Darwin backwards?

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What is it with ID proponents and gambling?  Or rather, what is it that makes people who play p0ker and roulette think that that gives them a relevant background for statistical hypothesis testing and an understanding of stochastic processes such as evolution?  Today, “niwrad”, has a post at UD, with one of the most extraordinary garblings of evolutionary theory I think I have yet seen.  He has decided that p0ker is an appropriate model this time (makes a change from coin tossing, I guess).

S/he begins:

I dedicate this short post to our great UD President Barry Arrington, who is a poker player.

Evolutionists usually claim that prerequisite for Darwinian evolution is a single self-replicating thing capable of heritable variations. From such thing evolution produced all life forms, from ameba to whales, by means of small random variations and natural selection.

Just for fun, we could metaphorically see evolution as a particular “poker game”, with the following correlations:

(1) The dealer deals shuffled cards to the players. This shuffling is analogous to the genotypic random variations.

OK, so each player is an organism. So far so good. And each has a different “genome” aka the hand of cards.

(2) The active players show their cards, and the owner of the best five-card hand wins. These players are analogous to the phenotypes, the organisms that fight for survival.

And the player herself is the phenotype. One organism survives.

(3) Players who fold and discard their cards are analogous to natural selection, by which traits that do not confer an advantage are discarded, while advantageous traits are selected for and are passed on

And all the others die.  We don’t seem to have any reproduction so far, so what happens next:

(4) Higher organisms have a number of cells ranging from 10^12 to 10^16. Roughly a five-card hand has a number of molecules of that order. Any card has a pattern which identifies the card value. In our poker/evolution metaphor the patterns in a five-card hand are symbolically analogous to the specifications of the main large apparatuses of an higher organism.

Still no reproduction.  But an additional piece of information: each card represents a specification for specific functional feature.

(5) Now, to make more precise our metaphor we must recall two things evolutionists state: at the beginning of evolution there is only a self-replicating thing; evolution works by small random variations in such primitive thing and its offspring. The small random variations are at the level of molecules. So it would be fully inappropriate to consider the dealer as a provider of cards in their entirety. Because in the metaphor complete cards are symbols of entire apparatuses with billion cells. Consequently, in our metaphor necessarily the dealer must provide/shuffle molecules of cards, not complete cards, to the players.

Still no reproduction.  But apparently niwrad has seen the problem.  Start again.  This time the dealer deals five piles of molecules to each player.

Conclusion

Like incomplete and unspecified card patterns confer no advantage to a poker player, analogously, biological irreducibly complex systems missing some parts confer no advantage to an organism. Example: a fragment of white card with only a black pixel in the corner is not a valid and recognizable card; analogously an organism with a genotypic variation cannot account for, say, an entire functioning cardiovascular or nervous system, arising ex abrupto. Such useless things would be discarded by the poker player / natural selection.

 

So now we have every organism with a useless genome, so they all die sans issue.

As a consequence, the players will never have winning card hands. In all sessions, they will always be forced to discard what they have in their hands. No complete poker game will ever begin. Darwinian poker is eliminative, not constructive. In short Darwinian poker is a non game.

 

Therefore Darwinian evolution doesn’t work.  Hooboy.

This poker metaphor somehow shows why not only Darwinian evolution cannot produce biologic complex IC systems, let alone organisms, but why it is a process that cannot even begin the job.

Because, apparently, it can’t explain OoL.
Even though Darwin stipulated that his theory did not account for the first self-replicating life forms; even though no “evolutionists” claims that Darwinian evolution can’t account for OoL; even though niwrad himself starts out by saying “Evolutionists usually claim that prerequisite for Darwinian evolution is a single self-replicating thing capable of heritable variations…” – s/he then presents a demonstration that Darwinian evolution cannot occur without a “single self-replicating thing capable of heritable variations”.

Yeah.

But here is the extraordinary thing: in the comments, Barry, the p0ker champ himself, leads the cheer:

Great post niwrad. So the Darwinian hand is “nothing.” Yet Darwinians, like our friend Lincoln, cling to it tenaciously. I guess they agree with Luke (from one of the best movies of all time, Cool Hand Luke): “Sometimes ‘nothing’ is a real cool hand.” 🙂

Great post?  For pointing out what Darwin himself was at pains to point out in the very work in which he expounded his theory?  Note that niwrad’s example assumes a “dealer” who deals out a set of genomes so useless that none of their bearers can reproduce.  In fact, nowhere does he even mention reproduction.  The post is entitled “Darwin’s Bluff” and niwrad ends with this thought:

A final poker concept remains to be placed in the metaphor: the bluff. Imagine a player who makes us believe he has a straight flush while having in his hands only some molecules of card. That is Darwin’s bluff – the biggest bluff in history – the claim to be able to create all life forms by unguided evolution, while it cannot produce the least organized system of the smallest living being.

 

I’d like to call niwrad’s  (“Darwin” backwards, get it?) own bluff: Imagine a player who makes us believe that he has a straight flush, while having in his hands only some molecules of card.  That is the ID bluff – fortunately not a very successful one – to persuade some people to think that ID has the killer hand that will bring the Darwinian House of Cards to the carpet, while it cannot even fill its own ID-supporting journal with anything more than review articles, a couple of theoretical models, and the odd piece of empirical research that falsifies a claim that nobody even makes.

I suggest that a first step for ID supporters is to learn what Darwinian evolution actually is – build some proper models, vary some parameters – and feel the power.

And the beauty of it is: how much more awesome would be a Designer who could dream up such a superb system, than one who has to keep tinkering with bug-butts, because the system is too buggy to evolve them on its own.

 

91 thoughts on “Darwin backwards?”

  1. This paper might be of interest to coldcoffee. I hadn’t realised before glancing at it that there is an overall pattern of growth and development in butterfly wings that is common across species.

    ETA

    More recent paper

    ETA

    This paper has a great list of references.

    ETA

    More on butterfly wings and evo-devo

  2. Interesting list of papers. I will study them.

    Alan Fox: This paper might be of interest to coldcoffee.

    The following text on page 2 seems to be surprising. The peppered moth became black due to pollution? I can’t figure out whether the paper claims it happened by soot of pollution or due to mutation – which is surprising, as again there seems to be a link between environment and the stochastic nature of mutation. Is mutation really random or environment dependent ?

    Genetic polymorphisms.
    Probably the most popular example of adaptive evolution of wing patterns involves the peppered moth Biston betularia. Industrial melanism in this species has long been a favourite text-book example of adaptive evolution in response to man-made effects on the environment. Changes in the frequency of paler and darker forms of B. betularia have occurred in response to changes in the levels of air pollution. This occurs, at least in part, owing to the darkening effects of pollution on the resting back-ground of the moth and concomitant changes in its relative crypsis for escaping the attention of predators.

  3. coldcoffee: The peppered moth became black due to pollution?

    Indirectly. Melanin levels vary in the population. Darker moths are less visible on dark backgrounds than lighter variants. Predation reduces the numbers of lighter forms et voilà darker forms predominate.

    I can’t figure out whether the paper claims it happened by soot of pollution or due to mutation – which is surprising, as again there seems to be a link between environment and the stochastic nature of mutation.

    The variation is there due to new mutations always occurring. The change in the environment, so that darker variations are less visible and have an increased survivability, brings about the change in the gene pool

    Is mutation really random or environment dependent ?

    Mutation is a bit, in my view, like background radiation, statistically predictable as a rate but entirely unpredictable as an individual event and outcome. There is no feedback from the environment that influences the outcome of mutation events. The design happens at the selection step.

    (Assuming evolution is true!)

  4. Or you could try reading gpuccio here for a rather garbled explanation. I think he is one of the best current “theorists” for ID posting at UD. I also think he fails miserably in this comment. Perhaps he was rushed.

    1) Of course a theory based mainly on random variation can be compatible only with an ID scenario. RV is completely incapable of building new complex functional information, for the probabilistic barriers we all well know. If variation is all that is there, then it has to be guided variation.

    2) It is rather obvious, also, that NS has almost no role in selecting positive variation by its reproductive advantage, except for very simple adaptations. The reason is extremely simple: as new complex functional information cannot be the result of RV, as already said, there is not opportunity for NS to select what cannot appear.

    3) However, there is no doubt, IMO, that NS has an important role as negative selection, that is by eliminating at least part of negative variation. There can be no doubt that living beings who undergo random mutations that are incompatible with life simply die. We have many examples of that even in humans. So, the so called “purifying” role of NS can scarcely be denied. But, as said by many here, its only result is to favor stasis, to defend what is already there.

    4) Finally, even that “purifying”, protecting role of negative NS has many limits. Only severe mutations are really eliminated. As we all know, even from human genetic pathologies, most deleterious mutations can and do survive in the population. Moreover, living organism have in themselves very complex, intelligent systems of preservations of their genomic integrity, which are much more powerful than simple negative NS. And still, negative mutations continue to exist and survive.

  5. Gpuccio again

    But it is well known that a mix of RV + Intelligent selection can be extremely more efficient than RV alone, and many examples of that are known, including bottom up protein engineering.

    I’m not sure if I’ve seen an ID proponent talk specifically about the “well known” phenomenon of “Intelligent selection” before. As I can’t comment at UD, perhaps someone who can would like to ask gpuccio for more details.

  6. coldcoffee: No, because it makes little sense that mutation- a stochastic process- happening inside the butterfly can replicate a leaf’s features existing outside the body – so accurately, even down to the brown spot! Imagine the number of variations of not just colors, but venation patterns and the form of the brown spots that needs to be formed and tested against predators [even assuming co-evolution] to perfect the leaf.

    Not just mutation. Mutation filtered by selection that allows the most leaf-like variations to survive and reproduce those genes. Wash, rinse, repeat. Evolution is an iterative process that gradually homes in on an optimal solution, not a one-shot batch of mutations. It’s also differential reproductive success that matters. Insects that are green with brown spots survive slightly better that those which are just green.

    Evolution doesn’t explore all possible variations. It only explores the ones reachable through small phenotype changes from an already successful form.

  7. Alan Fox: Indirectly. Melanin levels vary in the population. Darker moths are less visible on dark backgrounds than lighter variants. Predation reduces the numbers of lighter forms et voilà darker forms predominate.

    Seems the results are contentious .Even if you ignore the controversy of gluing dead moths to trees at low heights for testing predation and ignore nocturnal nature of moth, the other experiments don’t agree with the original pepper moth experiment.

    In rural East Anglia, where there was little industrial pollution and typicals seemed better camouflaged, melanics reached a frequency of 80 percent, prompting D.R. Lees and E.R. Creed to conclude that “either the predation experiments and tests of conspicuousness to humans are misleading, or some factor or factors in addition to selective predation are responsible for maintaining the high melanic frequencies.”5 Reviewing the geographical evidence in 1990, R.J. Berry concluded, “it is clear that melanic peppered moth frequencies are determined by much more than differential visual predation by birds.”

    One notable discrepancy in the distribution of melanism was its lack of correlation with lichen cover on tree trunks. Even Kettlewell had observed that melanism began declining before lichens returned, and Lees and his colleagues found a lack of correlation with lichen cover, which they considered “surprising in view of the results of Kettlewell’s selection experiments.” According to B.S. Grant and R.J. Howlett, if the rise of industrial melanism had originally been due to the demise of lichens on trees, then “the prediction is that lichens should precede the recovery of the typical morph as the common form. That is, the hiding places should recover before the hidden. But, this is clearly not the case.”
    In the United States, the frequency of melanics in southeastern Michigan dropped from more than 90 percent to less than 20 percent between 1960 and 1995, thus paralleling the decline of melanism in the United Kingdom. Yet the decline in Michigan “occurred in the absence of perceptible changes in local lichen floras,” prompting Grant and his colleagues to conclude that “the role of lichens has been inappropriately emphasized in chronicles about the evolution of melanism in peppered moths.
    “Recently, T.D. Sargent and his colleagues noted that “the recent declining frequency of melanism in B. betularia in North America, where the hypothesis of a cryptic advantage of melanism never seemed applicable,” is “perplexing” in view of the classical story.

  8. thorton: Not just mutation. Mutation filtered by selection that allows the most leaf-like variations to survive and reproduce those genes

    If it was just that ,how would butterfly wings of many species like Kallima have evolved with the upper side having colored pattern and the lower side resembling – very realistically a dry leaf ?

    The butterfly wings are shaped like a leaf when in the closed position. When the wings are open, the forewing exhibits a black apex, an orange distal band and a deep blue base.

    thorton: Evolution doesn’t explore all possible variations.

    What stops it if it is just a stochastic process?

  9. Alan Fox:
    Gpuccio again

    I’m not sure if I’ve seen an ID proponent talk specifically about the “well known” phenomenon of “Intelligent selection” before. As I can’t comment at UD, perhaps someone who can would like to ask gpuccio for more details.

    By intelligent selection I assume he means breeding or artificial selection.

    He’s wrong, of course. There;s no way artificial selection can produce organisms that can survive in the wild. Artificial selection concentrates on a few dimensions, and natural selection integrates hundreds or thousands of dimensions.

  10. coldcoffee: …the decline in Michigan “occurred in the absence of perceptible changes in local lichen floras,” prompting Grant and his colleagues to conclude that “the role of lichens has been inappropriately emphasized in chronicles about the evolution of melanism in peppered moths.
    “Recently, T.D. Sargent and his colleagues noted that “the recent declining frequency of melanism in B. betularia in North America, where the hypothesis of a cryptic advantage of melanism never seemed applicable,” is “perplexing” in view of the classical story.

    Not bloody likely that any of what you quoted was true – it was written by notorious liar-for-Sun-Myung-Moon, Jonathan Wells. Yes, he really is delusional enough to be a life-long Moonie, and that’s who you choose to believe? I feel sorry for you, coldcoffee.

    I’m not going to dig up 30 year old science journals to determine exactly which lies and distortions Moonie Wells made when he wrote that in 1999. We know for a fact that moth populations evolved in two centuries from a population almost entirely light, to population almost entirely black, then back again to light. That’s evolution in action although it might not be “Darwinism” in action, if it turned out we didn’t understanding the selection component of the moth evolution.

    And indeed, it turns out we did understand the selection component: birds preying on moths resting during the day, when the moths’ coloration is visible to the birds against the tree branch/lichen background.

    Here’s the answer — Selective bird predation on the peppered moth

    November 2011 trumps trumps your Moonie Wells 1999 quotemines and outright lies.

    Maybe the important lesson for you, coldcoffee, is not any specific item of data or hypothesis in evolutionary biology. Maybe the important lesson for you is to stop listening to the liars-for-Jesus and liars-for-Sun-Myung-Moon who are all the ID establishment has to offer. They don’t have your best interests at heart, and they don’t have any incentive to tell you the truth, but millions of dollars of incentive to tell you lies.

  11. CC if you don’t like the peppered moths here’s another well know example – rock pocket mice.

    Rock pocket mice live in desert areas throughout the southwestern United States. The large majority have light, sandy colored coats that allow them to effectively blend in with the desert sand. However, in several regions there are populations that live on dark colored volcanic rock. These mice have evolved a dark colored coat that gives them excellent camouflage against the dark surface. DNA tests have revealed the exact mutations that gave the dark mice their color. It’s a classic case of where a new trait was highly beneficial in a certain environment and it spread throughout the mice in that environment.

    The genetic basis of adaptive melanism in pocket mice

    The real kicker is that some populations of the dark variety have different mutations that also makes them dark colored. Selection pressure acting on random variations converged on the same result (dark coat) through two different independent genetic pathways.

    Go ahead and tell me with a straight face the Intelligent Designer gave the mice two different sets of mutations to achieve the identical effect.

  12. hotshoe: Not bloody likely that any of what you quoted was true – it was written by notorious liar-for-Sun-Myung-Moon, Jonathan Wells.

    He did give references to the research, and it seems he does says what the journals say at least in case of D.R. Lees and E.R. Creed ,which is not behind pay-wall.

    hotshoe: Here’s the answer — Selective bird predation on the peppered moth

    November 2011 trumps trumps your Moonie Wells 1999 quotemines and outright lies.

    That seems a better paper. Amazing that 1950s experiments are still controversial after so many years.

  13. thorton: The genetic basis of adaptive melanism in pocket mice

    The real kicker is that some populations of the dark variety have different mutations that also makes them dark colored.

    Ah! At last a non-controversial research.
    I have no problem accepting that mutation and predation did happen in the case of mice, however that still doesn’t explain butterflies’ absolutely realistic leaf wings. If it were just a question of solid color, there would be no problem in simple mutation, but it is a question of minute features of leaf being replicated accurately in case of one species, and in case of another, you have the color pattern on top side while underside of wing forms a realistic dead leaf- even recreating the ‘hole’ in the ‘leaf wings’.
    Even if we assume EVERY individual butterfly mutated to make a slightly realistic leaf before mating, imagine the crazy permutations that would be required to achieve such a result.

  15. coldcoffee: He did give references to the research, and it seems he does says what the journals say at least in case of D.R. Lees and E.R. Creed ,which is not behind pay-wall.

    That seems a better paper. Amazing that 1950s experiments are still controversial after so many years.

    Yes, creationists don’t do very well with reason and demonstrable fact when it contradicts their desired mythology. So I agree, that really is amazing.

  16. coldcoffee: Amazing that 1950s experiments are still controversial after so many years.

    I’m not sure whether the controversy was real or generated by personal concerns. The rôle of Haldane and his wife (previously Kettlewell’s research assistant) in questioning Kettlewell’s results seems dubious.

    I see hotshoe has beaten me to it over Jonathan Wells’ piece published in 1999 at ARN and the work by Michael Majerus in duplicating Bernard Kettlewell’s results.

    Unfortunately Professor Majerus died before publishing his results but he wrote this paper not long before his death in 2009 which is well worth reading.

  17. SophistiCat: Can a predator really distinguish between an exact replica of a leaf and something that is just camouflage-coloured? I wouldn’t expect either their eyes or their cognition to be so advanced. Especially since predators tend to react to motion more than anything else.

    Think arms races. Predators evolve too. Gazelles and cheetahs are engaged in a struggle for life that means that evolutionary changes in one species move the goalposts for another species. The environment is not static. A population of organisms that is shaped by a visually hunting predator will exhibit differential survival so that variants that are less obvious in their immediate location will come to predominate. But the predator population too comes under selection pressure. Those with better skills at locating prey will eat better and by differential survival will come to predominate. See The Red Queen Hypothesis.

    “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place”

  18. coldcoffee: Even if we assume EVERY individual butterfly mutated to make a slightly realistic leaf before mating, imagine the crazy permutations that would be required to achieve such a result.

    Did you look at the study on wing development in butterflies, especially the diagram on page 6?

  19. Regarding the mechanisms and genetic pathways for the evolution of patterns on butterfly wings, one should also consider sexual selection as a powerful and rapid process that is certainly involved where sexual dimorphism occurs.

  20. A comment from William at UD:

    DDS syndrome: arguing that sieves & gutters can be natural, as if a happenstance, Rube Goldberg collection of natural “sieves & gutters” is categorically “the same thing” as what it takes to construct the equivalent of a fully functioning, computerized battleship that can not only repair itself, but make copies of itself.

    I’d like to know whether William also regards as deranged, the argument that a hand of cards is “categorically ‘the same thing'” as what Darwin proposed as his theory of evolution.

  21. Or coins on a table.

    ID revels in equivocation and abuse of metaphor.

    One moment the genome has information, but if you demonstrate tha GAs accumulate information, that’s reductionism.

  22. Lizzie: I’d like to know whether William also regards as deranged, the argument that a hand of cards is “categorically ‘the same thing’” as what Darwin proposed as his theory of evolution.

    Bearing in mind that William J. Murray wrote this comment there is the possibility that he is unclear about what Darwin proposed.

  23. WJM@UD

    […]what it takes to construct the equivalent of a fully functioning, computerized battleship that can not only repair itself, but make copies of itself.

    When Design comes up with that, I’ll be well impressed. Till then, organisms can’t be deemed ‘categorically the same thing’ as that either.

    (I can hear WJM’s response now – “good thing that is not what I said then”).

  24. coldcoffee: Ah! At last a non-controversial research.
    I have no problem accepting that mutation and predation did happen in the case of mice, however that still doesn’t explain butterflies’ absolutely realistic leaf wings. If it were just a question of solid color, there would be no problem in simple mutation, but it is a question of minute features of leaf being replicated accurately in case of one species, and in case of another, you have the color pattern on top side while underside of wing forms a realistic dead leaf- even recreating the ‘hole’ in the ‘leaf wings’.

    Still with the argument from personal incredulity. Give me your specific reasons why the observed process of genetic variation filtered by selection could not have produce realistic camouflage? Or even two-colored wings which are brightly colored on one side for mate sexual attraction yet dull brown on the bottom that allow the butterfly to hide when it needs to?

  25. coldcoffee: Seems the results are contentious .

    Some of the fine details are contentious. The overall picture is not. And Wells is way, way out of date.

    Even if you ignore the controversy of gluing dead moths to trees at low heights for testing predation…

    Dead moths were glued to trees and photographed to illustrate the differences. The gluing was not part of the tests of predation.

    ..and ignore nocturnal nature of moth, the other experiments don’t agree with the original pepper moth experiment.

    And way out of date again. In addition to the reference already posted, see The peppered moth’s dark genetic past revealed, Industrial Melanism in the Peppered Moth, Biston betularia: An Excellent Teaching Example of Darwinian Evolution in Action, The peppered moth: a black and white story after all, and Recent History of Melanism in American Peppered Moths. (Wonder if this post will get stuck in moderation?)

    Of course the take-home is that when you get your information from creationists you will get a mixture of out-of-date information and outright lies. Bet you will ignore this and the above facts.

  26. Amazing that 1950s experiments are still controversial after so many years.

    That’s because scientist really really care about finding out what’s really really happening. Questions were raised, questions were answered through further research.

    What would be amazing would be someone like Wells issuing a second edition of his book with his lies and errors corrected.

  27. JonF: What would be amazing would be someone like Wells issuing a second edition of his book with his lies and errors corrected.

    Not just amazing, it would take a flaming miracle!

    Men like Moonie Wells are among the best proof that YHWH cannot possibly be the god watching over our planet. Otherwise, Wells would have been struck down by lightening for how badly he behaves and how hopeless he makes his fellow christians appear when they applaud him.

    Seems the bible has something to say about Wells:

    “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” says the LORD.

    Even though I’m non-christian, I feel great sympathy for the “sheep” among christians who have been “destroyed and scattered” by the premeditated machinations of Moonie Wells and his fellow liars.

  28. JonF: Bet you will ignore this and the above facts.

    No, that’s not a fair statement.

    Coldcoffee may not be convinced by the evidence and the journal articles, but xe is – as shown in above replies – definitely taking a look at them, not ignoring them.

  29. Alan Fox: Think arms races.

    I understand the mechanism, I just don’t understand why it produced this result. I hope that those who study mimicry in insects have addressed this question. It ought to be possible to test how well a relevant predator can discriminate between a near-perfect replica of a leaf and a not-so-perfect one. Or whether they can discriminate all of the colors. If predators are not so discriminating, then something else must be going on.

  30. SophistiCat: I understand the mechanism, I just don’t understand why it produced this result. I hope that those who study mimicry in insects have addressed this question. It ought to be possible to test how well a relevant predator can discriminate between a near-perfect replica of a leaf and a not-so-perfect one. Or whether they can discriminate all of the colors. If predators are not so discriminating, then something else must be going on.

    It’s my understanding that the Cambrian period is when fossil evidence emerges of arms races. There is a lot of “armour” observed, hard carapaces, spikes and so forth. There are large (relatively in context) organisms that appear equipped for a predatory existence (see Anomalocaris for example). Things that we see today have a long and deep history in evolution. Anomalocaris vision (sorry, I couldn’t find the full article except behind a paywall.)

  31. Alan Fox: Did you look at the study on wing development in butterflies, especially the diagram on page 6?

    Yes, the eye spot formation is very interesting and while some doubts do exist [mentioned below], I have no problem accepting the possibility that future developments will sort them out, but I am not convinced that it explains how the leaf pattern- including venation, brown spots and even ‘holes’ in the leaf can be formed by a butterfly. It is not a random pattern; it is reproduction of exact pattern of leaf existing in nature.
    Take venation for eg :On one half of wing, the million nano scales which comprise the wings can be arranged in any angle from 0 to 180 degrees. Imagine the difficulty in getting all vein pattern right. Now take the brown spot on the wings, the nano scales can become colored in any of the millions of nano scales, however only scales in concentric circle [ even more amazing nor exact circle, but irregular circle] have to become brown and light brown. To replicate the holes, another set of scales have to become transparent- the spots could have taken any position right from the edge of leaf to the start of veins, however only a spot nearer the edge would be realistic and that’s exactly what happens.

    The developmental characterization of wing pattern formation has been advancing, but little is known about how the mechanisms that underlie this process interact to produce the adult phenotypes. The expression of some wing-patterning genes has been associated with particular cellular organizers of pattern formation (discussed above), but it is not known whether or how such genes determine the properties of these organizers.

    Eyespot formation involves the diffusion of a signal from a central focus. What about bands, chevrons or large patches of color? Theoretical models propose that similar mechanisms might operate in producing all types of pattern6,but there is, as yet, no direct evidence that any corresponding developmental organizers exist in genera such as Heliconius or Papilio.

    We need a more complete understanding of the genetic and developmental mechanisms that produce wing pattern variation in several model species.The challenge,then,will be to integrate the knowledge about different patterns in different species (a return to the comparative method) and the insights about the ecological factors that shape pattern variation in natural populations (a return to ecological studies).

  32. JonF: Bet you will ignore this and the above facts.

    I do try to read as many articles as possible. I have skimmed through the references and find that this has not been explained satisfactorily:

    Cyril Clarke, who investigated the peppered moth extensively, wrote:
    ‘But the problem is that we do not know the resting sites of the moth during the day time. … In 25 years we have found only two betularia on the tree trunks or walls adjacent to our traps (one on an appropriate background and one not), and none elsewhere

    Saying that Cyril could not have detected camouflaged moths by giving an example of how ecology students couldn’t detect the moths is not inspiring. He couldn’t be so blind that he detected just two moths.

    =>High melanic frequencies are found even in parts of eastern England which are relatively unpolluted (Anon 1969; Hawksworth & Rose 1970; Ctreed, Less & Duckett 1973)
    I found no explanation for this.

    =>D.R. Lees & E.R. Creed, Industrial melanism in Biston betularia: the role of selective predation shows that in an unpolluted area their traps captured four times as many dark moths as light ones.
    If this is the case, how can the counting of moths in earlier experiments be reliable?

    However the later experiments with cages can be considered to be reliable, so I am inclined to believe the pepper moth story, but it still doesn’t address my original comment: I am not convinced that it explains how the leaf pattern- including venation, brown spots and even ‘holes’ in the leaf can be formed by a butterfly. It is not a random pattern; it is reproduction of exact pattern of leaf existing in nature.
    Take venation for eg :On one half of wing, the million nano scales which comprise the wings can be arranged in any angle from 0 to 180 degrees. Imagine the difficulty in getting all vein pattern right. Now take the brown spot on the wings, the nano scales can become colored in any of the millions of nano scales, however only scales in concentric circle [ even more amazing nor exact circle, but irregular circle] have to become brown and light brown. To replicate the holes, another set of scales have to become transparent- the spots could have taken any position right from the edge of leaf to the start of veins, however only a spot nearer the edge would be realistic and that’s exactly what happens.

  33. hotshoe: Coldcoffee may not be convinced by the evidence and the journal articles

    Thanks for supporting me. Yes, I do go through as many papers as possible.

  34. coldcoffee: It is not a random pattern; it is reproduction of exact pattern of leaf existing in nature.

    I suspect that this idea is. at least partly, behind your genuine amazement that mimicry ever happens — of course we could never copy one leaf design without intelligence, without a perspective that allowed us to see what we were copying and to rework any mistakes we had made towards a desired level of perfection, in short, without “intelligent design”.
    And as creationists know, even the “evilutionist”Richard Dawkins freely admits that he finds such biological adaptations impressive: “Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view. Yet the living results of natural selectioin overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning. …”
    [cover blurb of The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence Reveals a Universe Without Design]

    But it takes nothing away from my appreciation of the beauty and amazing “design” of butterflies’ wings to note that they are not miraculous.

    First, you are overemphasizing how special the pattern is; it’s not an exact pattern of leaf existing in nature It’s a visual representation of some more-or-less typical leaf that might exist in that butterfly species’ environment. The apparent leaf-veins, the apparent “dead spots” or “holes”in the leaf – those could have been located almost in any arrangement on the wing without breaking the illusion because it’s not an exact copy of any one particular leaf. Yes, it’s a subtle point, but an important one, I think, because overemphasizing in your own mind “amazingly exact copy” biases you against being able to consider any possible explanation except an actual copy-artist.

    Second, we know that these amazing butterfly wings have been in existence for around 300 million years. Even if you don’t believe that evolution did the “designing”, there’s no question that evolution has had plenty of time to act. That’s billions of generations. That’s billions of potential mutations, any of which could have been disastrous but also any of which could have improved the butterfly camouflage before it was “perfected”.

    Third, bear in mind that each butterfly wing-scale is not “painted” separately, that is, not controlled by a separate gene. So there aren’t/weren’t a million separate genes which each had to accidentally mutate to get the appearance of a leaf vein or dead spot. Just a handful of genes … although they do have to turn on at the right moment in the butterfly’s development (but that’s not amazing beyond belief, either; the ones that don’t turn on at the right moment are the ones that most likely get eaten, so we never see them, and we are left with only the best examples to marvel at).

    Also, as Thorton already mentioned, the ancestral butterflies didn’t have to be such perfect mimics. All they had to do was escape notice by whichever predators existed back then — and those predators had not yet evolved the acute visual processing which nowadays lets them see through butterfly disguises. Back then, any dull-colored underside which didn’t stand out against the background was good enough for butterfly survival. It’s an arms race. The prey gets better defenses/better camouflage then the predator has to get better weapons/better camouflage-detecting senses. The predator gets better, then the prey has to get better again. Or else, one or the other of them goes extinct, and again, we never see the losers, we only have the best surviving examples.

    I think evolution and adaptation, including butterfly mimicry, is marvelous. But I don’t think it’s too improbable taken step by step to be true.

  35. Also, as Thorton already mentioned, the ancestral butterflies didn’t have to be such perfect mimics. All they had to do was escape notice by whichever predators existed back then …

    Tiger joke. They only had to get eaten less often than their neighbors.

  36. I do find myself wondering why The Designer put so much effort into getting prey species to evade his also-designed predators … surely he could just have made the predators less observant? It suggests multiple designers – the adaptations of the Butterfly Committee attempting to confound those of the Bird Group, and vice versa.

  37. coldcoffee: but it is a question of minute features of leaf being replicated accurately in case of one species

    Yeah, it’s bizarre. But the ID alternative (such as it is, any idea?) is even more bizarre, no?
    Some weird designer thingy with a fetish for beetles and for living a very long time and such like. Now that’s unlikely.

  41. CC here is a neat demonstration of what the power of random variations filtered by selection in a feedback process can create.

    A programmer used a genetic algorithm to simulate the real life RM+NS process. A picture was created from 1000 ellipses of random size, color, and placement. It was used as a starting point for a population of 300 (the butterflies). The process was begun, each picture had 3% of its ellipses randomly mutated (random genetic mutations) The resultant 300 pictures were then compared against a target template (the leaf) The 150 that looked most like the target were allowed to live and reproduce, the other 150 were killed off.(natural selection) The cycle was repeated many many times. At first you don’t get much but a blob but as time progresses you get the picture looking more and more like the target. After almost 40,000 generations you get something that at a quick glance would fool most people into thinking it was the real thing. Check it out!

    Evolving Famous Scientist

    Now remember that in the real world there were billions of butterflies and millions of generations. Is it still so surprising they ended up so closely resembling a leaf?

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