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Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Peppered Moths and Natural Selection | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
JonF Member (Idle past 168 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
1. First off, no the study does not rule out all the various factors that could have influenced whether lightly colored or darkly colored moths became more dominant as a result of soot. It could be something else entirely, perhaps another aspect of pollution, coincidence, etc,...
The statistics have been done. The correlation between pollution and relative frequencies of moth populations is very significant. It's not a coincidence. Perhaps another aspect of pollution ... but, if so, so what? The conclusion is that natural selection changed the population; exactly how this happened is an important question but is not going to change the primary conclusion. The statistics also demonstrate that bird predation is the major influence on the balance between the two types. There are probably other effects, and there is disagreement about those effects and their relative importance, but bird predation is #1.
2. Secondly, birds have the ability to see in the UV spectrum and the ignorance of that basic fact renders moot any conclusions about what birds actually see in this instance.
Nobody has made any conclusions about what birds actually see (there have been some hypotheses). The fact that birds can see in UV does not render the actual conclusions of the studies moot.
3. Peppered moths are nocturnal and so releasing them in the day-time to draw conclusions about their behaviour also makes the study based on faulty data.
Why? They were never recaptured before the next night, and sometimes two nights passed before recapture.
5. I have heard but not verified that these same experiments were repeated elsewhere in the world with the opposite results. As such, since the experiment is not repeatable, it falls down on that merit as well.
You heard wrong. The same experiments have been repeated elsewhere in the UK and in the U.S. with the same results. The results are repeatable and have been repeated. See Moonshine: Why the Peppered Moth Remains an Icon of Evolution, The peppered moth: a black and white story after all, FINE TUNING THE PEPPERED MOTH PARADIGM, and Recent History of Melanism in American Peppered Moths.
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JonF Member (Idle past 168 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
1. First off, no the study does not rule out all the various factors that could have influenced whether lightly colored or darkly colored moths became more dominant as a result of soot. It could be something else entirely, perhaps another aspect of pollution, coincidence, etc,... Unless someone can show where all of the other potential factors have been ruled out, please don't respond until you (evos here) provide that. Irrelevant. The conclusion is that natural selection, largely due to bird predation, changed the distribution of light and dark moths. It is not necessary to rule out all other protential factors to consider that conclusion justified.
2. Secondly, birds have the ability to see in the UV spectrum and the ignorance of that basic fact renders moot any conclusions about what birds actually see in this instance. It appears one study indicates UV vision reverses things, but perhaps I am misreading that. If you want to get into this subtopic, I'll answer you in that regard. Let's see the cite.
3. Peppered moths are nocturnal and so releasing them in the day-time to draw conclusions about their behaviour also makes the study based on faulty data. Please cite the studies that show statistics related to bird versus bat predation, day-light habits, etc....Releasing moths into the day-light where they are stunned by the change is not a valid approach. The moths were released in the morning about the time that moths are settling in for the day. As I psoted before, see Moonshine: Why the Peppered Moth Remains an Icon of Evolution, The peppered moth: a black and white story after all, FINE TUNING THE PEPPERED MOTH PARADIGM, and Recent History of Melanism in American Peppered Moths.
4. In reality, birds are not even the primary predator of peppered moths, but rather bats are. Bats method of sensing prey is totally different, and relies on sound waves and thus bats tend to capture moths in flight rather than while they are resting. This fact further makes the claims of the study to be somewhat fantastic in nature and without solid scientific standing. Please cite where bat predation factors are accounted for. Please demponstrate that it is necesary to accounht for bat predation. Since bats apparently do not select by color, the effect of bat predation would be to somewhat blur but not remove the effect of bird predation. If 95% of all moths are eaten by bats and 5% are eaten by birds, that's still enough for differential bird predation to affect the distribution of colors. So, you need to provide evidence of bat predation being more significant than bird predation and the statistical analysis that demonstrates that the effect of bat predation can remove the effect of differential bird predation.
. I have heard but not verified that these same experiments were repeated elsewhere in the world with the opposite results. As such, since the experiment is not repeatable, it falls down on that merit as well. You heard wrong. The same experiments have been repeated elsewhere in the UK and in the U.S. with the same results. The results are repeatable and have been repeated. See, I can repeat myself too. Don't bother to repeat yourself again until you've read my references. Yet again, see Moonshine: Why the Peppered Moth Remains an Icon of Evolution, The peppered moth: a black and white story after all, FINE TUNING THE PEPPERED MOTH PARADIGM, and Recent History of Melanism in American Peppered Moths.
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JonF Member (Idle past 168 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
If they are hard to find, where do they rest during day? Are these places accessible for birds to pick them? If it is so, what are the difficulties for a scientist to make a photo of them in their resting place? From Fine Tuning the Peppered Moth Paradigm:
quote:{Emphasis added} 34 years. He saw 47 moths, far more than any other researcher. Yup, they're hard to find and pose. Got any suggestions for how to get a light-colored moth and a dark-colored moth together in a well-lit area that demonstrates teh difference in camouflage?
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JonF Member (Idle past 168 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
Because we know, that some locusts (grasshopers) as Oeddipoda caerulescens or Oedipoda germanica change their colour on on wings during larval stage through vision channels (Suchantke:"Metamorphosen in Insektenreich"). Is this not also possible explanation for peppered moths? That peppered moths change color according environment (whatever the mechanism is) without any selective pressure from birds and that this case of peppered moths do corroborate neither darwinistic selectionism nor neodarwinism as theory. It is not a possible explanation. You should learn something about the subject before attempting to criticise. The peppered moth has been extensively studied, and individual moths do not change color over time or under any kind of pressure or environment. The statistics of the populations have been investigated in many experiments. The color differences are due to a mutation in a gene that causes melanin production. The "dark" allele is dominant, so a moth must have two "light" alleles to be light. The dark mutation is "recurrent", in that it arises anew once in a while; but, before industrialization, the dark moths were at such a disadvantage that the light moths were far in the majority. We know that the coloration is due to genetics and nothing else, and we know that dark and light moths are that way because of their alleles.
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JonF Member (Idle past 168 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
It may be then only unproven darwinistic assumption, that peppered moths are eaten during day by birds and that there exists selection pressure at all. From Peppered moth predation experiments:
quote: ABE: From the distinctly anti-evolution Jonathan Wells at Second Thoughts about Peppered Moths:
quote:{emphasis added} {end ABE}
I personally will be very glad to read some article about how "palatable" peppered moths really are, if it is convinient for birds (and simple) to look after them on bottom parts of branches in the canopy. Well, then, hie thee to a library and start with Kettlewells's 1953 and 1955 papers. So far you haven't done even an Internet search.
Some experiments in the aviary where birds have nothing else to choise for eating and where peppered moths are light accessible on wall is not of relevance. How do you know they had no other choices? How do you know how accessible the moths were? Even if there was nothing else to eat and the moths were accessible, why is it not relevant? It shows that birds will eat peppered moths and not avoid them. Edited by JonF, : Added quote from Wells
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JonF Member (Idle past 168 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
That's the conclusion of a new study by Michael Majerus, specifically designed to test the bird predation hypothesis.
A PDF transcription of his talk about it at ESEB in Uppsala is available at The Peppered Moth: The Proof of Darwinian Evolution. Hopfully the PowerPoint slides will be available soon and, of course, we look forward to a peer-reviewed publication. The Panda's Thumb has a blurb at Peppered Moths: We Told You So.
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JonF Member (Idle past 168 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
There's a new discussion of the state of the art things Peppered Moth at Panda's Thumb Beat'cha to it! Message 261.
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JonF Member (Idle past 168 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
Now both Majerus' script and PowerPoint presentation are available at Majerus Lab Evolutionary Genetics Group. Some highlights:
quote:
quote: quote:
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quote: Edited by JonF, : No reason given. Edited by JonF, : Slight table formatting cleanup
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JonF Member (Idle past 168 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
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JonF Member (Idle past 168 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
Avian vision models and field experiments determine the survival value of peppered moth camouflage
quote: At least as of now the full text can be downloaded.
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