Pharyngula

Posted by: Kseniya | March 30, 2007 8:07 AM

Beautiful!

And hey, nice fake eyespot. I need one! A Guess? eyespot, of course.

Posted by: MTran | March 30, 2007 12:04 PM

Nice colors!

I stumbled upon another lovely creature while clicking through the Getty Museum this morning.

Posted by: zakazaneovocie | March 30, 2007 2:09 PM

Do you have any explanation (I mean darwinistic explanation) of such striking colors? I would say it nicely support theory that color of animals is something independent from "survival advantage" and has more to do with self-representation (die Selbstdarstellung), creativeness of Nature. It has nothing to do with with "random mutation and natural selection" I dare say.

Posted by: zakazaneovocie | March 30, 2007 2:55 PM

I am not sure it is the case. I have had some discussion on it at EvC. Darwinists have the same explanation (aposematism) for eyspots on butterflies wings and it turns to be false:

The presence of eyespots did not increase the escape probability of resting butterflies once captured (even a form with enlarged eyespots did not add to effective deflection of attacks).There was also no evidence that eyespots influenced the location of strikes by the predators. This study thus provides no support that marginal eyespot patterns can act as an effective deflection mechanism to avoid lizard or avian predation

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1034/j.1600-0706.2003.11935.x/abs/

Same for mushrooms. Darwinists claim that striking coloration of mushrooms may have had some aposematic meaning. And yet it have also no scietntific backgroud:

Poisonous mushrooms do not tend to be more colorful or aggregated than edible mushrooms, but they are more likely to exhibit distinctive odors even when phylogenetic relationships are accounted for.

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/497399

So darwinistic explanation of coloration via mimicry/aposematism couldn't be claimed ad hoc without serious research. It was also opinion of professor Adolf Portmann who explained it by non-darwinistic forces (continuing in Goethian tradition).

Posted by: Christian Burnham | March 30, 2007 7:14 PM

V. pretty.

Do different cephalapods of the same species have different markings (like cats)?

Posted by: Christian Burnham | March 31, 2007 12:52 AM

Drhoz-
Wait- do all cephalopods have the ability to change color?

I'm embarrassed. I know nothing about cephalopods. I generally come here for the religion, humor and politics.

I should do a little self-education on the web to learn exactly what a cephalopod is.

Posted by: antidarwinist | April 10, 2007 1:02 AM

Eat me and you'll regret it - remember what I look like

To the most poisonous mushrooms belong Amanita phalloides -responsible for 95% of the fatalities. One cap have enough poison to kill three people.
Anyway genus Amamita show as amazing coloration as shows mushrooms as whole. We know green, red, yellow-brown,grey-violett Amanita etc.

Going into the forest forget first darwinistic rule of thumb, that red one should be poisonous (aposematic) and those with green-hat one should be edible (cryptic). The opposite is true - those with green hats are mentioned poisonous Amanita phalloides. Those with red hats are either Amanita regalis (using by shamans etc..) or the pink - Amanita rubescens - which is very tasty and considered by some people as the most tasty mushroom at all. But do not taste red Amanita muscaria.

So darwinistic explanation of reason of coloration in living kingdom should be considered as only armchair excersise - do not follow rather darwinistic fancy explanation as to coloration in Nature - it can cost you a life.

VMartin

Posted by: Kseniya | April 12, 2007 5:52 PM

V-M, I read this thread last night, and it seemed to me that you'd reversed the findings of the paper you'd cited. Wasn't the point that the speckled moths, which appeared to human eyes to be camouflaged against the foliose lichen, were in fact far more visible than their darker counterparts to the UV-sensitive eyesight of the predatory birds, which accounted for the (previously puzzling) fact that the apparently less conspicuous moths were in fact being eaten more frequently than their darker cousins?

I started composing a comment to this effect, but I wasn't sure if you were misunderstanding the paper, or if I was misunderstanding you. I concluded that it must have been the latter (it was very late at night, my time) so I scrapped the response.

Speaking of clocks, I think you misunderstood Mr. Fox. He correctly pointed out that your April 10th post (#14) was made "late at night," not that 4 in the afternoon was "late at night" as you accused him of claiming in your subsequent post (#16, which has mysteriously disappeared). A minor error, yes, but I can't help but think your mediocre grasp of English may be impacting your ability to process and respond to comments made on these threads, to say nothing of the scientific papers you're citing. If I'm wrong, forgive me, I'm not trying to insult you.