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Camouflage and Mimicry

Started by Virgule punctuation mark, July 28, 2009, 04:59:08 PM

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Daddy

Quote from: Virgule punctuation mark on July 30, 2009, 01:39:55 PM
I think I understand now, I was looking at this in the wrong way, I misunderstood the cause and effect aspect of evolution.
I always thought changes occur because of the need, rather than the solution fitting into the problem. Such as; "A giraffe's neck becomes longer over the generations because it works at getting higher leaves." rather than the way it works "a giraffe can reach higher leaves become some gain longer necks and are more successful." is this correct?
Yeah. The giraffe with the longer neck can reach more leaves, and would no longer have to compete for the leaves with the animals who ate from the bottom.

QuoteIt seems like such camouflage mechanisms would benefit all species significantly, though only some experience such changes and succeed in that evolutionary branch, I have a few more questions on my mind, but it would digress off the topic of the thread.
Two things completely slipped my mind earlier:

1. The generation cycle of insects is much shorter which speeds up this process even more than something like mammalian evolution. Mammals don't usually sexually mature for months at a minimum, usually years or decades. . Insects live less than a year generally, with month having months as a life cycle.

You take a mammal that has a generation cycle of 10 years and you only get 100 generations out of that in 1000 years.  An insect with maybe 4 cycles per year gets 400 generations out of the same time span. It's why insects seem to evolve so fast (lol pesticide resistance)

2. I completely forgot the other aspect of evolution: sexual selection. A bug who looks more leaf like is more likely to attract a mate, even accidentally since the mate will be looking for food and whatnot. The more leaf-like insect now has the benefit of not being eaten by a bird and drawing mates in closer.

QuoteThanks for the explanations.
giggle;

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