1. gregladen
  2. "I reject the Darwinian assumption that larvae and their adults evolved from a single common ancestor"

"I reject the Darwinian assumption that larvae and their adults evolved from a single common ancestor"

By gregladen on October 12, 2009.

What might have been a plausible idea in the 17th or 18th century is the starting point for a just published paper in PNAS.

Before you go read about it, I just want to say this: Having a system of publication in which some crap gets published is the cost of having a system of publication in which important stuff that does not happen to tickle the fancy of the publiconormative old guard GOB networkians does not get rejected.

I'm some will insist that we can have our cake (only good stuff gets published) and eat it too (and not good stuff gets not published) but that simply isn't true. And, the fact that it isn't true can be demonstrated by looking at Lynn Margulis.

Who it turns out is behind this whole thing.

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1. Lynn Margulis: that explains a lot.

2. "publiconormative old guard GOB networkians" - is that a sciency term? :)

I know someone who is in 3rd year PhD in computer science networks. Maybe I can convince him to title a paper with that.

3. "publiconormative" - my spell checker hesitated trying to decipher that one.

By NewEnglandBob (not verified) on 12 Oct 2009 #permalink

This reminds me of a question I had been wondering about for a while.

How easy/difficult is it to identify adults and larvae in the fossil record? If for example, a fossil impression of a caterpillar and a butterfly of the same species were found side by side in the same rock strata, how would one go about determining that the two are the same species?

Is it possible that some specimens (from, say, a Cambrian deposit, for example) currently classified as two separate species are actually a larvae and adult form of the same species?

amphiox,

Yes, that is absolutely possible and also very, very likely. As a matter of fact, with the advent of genetics, we've found may species that are alive today that were determined to be the same species despite looking quite different.

fact3r wrote

As a matter of fact, with the advent of genetics, we've found may species that are alive today that were determined to be the same species despite looking quite different.

And the reverse: populations that are determined b genetic analyses to be different species in spite of appearing morphologically to be identical, or at least very very similar.