Assassinator
Posts: 479
Joined: Nov. 2007
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| Quote (Zachriel @ July 30 2008,17:41) | On the eyespots of butterflies and moths thread.
| Quote | | Eric Anderson: At present, it seems like we have just a bunch of stories about how creature A is camouflaged to avoid predators, and thus ensure survival, while creature B is not camouflaged to warn predators, and thus ensure survival. In either case, these are primarily stories, with so many exceptions on either end and such a tenuous link between the trait and the developmental adaptationist path that it strains credulity. |
Actually, we have what's commonly called 'data'.
* Paper moths that are conspicuous are attacked less frequently.
* Many toxic organisms are conspicuous.
* Predators avoid toxicity by avoiding conspicuous prey.
* Consequently, being conspicuous is an evolutionary advantage for toxic prey.
* When there are predators in the environment, then it's an evolutionary advantage for non-toxic prey to be either camouflaged or to look like toxic prey.
Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy... the fear to attack. — Dr. Strangelove
It doesn't do much good for prey to be toxic unless it's easily identified by predators to act as a deterrent.
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the... whole point of the doomsday machine... is lost... if you keep it a secret! — Dr. Strangelove |
Nice little personal anecdote about something similar.
A couple of years ago my grandparents got a pond, with a pretty collection of carp's or something like that, black and orange and mixed pretty equally divided. We also know that we've got great blue heron's over here who are notorious of emptying ponds (yet my grandparents have barely done anything to keep them away). Today I visited my grandma again, and I noticed that the color-frequency is drasticly different then when they started with the pond. There are barely any pure orange carps anymore, I only counted 1, maybe 3 mixed one's and the rest was pure black (wich were hard to count since I could barely see them). The ratio was, I think, 3 blacks for every none-black (including the baby fish) while at the beginning of the pond it was far more fifty-fifty.
Ofcourse it isn't rock-solid science, but it's really fun to watch things like that actually happen infront of your eyes.
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