Hi again InGodITrust,
Mr. Jack, Wounded King and others have responded--without reservation--that kin selection is responsible ...
I find the concept of bugs having an awareness of kin to be somewhat problematical, and to me kin selection only works when one is aware of kinship at some level.
And kin selection is a form of natural selection.
Correct, the action of the one benefits the survival or reproduction of their kin.
But RAZD, you have the answer with the "neutral mutation." Neutral mutations can be used to fill in a lot of blanks, I would guess-- kind of a get-out-of-jail-free card. It doesn't seem to me that the spread of neutral mutations, in this case, can be considered natural selection. It is chance.
There are often disagreements when information is incomplete and conclusions are tentative - as is the case with much of science. Don't ask for absolute answers, as they are not the purview of science, rather they are the purview of people who think they know absolute truth/s.
Yes it is chance, a stochastic effect, that any mutation happens. One thing to keep in mind is that not all mutations are subject to selection when they occur. They can become beneficial or detrimental at a later date, either in conjunction with a later mutation or a change in the ecological opportunities. In one experiment it was determined that a neutral mutation enabled a later mutation to be beneficial.
Most mutations are neutral - they don't affect the selection of the phenotype either by reproduction or by survival - but they do add to the variety of the population to enable it to be more flexible in later responses to ecological changes.
If the foul taste came about de novo incrementally, or if it existed for another purpose but was later refined for defense, it still seems that if neutral mutations were involved, the taste would be a result of chance more than natural selection.
Natural selection has nothing to do with the appearance of the foul taste, or any other mutation, just with the effect on survival or breeding afterward, it is a response mechanism.
The taste would be due to the chemical makeup of various proteins, and could be due to a combination of several proteins, as what is being tasted is the "recipe" of the bug, not the individual molecules. So yes, it could build up over time in several layers of mutations.
To simplify the matter, I first thought of a population of bugs that tasted okay. Then one individual bug in that population turns up with a genetic mutation that gave it all-out horrible taste, that a predator would reject. This is unrealistic, because the development of the foul taste would probably come in increments, rather that all at once.
If the predator spit the bug out and it survived to breed, then natural selection has occurred, and the beneficial foul taste gets passed on. If the bug dies then it depends on the other bugs carrying the same mutation to spread it through neutral drift until selection on the population occurs.
Some molecules can have a significantly different taste with only one molecule change, urea for example.
Enjoy.
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