Evolution?

Question

I'm not religious, but don't believe in Darwinian theory. I believe that evolution has to be use based somewhat along the lines of Lamark or perhaps Lysenko.

Can anyone explain this one: The Bee Orchid pollinates and breeds by attracting bees to it and does so by looking surprisingly like a bee. How is this possible, if mutations are random? The orchids mutations were assumably not conscious, and an orchid cannot know what a bee looks like.

Assuming the first mutation, which had the orchid start looking vaguely like a bee occurred randomly. Further mutations making the orchid look more like a bee through "genetic drift" must become even more so improbable if the orchid can't know what a bee looks like.

I don't think that random mutations result in evolution; it must be environmental factors that "COMPEL" the mutation.

Any comments.. sensible people only. no Christian lunatics please.

Answer 1

The evolution of this kind of mimicry (I think this is called 'Bakerian mimicry') is absolutely explainable by natural selection.

The first thing to remember is that it is not necessary for this flower to evolve from something that looked *nothing* like a bee into something that looks *completely* like a bee. The starting point (in this case) is the ordinary orchid, which already has features that are different from other flowers ... and the ending point doesn't have to be a perfect replica of a bee ... just something close enough to distract a bee for a couple of seconds in its quest for a mate.

Second, remember that natural selection is about competition *between members of the same species*. Thus, it is not like some orchids look like bees and others don't at all. An orchid just has to have a *slight* edge over neighboring orchids of the same species ... if it can attract 5% more bees than its neighbors, or keep the bees distracted for 5 seconds instead of 3 seconds, that is all that is necessary for natural selection to do its thing.

Let's look at the details:

1. To see what natural selection was *starting* with in this case, go to Google images and look at pictures of ordinary orchids, and notice that they already have non-symmetrical structures that already *loosely* resemble some structures in an insect. I don't mean legs and wings, but rather that orchids are different from other flowers in that they have non-symmetrical structures in pairs ... like petal and sepals, and a pouch-like structure hanging underneath.

For example, here's a nice page on general orchid anatomy:
http://orchidlady.com/pages/encyclopedia/orchid_flower_anatomy.html
Go to the bottom photograph of the structure of the Paphiopedelium orchids, and notice the structure of the dorsal sepal, the two (already wing-like) lateral petals, the smaller lateral sepals, and the pouch-like lip or labellum.

Then go online and notice the intricate range colors and patterns that are already everywhere throughout the orchid world ... brightly colored stripes, swirls, in bright reds, yellows. oranges, purples, etc. etc. (And don't forget that bees have a different color range than we do, deep into the UV range invisible to us ... so even a white flower to us can have bright colors to a bee.)

Those basic orchid characteristics (anatomy and coloration) are what natural selection is *starting* from (in this case).

2. This is where *variation* comes in. A species of orchid showing lots of variation in the coloration, size, patterns, shape of the pouch-like labellum, the shape and size of the two lateral petals, the shape of the dorsal and lateral sepals, the colors on each of these structures, etc. Thousands of slight variations.

3. Now consider bees. A sexually reproducing insect will actually travel further in search of a mate than it will in search of food. Along the way it will stop to investigate anything that *remotely* resembles a potential mate (and will move on if it is not a mate). It is, after all, also pausing for pollen, but if a flower also happens to remotely resemble a possible mate ... even *slightly* ... the bee will be more likely to pause there than the neighboring orchids with less of a resemblance.

And that is all the ingredients needed for natural selection.

4. If an orchid has a certain combination of variations (slightly more "wing-like" petals, slightly more colorful pouch, slightly longer sepals) that distracts bees even *slightly* more often than its neighboring orchids, those bees will visit that orchid *slightly* more often (even if only for a second to check it out) and carry off some pollen.

5. (Here's the KEY.) Each of those bees will then fly to another orchid with similar *slightly* more bee-like characteristics.

In other words, THE BEE IS DOING THE SELECTING. Moving from slightly-more-bee-like flower to slightly-more-bee-like flower and skipping the slightly-less-bee-like flowers ... the best mimics getting *slightly more* exchange of pollen with the other better mimics.

In other words, each bee is (unknowingly) breeding the most "bee-like" orchids with the other "bee-like" orchids.

... this is the same idea as "artificicial selection" practiced by human breeders ... selectively breeding orchids with other orchids with desired characteristics.

6. Multiply that by thousands of horny bees over many weeks and days each year. All of them exchanging pollen between those orchids that *most resemble* possible mates (even slightly).

Result: Next year's crop of orchids are the offspring of last years winners ... the best mimics bred to the best mimics. The losers (the ones with the wrong colored pouch, the smaller lateral petals) producing fewer offspring.

7. Multiply that by *tens of thousands* of generations.

Result: What was once just a barely recognizable resemblance just barely enough to distract bees for two seconds on their daily errands ... after many generations becomes what is a striking resemblance.

Two key points:

- First, at no point does an orchid "know" what a bee looks like and "decide" to look more bee-like ... any more than a peacock "knows" that a bigger tail atracts more peahens and thus "decides" to grow a bigger tail. Those peacocks lucky enough to be BORN WITH (not acquiring in their lifetimes) a *slightly* bigger tail just get a *slight* edge attracting the ladies ... a flower with *slightly* bigger petals (making them look *slightly* more like wings) gets a *slight* edge attracting the bees. Another way to look at it is just as run-of-the-mill sexual selection (a *very* well-known part of evolutionary process) ... the same process that resulted in the peacock's tail ... except appealing to the sexual preferences of another species.

- Second, nothing has to "COMPEL" the mutations that produce more bee-like appearance. It is just basic random variation feeding NON-RANDOM natural selection. Consider the size of those two side petals on run-of-the-mill orchids. If you measure the size of these petals on a thousand individuals of the same species, there will be a perfectly normal range (say 5%) of random variation in the size of these petals. Early in the evolution of these bee orchids, bigger was better ... if a mutation occurred in one individual that made its lateral petals (say) a whopping 8% bigger than its neighbors, then it gets a lot of business from the bees that year and next year a lot more orchids have that mutation ... until after many generations that "big-petal" mutation is so widespread it is the norm. But eventually size may find an optimum. Mutations that produce petals that are *too* big do a *worse* job of fooling and attracting the bees, and so those mutations don't do so well. So after time, a stable range of optimum petal size ... not too big, not too small ... the one that produces the best natual mimic of bee-wings ... stabilizes. The perfect petal size settles down in the genome of the orchid.

Natural selection works in this case.

Answer 2

What confuses many people about evolution is the assumption there is nothing but random mutations involved. The driving force behind evolution is a process called "natural selection". Orchid evolution is driven by insects. Flowers which attract more insects are more likley to be pollinated. Any Orchid whose mutation enhances the attractiveness is polinated even more. As time goes on, the flower becomes very attractive to whatever polinates it. Its ancestors which were less attractive went extinct. The flower dosen't "know" what it is supposed to look like - the only important thing is that the mechanism works reliably. Nobody has to understand automotive engineering to drive a car. All it has to do is work. A good example of evolution in progress is a species of north american freshwater mussle. The bivalve has paracitic larva which spend their early life in the gills of fish. The mussle ejects a cloud of larva into the mouth of a preditory fish. It does this by deploying a lure which looks like a minnow. When the fish snaps at the lure, the mussle ejects its larva. Some lures are more convincing than others. The best even have eyespots. Again, the mussle does not "know" what to look like. The preditory fish is the driving force here. Another good example of evolution is bird flu. Random mutations have enabled the virus to infect humans, but it can not easily be spread between people. (Yet). It is only a few mutations away from the ability to do this. If and when this occurs, this strain of virus will become the dominant form of the virus since it will have so many hosts. A virus is barely alive, so the notion there is some sort of decision going on is nonsence. What is happening is very much like a pebble rolling around inside a bucket with a tiny hole. If the pebble rolls past the hole, it falls out of the bucket. This is the force which drives evolution.

Answer 3

the individual orchid does not know what a bee looks like.
but the more similar an orchid looks like a bee, the more likely it's genes (and look) will pass into the next generation, that's called natural selection.

As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Those hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one phrase a second, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length. But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days. That's the difference for having a trait develop with or without a selection mechanism.

Answer 4

Of each variation of bee orchid in your example, the ones which look most like a bee attract more pollinating bees and are therefore more succesful. The plant doesnt know or even needs to know what it looks like. It is a simple "results orientated" approach. The most successful breed and reproduce more than the least successful. Thus any bee orchid not looking sufficiently attractive to a bee doesnt get to reproduce and that strain dies out.

Answer 5

Would you consider reading a book I recommend? It is "The Making of the Fittest" by Sean Carroll. It explains very well how evolution and natural selection work. It answers the question you have. It also talks about Lamark and Lysenko and about how Lysenko nearly destroyed Soviet agriculture with a false understanding of evolution.

The other thing your question doesn't address (besides natural selection) is the time factor. It is hard for humans whose life span is 80 years or so to imagine what can happen in a million years.

Answer 6

natural selection explains this - basically a large number of random events occur but certain events are encouraged or reinforced. So EVERY orchid that randomly looks more like a bee is more likely to attract a bee. Over long periods of time most of the bee-like orchids succeed in reproducing while the one's the bees don't like hardly ever succeed. More and more bee-like orchids every time until they are almost all that way.

Answer 7

a million) in accordance to evolutionists, human beings developed from apes? human beings are apes with the help of definition. Linnaeus categorized us as such and he became a creationist. 2) there are various shown information in technological understanding, yet evolution is in basic terms an theory. fake via a pretend effect of the be conscious concept. A actuality, in technological understanding, is a discrete ingredient of information. Theories connect information and clarify them. there's no larger classification than concept. 3) A transitional variety is a fossil of an animal it incredibly is slightly one species and section yet another. fake. All organisms are transitional. 4) The age of the earth is desperate with the help of scientists fullyyt for the duration of the radioactive relationship of fossils ? The age of the Earth became desperate with the help of relationship a meteor on the thought that the photograph voltaic device became all a similar age. All different calculations extra healthful the age got here across. 5) The scientific approach starts off with a prediction and then seems for information to help that prediction? It starts off with assertion. Then a hypothesis is formed from that assertion. After the hypothesis is formed, scientists seek for information to help or falsify the hypothesis. 6) the thought of evolution includes the huge Bang? fake. 7) To have self belief in evolution is to have self belief that existence and count got here from no longer something? fake.

Answer 8

The flower that resembles an insect comes to be that way by way of accident. The fact that the bee likes such flowers because it resembles its own species worked to the advantage of both plant and bee and therefore this evolutionery event was sucessful. Plants that evolved in ways that didn't attract insects did not survive.

Answer 9

OK, here is how it all works. Once upon a time, each of the proto-species had elected representatives to serve on the Random Utilitarian Board of Evolution (R.U.B.E). (That is why the faithful secularists who fanatically believe in Random Design are called "rubes") Anyway, a proto-plant species who served on the board fell in love (Randomly, of course) with a proto-insect species representative. They decided to use their Random influence on the R.U.B.E. to make it so they were necessary to each other and could be with each other, and so that all their descendants would be stuck in the same situation. OF course, they had to evolve (Randomly) hormones first so they could fall in love in the first place, then they did the whole pollination thing. It.s all right there in Bullfinch's Secularist Mythology, which is the official doctrine of the entire Secularist Atheist Church. You will be burned at the stake in a scientifical manner if you joint the Atheistic Faithful in believing this as Fact. (Random fact, of course)

P.S "Natural Selection does not work fast enough with the rate of random mutations to adapt to changing environmental circumstances, which can occurr quite quickly. A species will go extinct waiting for Natural Selection to make it possible for that species to adapt. In addition, Natural Selection does not overcome the problem of destructive mutations, which is pretty much what all mutations are. That is why mutated frogs and fish die off before they can reproduce. There just is no reproductive advantage to a twisted three-eyed frog or a fish built in a 90 degree angle with undersized gills. Most of these mutations cannot be passed on to succeeding generations anyway, which is something the future generations can be thankful to Somebody for.

Answer 10

You are quite correct that random mutations do not drive evolution.
All observed mutations are information neutral or lossy. Evolution requires vast increase in genetic information.
In fact natural selection acts to weed out any mutations.

I am sensible, and the only sensible answer to what we see is that it was created by the master designer.

As for lunatic answers, just how reasonable is it to believe that everything came from nothing, that order arose from chaos, that information arose from nowhere.
Hmm.