Rapid microevolution in a butterfly

Researchers from Berkeley have observed the rapid spread of a trait amongst Blue Moon butterflies in Samoa. The trait concerned provides resistance to a bacterium that kills males in the egg. This trait has spread from being rare (at best) to being widespread in the population in a period of about a year on the island of Savaii.
See the Press Release for details.

The description does not represent macroevolution. This is describing selective pressures.

Can you explain the relevance of your comment ?

I'm guess I'm just waiting for the punchline. Something tells me that your mentioning of microevolution is the proverbial segue in to the introduction of macroevolution, and how its not so impossible to conceive that micro inevitably leads to macro.Am I jumping the gun?

---

"The problem of Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it is difficult and left untried" -G.K. Chesterton

Not only does this represent another fine example of natural selection operating on a population, it demonstrates rather nicely how the power of sexual selection can operate quickly in a species.Enjoy.

---

Join the effort to unravel AIDS/HIV, unfold Proteomes, fight Cancer,
compare Fiocruz Genome and fight Muscular Dystrophy with Team EvC! (click)

---

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Jumping the gun ? More like fantasising. This is a Links and Information topic. No further development of the topic was intended - and that his how this forum is meant to be used. If I had intended to developa nd discuss the topic further I would have gone through the proper procedure which starts with submitting to PNT.So you were attempting to preempt a post that was never going to come - and that you should have known was never going to come.

I don't thing, from my reading, that this is an example of sexual selection at all.The females are, IIRC, NOT selecting based on the resistance gene it is just that those with it are the only males surviving to breed. It appears that none or nearly none of the non-resistant males survive so the selection pressure is huge.

No, this isn't, but what it shows is that if sexual selection were in operation and 1% of the male population were selected for mating that the result would be a dramatic change in the population in short order.This is independent confirmation of how quickly sexual selection can affect a population, similar to the way the spread of introduced species confirm how quickly a small introductory populations spread across a continent demonstrates the mechanism for punk-eek.Enjoy.

---

Join the effort to unravel AIDS/HIV, unfold Proteomes, fight Cancer,
compare Fiocruz Genome and fight Muscular Dystrophy with Team EvC! (click)

---

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.