Hybridization, not Darwin’s natural selection, explains why butterflies mimic each other?
Here’s an open access paper, just published in Nature online (May 16, 2012) , about whose abstract a friend writes to say, “You could request a full paragraph of explanation for each sentence.” Well-known examples of South American butterflies mimicking each other’s wing patterns may be due – not to wing panel by wing panel natural selection – but to hybridization. That would make more sense. Never mind the famous question “What good is five percent of an eye?” Well, some good. A more important question for many life forms is, what good is looking only five percent less like lunch? Five percent of an eye may be useful; looking only five percent less like lunch is not likely to Read More ›