Mimicry: Please help me understand how

Because my stance is that coloration of insects play no role in their protection. I am presenting some arguments that wasps do not possess warning coloration. We have work it out first. Mimicry of wasps is the second step. If it shows up that natural selection play no role in maintaining of aposematism of models there is no need to believe it plays any role as driving force in mimicry of wasps.So the question I am interested about your opinion is this: If aposematism has some warning meaning why we observe harmless wasps to be aposematics?And vice versa - Why we observe stinging poisonous wasps having black or brown color which are considered cryptic (black wasps, you know)?I do not see the forces behind the curious phenomenon. Last time you answered that there is some kind of trade off looking more waspish and being fast in imperfect wasps' mimics. I don't think you have any evidence for it but I appreciate that it accords with your theory very well. In the mentioned case of wood wasps I am lost again what could be the darwinian explanation of it.

RAZD at Egg burier animals question:http://EvC Forum: Egg burier animals question -->EvC Forum: Egg burier animals question I have used arguments of McAtee from US Agriculture Survey department who summarized the greatest research about stomachs of birds ever done - 80.000. Wasps were eaten surprisingly often according McAtee to have any warning meaning. I have used arguments of Heikertinger who after 40 years of denying neodarwinian explanationon of mimicry summarized his arguments in his book ""Das Raetsel der Mimikry und seine Loesung - Eine kritische Darstellung des Werdens, des Wesens und der Wiederlegung der Tiertrachthypothesen Jena 1954"Heikertinger arguments about warning coloration of wooden wasps that are harmless and cryptic coloration (brown, black) of poiosonous wasps has not been adressed from your part. See my previous post 196.I suppose I have brought a lot of arguments. Your only answer is almost the same - whatever the facts are, there must be always some "small survival advantage" of looking waspish. You don't have other afguments than "small survival advantage". I don't abuse you that you know little about the problem and systematics of Hymenoptera and their supposedly mimics.I am only disapointed that you you have the audacity to call me "troll" and my arguments "circular". That's really unbelievable. Obviously "small survival advantage" is no way "repetitive arguments" even if you repeat it ad nausea in every thread.

Still no answer to my question about harmless wooden wasps? What is the reason of warning conspicuos coloration of them if they cannot hurt? What kind of force is maintaining their coloration? Any mysterious neodarwinian "small survival advantage"?Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.

The colouration of some insects may well play no role in their protection. Potential examples of this are not relevant to the topic though. Then let's look at those wasps that are proposed to have colouration that serves as a warning, and not at those that don't. It might be mimicry or it might not, but it is not relevant to whether or not the colouration of noxious wasps is aposematic. It doesn't matter what the explanation of it is for this topic unless it is proposed to deter predators - in which case it might be mimicry which would make it on topic.

I know well that it's you who determine what is the topic or not. I have been warned already not to continue using my evidence here.But you didn't answer why there are so many wasp species which are black and brown. Either they don't need to signal their poisonous qualities or predators better remember black or brown than aposematic black-yellow stripes.Edited by MartinV, : grammar

The topic is about mimicry. If you aren't talking about mimicry you aren't on topic - how is that not clear? It isn't anything to do with me determining anything. There are lots of non-noxious wasps for a start.There is no requirement for warning colouration to evolve in insects that are noxious, as I have answered on a number of occasions. They are irrelevant to this topic unless you want to discuss mimicry of these insects...for instance we could talk about ants that mimic other species of ant and invade their nests. That is mimicry and there is no warning colouration there.

The problem of bright coloration of catterpilars was a puzzle for Darwin. As far as I know he insisted on natural selection even if in this case it doesn't work. He said somethig like " I will believe in Natural selection even if in this case (bright coloration of caterpillars) it is not valid explanation of the phenomena". (According antidarwinian evolutionist Heikertiner.)I cannot find out his letters about the topic which he discussed with Wallace and Bates. Why this one is unavailable?| Darwin Correspondence Project

I am ready. Do you know that there are beetles living in cavers that look like ants? They have no way the same predators as ants but they look like them. Obviously predators play no role in their ant-like morphology.Aphaenops vandeli or plutoFree Pages Personnelles: Erreur 404 - Document non trouvéFree Pages Personnelles: Erreur 500 - Erreur interne du serveurYou know some systematics already discussed these supposedly "ant mimics" in the beginning of the 20 century.

Sounds like an interesting direction to take the thread. Do you have anything more on them than a couple of jpgs?

I've found it finally. Darwin solving the problem of aposematism 1867 wrote:

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Bates says the most gaudy caterpillar he ever saw in Amazonia (of a Sphinx) was conspicuous at the distance of yards from its black and red colouring whilst feeding on large green leaves. If anyone objected to male butterflies having been made beautiful by sexual selection, and asked why should they not have been made beautiful as well as their caterpillars, what would you answer? I could not answer, but should maintain my ground.

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The last sentence is significant. Can you imagine a physicist or a mathematician pronouncing such a credo?http://infomotions.com/...nberg/dirs/1/5/9/9/15997/15997.htm

He said nothing of the sort.

That wasn't Darwin 'solving' the problem, it was Darwin stating that he was unable to solve the problem and asking for some input. The response from Wallace was essentially 'aposematism':

quote:

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I had then just been preparing for publication (in the _Westminster Review_) my rather elaborate paper on 'Mimicry and Protective Colouring,'

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The letter itself is lost, but clearly Wallace was the best person to ask this of given he had just completed a paper on it.and Darwin replied:

quote:

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My dear Wallace,--Bates was quite right, you are the man to apply to in
a difficulty. I never heard anything more ingenious than your
suggestion, and I hope you may be able to prove it true. That is a
splendid fact about the white moths; it warms one's very blood to see a
theory thus almost proved to be true.[57] With respect to the beauty of
male butterflies, I must as yet think that it is due to sexual
selection

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So, he was confident that selection would provide the answer, he asked an expert in the relevant field and received an answer. That is very telling - it tells me that Darwin was both modest and smart. I can not only imagine a physicist saying something like 'I don't know the exact answer, but I am confident that the theory is capable of explaining it - you have studied this field more than me...what do you think?', but I've seen it actually happen.Likewise with mathematicians, only in a different way.

I know the whole story of conspicuous catterpilars as Heikertinger had written about it. First Darwin visited Bates and he didn't know the answer (1867). Bates reccomended Darwin to ask Wallace. Wallace responded Darwin that he (Darwin) was the man who always know the right answer. But he (Wallace) had thought that conspicuous coloration had some "warning" meaning. So those three famous men came to the conclusion that the problem could be explained by "unpalatability" of catterpillars. Actually Bates himself proposed such theory many years ago (Bates 1861) in his mimicry concept of the conspicuous coloration of butterfly Leptais .So those great three men reinvented in 1867 again the theory of warning coloration proposed by one of them in 1861.---Franz Heikertinger: Das Raetsel der Mimikry und seine Loesung, Jena 1954, page 16-17. Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.Edited by MartinV, : source

Did you have a point?

From medical point of view Darwin, Wallace and Bates were perhaps all sclerotics in 1867. Is there any other plausible explanation of their discussion?