article you mean, it may interest you that he has authored a more recent paper on imperfect mimics focusing on the preferences of pigeons (Bain et al., 2007).
I did find the final part of Gilbert's 2004 paper to be particularly amusing...
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, even in those who castigate such theorizing
In the previous article authors and scientists saw "imperfect" wasp-mimics almost everywhere - that's probably why it's explanation was so messy.
I agree that there can be cases of misattribution, I would certainly be hesitant to state that every one of the 600 species in the Sessidae family were close enough wasp/hornet mimics to gain a selecitve advantage, but then Wikipedia is hardly known for its circumspection and reserve.
Probabaly in many cases we are facing only the fact of covergence and chance.
Those would be exactly the factors which neodarwinism would consider to be responsible. The chance would be the mutational basis of the pattern variation and the convergence a result of common selective pressures on the mimic and target species. What basis would you, or Heikertinger, ascribe the convergence or the element of chance to.
Darwinism often support it's view by presenting "stunning" examples of mimics. One of them is "wasp-mimic" Trochilium apiforme
Care to support this, say with an example of some modern paper describing Trochilium apiforme as "stunning", or are the quotation marks just for effect?
So the outcome should be this one - the range, extent of different colors of Sessidae is so great that Trochylium apiforme would exists in the same coloration and shape even if there were no wasps on the Earth.
Based on what? Your wishful thinking? You single out Trochilium but the Synathedon species on the wikipedia page looks pretty similar in terms of its markings at least. We seem to have nothing but your armchair speculation that Trochilium is the only wasp mimic, although since you don't believe in mimicry you are presumably claiming it is just the only one that resembles a wasp.
Your theorising about what might exist in a world without wasps seems pretty divorced from reality.
TTFN,
WK

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


Message 49 of 241 (419732)
09-04-2007 2:06 PM
Reply to: Message 47 by Vacate
09-02-2007 4:01 AM


What is "darwinian" mimicry in fact?
I am still unclear of your position.
- Do you think that there are no mimics?
- There are mimics but predators are not fooled?
- If there are 600 species of moth one should be colored/shaped like a wasp simply based on variety? Does this apply to all species that number 600 or greater?
- Is the wasp example fundementally the same idea you would use to explain the leaf mimicing insects?
- Why do we call them leaf mimics if not for being fooled? Do you think this could be some type of advantage to them?
I re-read all your posts on this thread and I simply cannot understand your position.
Many people are unaware what mimicry actually means. I was one of them. I don't know the modern definition, but I somehow agree with Heikertinger - every mimicry has to have three floors:
1) there is a reseblance to other species.
2) This resemblance give some advantage to species.
3) This resemblance aroused due Natural selection.
Because I sometimes challenge first, second or third part in the given case of supposedly mimic phenomenon it may seems messy.
Obviously a resemblance without giving a protective value is no mimicry.
Protective value of mimicry which evolved due some transformations
and not due natural selection is problem for itself (as is the previous case of so called imperfect wasp mimicry).
My position is that natural selection play no role in mimicry and no role in the evolution.
Every "mimicry" should be closely studied as Heikertinger did it. Because he described in detail also wasp and leaf mimicry and challenged it I hope I will give you answer about leaf mimicry soon.
If you know German I will post you a link to Heikertinger work about ladybugs. Heikertinger checked darwinists experiments with ladybugs with other beetles. Selectionists observed that some beetles in presence of ladybugs died (secrets of ladybugs should be poisonous for them). Heikertinger observed the opposite phenomenon - ladybugs were mercilessly eaten by those beetles.
Because ladybugs are very colorfull darwinists need some explanation of it. Of course they have only one explanation - ladybugs are aposematic because they are poisonous. Bur theory is theory and facts are facts. Facts are science, not preconcieved armchair theories of Darwin, Bates, Wallace and Dawkins - those men who tried to explain so-called mimicry via natural selection.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 50 of 241 (419739)
09-04-2007 2:43 PM
Reply to: Message 49 by MartinV
09-04-2007 2:06 PM


Re: What is "darwinian" mimicry in fact?
Because ladybugs are very colorfull darwinists need some explanation of it. Of course they have only one explanation - ladybugs are aposematic because they are poisonous.
And hey, look, we're right.
Bur theory is theory and facts are facts.
And isn't it great how the facts always fit our theory? This is what we call "empirical verification".
Facts are science, not preconcieved armchair theories of Darwin, Bates, Wallace and Dawkins - those men who tried to explain so-called mimicry via natural selection.
Ah yes, armchair science. As exemplified by Darwin's book The Voyage of the Armchair, and Wallace's work Travels in the Amazon and Malay Archipelago in an Armchair.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Nuggin
Member (Idle past 2492 days)
Posts: 2965
From: Los Angeles, CA USA
Joined: 08-09-2005


Message 51 of 241 (419745)
09-04-2007 3:05 PM
Reply to: Message 49 by MartinV
09-04-2007 2:06 PM


Natural Selection plays no role in evolution...
My position is that natural selection play no role in mimicry and no role in the evolution.
If this is your position then we can make some assumptions about your beliefs.
Either a) you don't believe in heredity, therefore the offspring of an individual have absolutely nothing in common with their parents. (in other words, you don't look a thing like your parents)
or b) you believe that individuals in a population can and do frequently reproduce after their death. (in other words, your mother died 5 years before you were born)
However, if you do, in fact, believe that dead individuals do not reproduce and that those that survive to reproduce have child which share their traits, you pretty much have to accept natural selection as a mechanism of evolution.

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 52 of 241 (419751)
09-04-2007 3:27 PM
Reply to: Message 50 by Dr Adequate
09-04-2007 2:43 PM


Re: What is "darwinian" mimicry in fact?
Ah yes, armchair science. As exemplifed by Darwin's book The Voyage of the Armchair, and Wallace's work Travels in the Amazon and Malay Archipelago in an Armchair.
I bow before you.

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


Message 53 of 241 (419758)
09-04-2007 4:21 PM
Reply to: Message 52 by crashfrog
09-04-2007 3:27 PM


Re: What is "darwinian" mimicry in fact?
quote:
I bow before you.
Don't ridicule yourself please. Dr. Adequate represents darwian aggresive ignorance sufficiently. You are on a higher level.
Wallace and Bates invented explanation of mimicry from the table. Wallace described Papilio butterflies flight as slow and weak and "we can make conlusion they posses some protection"... "Drusilla are common and have slow flight...it seems having some protection..." He had never been experimentally proved the phenomenon.
Bates 1861: "The reason of mimicry CANNOT be other as natural selection..."
Darwin adressed the problem of mimicry only from Bates. According Darwin only Belt "proved" it. Belt had made som experiments with apes.

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 54 of 241 (419761)
09-04-2007 4:44 PM
Reply to: Message 53 by MartinV
09-04-2007 4:21 PM


Re: What is "darwinian" mimicry in fact?
Dr. Adequate represents darwian aggresive ignorance sufficiently. You are on a higher level.
A level so high, apparently, you've never been able to respond meaningfully to my posts.
You're beyond any attempt at meaningful conversation, Martin. The immediacy and ease with which you play the "No speaka da English" game makes it impossible to converse with you. And, of course, you're a creationist, so even if you could successfully read posts written in English, you'd simply ignore their contents.

This message is a reply to:
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MartinV 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5828 days)
Posts: 502
From: Slovakia, Bratislava
Joined: 08-28-2006


Message 55 of 241 (419841)
09-05-2007 1:07 AM
Reply to: Message 54 by crashfrog
09-04-2007 4:44 PM


Re: What is "darwinian" mimicry in fact?
If you dont underestand any of the post I have written here just tell me. I would write it more precisely to meet the standards of English.

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


Message 56 of 241 (421912)
09-15-2007 12:32 AM


Ladybirds and neodarwinian "natural selection"
According neodarwinian teaching for coloration of ladybirds is responsible natural selection. But you have to believe in natural selection and know nothing about ladybirds and their predators to accept such explanation.
Some of these ladybirds are presented as models for mimicry for other species. It is obviously nonsense. "Aposematic" ladybirds are eaten by birds and by other predators as other beetles are. Birds don't know anything about supposedly poisonous qualities of ladybirds:
quote:
The defensive mechanisms which protect ladybird beetles (Coccinellidae) against predators are reviewed. Besides behavioural mechanisms, such as thanatosis and reflex bleeding, chemical defence mechanisms are playing a prevalent role.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/q466422173wh8457/
I am afraid no visualy oriented predator is scared by "reflex bleeding".
Franz Heikertinger discussed the "aposematic" issue of ladybirds
in Biologiscen Zentralblatt 1932 under the name "Die Concinelliden, ihr "Ekelblut", ihre Warntracht und ihre Feinde". Available at inet
http://www.zin.ru/animalia/Coleoptera/rus/ukropbib.htm
He adressed there all darwinian fantasies about ladybirds:
1) their poisonous defence (giving examples where a poison play no role for predators, even though we think it should).
2) their various coloration and patterns which obviously cannot be explained away ad hoc by natural selection.
3) giving results of his own experiments and list of all birds predators in which stomachs many rests of ladybirds had been found.
1
2
3
4
5
Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 57 of 241 (421920)
09-15-2007 1:14 AM
Reply to: Message 56 by MartinV
09-15-2007 12:32 AM


Re: Ladybirds and neodarwinian "natural selection"
MatinV, all the flatulent twaddle in the world won't get rid of the facts that:
(1) Ladybirds are poisonous.
(2) Predators avoid species with aposematic colouration.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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 Message 56 by MartinV, posted 09-15-2007 12:32 AM MartinV has replied

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 58 of 241 (421928)
09-15-2007 1:54 AM
Reply to: Message 53 by MartinV
09-04-2007 4:21 PM


Re: What is "darwinian" mimicry in fact?
Don't ridicule yourself please. Dr. Adequate represents darwian aggresive ignorance sufficiently.
Ah yes, the "aggressive ignorance" of someone who knows that Darwin and Wallace weren't armchair scientists. As opposed, I suppose, to the courteous wisdom of someone who pretends that they were.
Wallace described Papilio butterflies flight as slow and weak and "we can make conlusion they posses some protection"...
And he was absolutely right --- they are Batesian mimics.
"Drusilla are common and have slow flight...it seems having some protection..."
And golly gosh, he was right again! See Brand, J.M., Blum, M.S., Fales, H.M., and Pasteels, J.M. 1973b, The chemistry of the defensive secretion of the beetle, Drusilla canaliculata. J. Insect Physiol. 19:369-382.
Bates 1861: "The reason of mimicry CANNOT be other as natural selection..."
Oh look, Bates was right!
Have you ever noticed how evolutionists are always right?
Darwin adressed the problem of mimicry only from Bates. According Darwin only Belt "proved" it. Belt had made som experiments with apes.
Could we have that in English, please, and possibly with some references?
In the real world, which differs markedly from the fantasy world in your head, Darwin discussed forms of mimicry other than Batesian:
"Nor can I see any force in Mr. Mivart's difficulty with respect to "the last touches of perfection in the mimicry;" as in the case given by Mr. Wallace, of a walking-stick insect (Ceroxylus laceratus), which resembles "a stick grown over by a creeping moss or jungermannia." So close was this resemblance, that a native Dyak maintained that the foliaceous excrescences were really moss. Insects are preyed on by birds and other enemies whose sight is probably sharper than ours, and every grade in resemblance which aided an insect to escape notice or detection, would tend towards its preservation; and the more perfect the resemblance so much the better for the insect. Considering the nature of the differences between the species in the group which includes the above Ceroxylus, there is nothing improbable in this insect having varied in the irregularities on its surface, and in these having become more or less green-coloured; for in every group the characters which differ in the several species are the most apt to vary, while the generic characters, or those common to all the species, are the most constant." (Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species)
---
Could I also point out that in the 21st century we know rather more than people did in the 1860s, and that quoting from works of that date in an attempt to suggest that evolutionary explanations of mimicry are speculative or unproven is therefore very, very, very, very stupid.
Esecially when, in the light of modern knowledge, these early speculations turn out to be absolutely right in every respect.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Nuggin
Member (Idle past 2492 days)
Posts: 2965
From: Los Angeles, CA USA
Joined: 08-09-2005


Message 59 of 241 (421929)
09-15-2007 1:58 AM
Reply to: Message 56 by MartinV
09-15-2007 12:32 AM


All noise and no substance
Pretty pictures, but they don't have anything to do with your point.
You seem to be saying that despite the fact that these insects are poisonous, there's no reason an animal would choose to not eat it, but if you recall from earlier in this sentence, they are POISONOUS.
If you believe that natural selection is NOT responsible for the coloration, let's hear your hypothesis about what is responsible. If is magic elves with tiny paint brushes? Maybe magic angels with tiny paint brushes?
If you don't have a hypothesis, then nothing you have to say has any value whatsoever.
And, by the way, you still haven't answered my post about why you believe that dead parents have offspring that don't look like them.
Does the world you live in have even a tangiential relationship to reality, or are you just spinning off into never never land.

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


Message 60 of 241 (421931)
09-15-2007 2:15 AM
Reply to: Message 57 by Dr Adequate
09-15-2007 1:14 AM


Re: Ladybirds and neodarwinian "natural selection"
MatinV, all the flatulent twaddle in the world won't get rid of the facts that:
(1) Ladybirds are poisonous.
Poisonous for whom? 1 gram of insect poison Cantharidin for instance is enough to kill 20.000 kg of people, but only 7 kg of hedgehog species. Insect eating hedgehogs, crabs, frogs etc are almost unsensitive to the poison. Eating a beetle with this poison can kill you.
Many species of birds are completely unsensitive to the poison (Otis tarda).
Predators avoid species with aposematic colouration.
It is only bold darwinian pressuposition.
The facts are following - ladybirds have many predators, especially birds. To those predators their coloration is very convenient signal I would say.
In the North America they are eaten by species of Muscivora, Myiarchus, Sayornis, Myiochanes and especially Empidonax. About E.minimus wrote Beal (1912) that in their stomach only three beetle species were more present. Chapin (1925) researched Virco-species nourisment and concluded that Coccinelidae make 1/12 of their food income. In Vireosylva philadelphica they make more than 1/5 of beetles they ate. By V.gilva more than 1/2 of eated beetles and 1/12 of food income...
Vireo Huttoni: 5/8 of eated beetles...
There were once a much more greater research of stomach contents of birds. Csiki on Hungary during 1905-1915 reserched more than 2.000 stomachs of birds. He found there suprisingly great number of "aposematics" like wasps, ladybirds etc... I am afraid darwinists do not continue in such research any more. In the thread of Mimicry and neodarwinism I quoted McAtee who observed the fact, that stomach of some bird conained more "poisonous" models of wasps as their harmful moth mimics.
Such researches undermine unproved hypothesis of warning coloration of wasps, ladybirds etc. The only experiments and observations which are valid and which reflect reality are those outdoors, in the countryside.

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 Message 57 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-15-2007 1:14 AM Dr Adequate has replied

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