Mimicry: Please help me understand how

quote:

---

But there are also mammals that eat wasps so that "terrrible taste" wouldn't be so terrible as darwinists would like us to believe.
  —MartinV

---

I had a bad cough when I was a kid. Doc gave me this medicine that tasted so terrible I was almost literally sick. But my mom made me take it every day until the cough went away. Does that prove it didn't taste that terrible? No. It proves I wasn't given a choice.If an animal is faced with two options: 1. Eating something that tastes bad or 2. Going hungry, that is not really a choice, is it.I think you are the one with the memory problems here. No matter how many times you say that the neodarwinistic selection model doesn't work because some animals eat wasps, you forget that you can never find evidence for succesful mimicry in an animals stomach.

You brought up memory, I just asked for evidence that bird's don't have a good enough memory to support the hypothesis. You could not do it, you change the subject and now you are criticising me for addressing your points as you bring them up?Poor form, Martin. Yes you have. It was never in dispute, so it doesn't advance the debate. The article you linked to also pointed out that that mammals and birds consider different things untasty or tasty, so I fail to see your point. The important point, as far as we are concerned, in the article you linked to is that birds do find some things untasty and will avoid those things if given the choice. Another thread would be better for that, I'd imagine. However the simple answer would be that stings were presumably developed to protect the queen from predator attack; I haven't looked into it in any depth.

Sheesh.Trying to educate MartinV is like pouring water into a sieve.Yes, their chemical senses are "poor". This does not prevent them from learning to avoid unpalatable foodstuffs, as we know from multiple experiments. And there are also mammals that don't.Go eat a wasp, MartinV, and tell us how yummy it was.No? Birds are not the sole potential predators of wasps, anything that likes calories and protein, i.e. any animal, might happily crunch them up --- if it wasn't for the stings and the unpalatability, next question.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You find it "weird" that all the experiments in this field prove you wrong?I find it utterly inevitable. Prospective repellant, MartinV. They had something which they hoped would repel birds. It didn't repel all birds. What the heck you think this has to do with aposematism, I have no idea. This repellent was not produced by natural selection, was it? It wasn't a chemical secreted by an aposematic creature was it? As you yourself admit, natural selection is not the issue in this experiment. It's got damn-all to do with anything you're babbling about, has it?

quote:

---

Generally, if you offer a bird two food choices, and you add a
chemical to one that is so offensive to them that they will not take any of it in a choice situation, and then give them no choice but the flavored food, food intake will be normal over a 14-day period. You have to increase the offensiveness 10-fold to reduce food intake by 10%. Taste offensiveness is of little consequence when the test is of reasonable duration.

---

I, too, would eat unpalatable food if the alternative was starving to death.Which part of this do you not understand?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

That would be strange if it was true, but it's complete bollocks, isn't it?Say, do you avoid eating wasps only when you're in a cage? Do tell.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No you're not. You're extremely perplexed. You're baffled on a gargantuan scale. You are massively stymied, your puzzlement is titanic in its magnitude. You are discombobulated to the nth degree.This is because you're wrong.I am not even a little bit perplexed. This is because I have a view of nature that actually makes sense. You should try it some time.

quote:

---

The colored stripes contain pigment granules underneath the translucent cuticle where light sensila were detected (Ishay et al., 1986). These granules are cylindrical in shape and in Vespa orientalis they comprise of what seems to be spores of a symbiotic fungus (Ishay and Shmuelson, 1994).In the hornet the pigment is of a prominent yellow color but in other hornets or wasps the pigment can appear in various shades of green, beige, black (Vecht, 1957, 1959; Ishay et al., 1967; Kemper and D"hring, 1967; Wilson, 1971; Matsuura and Sakagami, 1973; Spradbery, 1973; Edwards, 1980; Akre et al, 1981; Brian, 1983; Matsuura and Yamane, 1990).

---

According this research it is spores of fungus that are responsible for the yellow stripes of Vespa orientalis.I am not sure if that shades of green, beige, black are also due to the color of spores of fungi. But it would be more simple explanation of difference of coloration of these Hymenoptera as those neodarwinian questionable "protective coloration" of them.One should be really blind not to ask why are wasps aposematic and bees almost cryptic when "aposematism" for poisonous bees should have given them the same "survival advantage".Fungi and coloration of some hymenoptera:http://scilib.univ.kiev.ua/article.php?27251http://www.desc.med.vu.nl/Publica....R_3.htm---
As to dr. Adequate, I don't read his posts anymore. His posts should probably gave some arguments or elucidate problems from darwinian point of view, so let his posts serve for discussion with other participants.

OK so you have provided the mechanism behind the colouration of some potential models. What has this got to do with with the fact that mimics have also utilized a mechanism for looking similar?

Yeah, if you want to hide from reality, you've gotta hide from me too.

What kind of mimics do you have on your mind? Some given species from Diptera or Lepidoptera? You know we should find out if the given "mimicry" is not pure chance of looking alike by transforamtion sequences which would exist also without wasp model. And we should also find out if birds are so mislead by it as neodarwinists are.

Whatever mimics you would like to discuss. Why limit ourselves? Indeed, we've discussed this before already. Why limit ourselves to bird predation? There are plenty of other mimics out there.

---

What has this got to do with my post?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

First we should perhaps agree in the cause and the origin of the aposematism of wasps. Bees venom is stronger that those of wasps and wasps do not have so much venom as bees have. Wasps use their venom often when preying (maybe their sacks are are full of venom in experiments in cages, something that doesn't occurs in the free - hence the difference of bird predation in cages and in the free. Just a thought.)Anyway you didn't answer to the question about non-aposematic coloration of bees. And the question is important, because it has been posed even in the article we discussed about:

quote:

---

Given that they are noxious, and birds learn to avoid them, why is the honeybee complex not aposematically coloured (Holloway, 1976) ?

---

So why?

No problem. What do you propose is the cause and origin of aposematism in wasps? I didn't see a question about non aposematic colouration of bees, only a question about the honeybee complex. I'm not sure what a honeybee complex is in this context. Are you suggesting that honeybees are not aposematically coloured, or are you suggesting their mimics aren't, or both?

Because so much of his gibberish depends on tacitly assuming that insects have no other potential predators except birds.

That must be a surprise to other insect species, arachnids, mammals, reptiles & amphibians that subsist on insects.