Butterfly Unlocks Evolution Secret

Anonymous Coward writes "The BBC has an article about a dramatic discovery in the quest for understanding evolution. From the article: 'Why one species branches into two is a question that has haunted evolutionary biologists since Darwin. Given our planet's rich biodiversity, "speciation" clearly happens regularly, but scientists cannot quite pinpoint the driving forces behind it. Now, researchers studying a family of butterflies think they have witnessed a subtle process, which could be forcing a wedge between newly formed species.'"

Comments

Wasn't this obvious?

[nokilli]

Mutations occur, and when they occur in parallel for members of the same species, and those mutations survive into succeeding generations, you achieve speciation. End of story. What am I missing?

Now, if you want to talk about butterflies and evolution, then answer for me how it is that butterflies could have evolved in the first place. You're talking about a two-stage organism here, one stage does nothing but eat, the other stage does nothing but procreate. Which came first?

If it was the caterpillar, how is it that it suddenly figures out how to create a cocoon, lay dormant for a winter, then emerge as a completely different creature? They obviously had the means for procreation on their own, so why bother becoming a butterfly?

If it was the butterfly, why even bother with the caterpillar stage? If you can already fly around and stuff, why bother crawling?

People cite all these other examples trying to bring down evolution, and to me they never succeed, it's obvious to me for instance how eyes evolved. But caterpillars turning into butterflies still boggles my mind.
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Why didn't you know?

Re:Wasn't this obvious?

[Got Laid, Can't Code]

No, it's non-obvious. You missed the point--the cohabiting species have special marks which allow them to choose to mate only with their own species instead of interbreeding. It isn't chance, it's choice.

As for the caterpillar/butterfly thing, it is mysterious, but I'd like to point out that some of the simplest animals on earth go through life stages. Jellyfish, for example, hydrae, and many other invertebrates go through various stages of life. Amphibians do this as well.

As far as I can tell, the reason behind it is a reproductive strategy. The butterfly, and other insects, has hundreds of offspring, only a few of which will survive to adulthood and then have hundreds more offspring.

Humans do not go through such dramatic stages as a butterfly, but a butterfly might be amazed to find out that humans survive for 13 years before reaching reproductive age!

Re:Wasn't this obvious?

[iamplupp]

"If all offspring have the same number of genes as their parents, and all species on earth are evolved from one original life form, shouldn't all creatures have the same number of genes? Are there any theories out there regarding how genes are added or subtracted over time?"

There are many mechanisms for adding, changing, and subtracting genetical information (translocations, mutations, deletations, insertions, non-disjunction etc etc. In the vast majority of cases the results are death for the offspring but in a rare few cases it results in viable and even rarer, a better adapted offspring. For an everyday example: People with Downs Syndrome have either an extra 23rd chromosome or a robertsonian translocation with pretty much the same added genetic material as a result. That means they have roughly 2 percent more genes than other people...

And racism?

[mcrbids]

I wonder if this has any impact on the view of racism?

Racism is a *very* touchy subject, and I may get flamed just for bringing it up, but doesn't this sound like butterfly racism? If this were, in fact, a provable, natural, biological mechanism, then, wouldn't we, as biological organisms, be falling prety to much the same effect? Isn't racism a social form of speciation?

What impact would this have on the ACLU? Hiring quotas? The civil rights movement in general?

I'm not suggesting that racism is good. But, might these be related?

Re:Intelligent Design, explained Intelligently

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, how about this:

Wave two pencils in front of a person, about 30cm apart. Then, have them cover one eye and step away slowly, while looking at one pencil tip, until they can't see other due to their blind spot.

Now, ask a squid to do the same thing.

Guess what? Squids have no blind spot, because the optic nerve and blood vessels connect to the eye without interrupting the potosensitive cells.

An intelligent designer (when hypothesizing that the designer was the same for both) would not have produced a defective eye for humans when they designed it properly the first time (only the day before).

Of course, not only humans have a blind spot; all vertbrates do. Likewise, many creatures other than squids do not suffer from blind spots-encumbered vision.

You can easily disprove intelligent design, because both "intelligent" and "design" (not to mention the other attributes of the particular designer that most folks seem to have in mind) imply certain conditions that their designs would have to exibit relative to other designs by that same author.