A Textbook Evolutionary Story About Moths and Bats Is Wrong | Hacker News Reader

A Textbook Evolutionary Story About Moths and Bats Is Wrong

theatlantic.com

47 pointsYossi_Frenkel10 comments

I take moths' hearing as evidence for Cretaceous echolocators. Other insects? Pterosaurs? Birds? Flying mammals that were not bats? Proto-crypto-bats? Could be any of them, or several. Most terrestrial species disappeared, so most of the interesting ones did.

It is amazing to be able to deduce the past existence of creatures that left no physical trace.

> It is amazing to be able to deduce the past existence of creatures that left no physical trace.

Well, unless they didn't have a past existence

Try not to pat yourself on the back too hard

I didn't say it was amazing to do it. It is amazing that it is possible to do it. You could too, if you were ... someone else. Too bad.

Apparently was a (sophisticated) just so story ... http://www.boop.org/jan/justso/

To be so gleeful in its disdain for a couple of goofy mistakes, TFA misuses the language in such a way as to perpetuate a similar sort of mistake. "So bees invented butterflies?" "...moths then transformed their existing ears..." Yuck. Sure, it's just metaphor, but this sort of metaphor has historically caused a lot of confusion about evolution. Intent is not a feature of natural selection. Atlantic readers have a hard enough time with this as it is; they certainly don't need to read this pseudo-creationist garbage.

When trying to explain to someone confused about this casual use of language that seems to imply an intent to evolve, I have used this analogy before.

"Have you ever said something like: I need an alignment done; my car wants to pull to the right? It is clear to the speaker and listener that the car does not want anything, it is just a manner of speech."

"In exactly the same way, when a biologist says 'the finches developed stronger beaks to better crack the nuts found on that island' it doesn't signify intent or design."

Ed Yong is among the greatest writers on nature. If you have a problem with him, you may be assured the problem is you.

Intent is neither a feature of insect behavior, as we understand intent. Yet we happily talk about bees seeking flowers. Language is always analogical. When it involves birds and bees (or moths) we just notice it more.

The problem is not mine. I have studied this material enough not to be confused by confusing writing. I wouldn't recommend this article to a junior-high student, however.

[EDIT:] Actually I don't recommend it to you either. Just above this thread you're on about being "able to deduce the former existence of creatures that left no physical trace." Seriously? Hearing implies echolocation by predators? I can hear; so can many other animals. Is echolocation really that common? How would echolocation itself evolve in the absence of hearing?

The claim is that, by the evidence, moths had ultrasonic hearing 28 million years before bats' own echolocation developed; and that some moths in environments without bats have since adapted to lower ranges. We must presume paleontologists can recognize the frequency range sensitivity of these structures from their preserved physical shape.

In what way would hearing not sensitive to frequencies that appear in the environment be adaptive? The existence of hearing adapted to ultrasonics implies the existence of something to produce ultrasonics. It doesn't tell you what those producers were, just that detecting them was important to successful moth reproduction.

One possibility would be the moths themselves making sounds. But why would they lose such a capacity?

It is possible they had to evolve to stop making the sounds to avoid attracting the interest of bats, but thousands of species all dropping it, even in places where there are no bats, is not plausible.

The best alternative consistent with what we know is that the original insectivorous producers of ultrasonic noise are now extinct, and that bats later evolved into a similar niche.

There are other possibilities that must be eliminated, through careful research, before we can be confident of late-Cretaceous echolocating insectivores.

TFA does not contain that evidence; the most straightforward reading contradicts it directly. Don't pay such close attention to Jayne Yack's "All of those ears, as far as we know, are tuned to ultrasound, and therefore most likely respond to bats." "as far as we know" is doing a lot of work in that proposition, because actually no one has done any of the research that would be required to show that any of the nine distinct ear evolutions were initially targeted at ultrasound. Later in that same paragraph, Jesse Barber more sensibly indicates, "It seems likely that ears evolved for that reason: to survey the world." The following paragraph begins thus: "When echolocating bats arrived in that world, moths then transformed their existing ears into specialized sonar detectors, by shifting their range toward higher frequencies."

One might have expected one of "the greatest writers on nature" not to have so confused his ardent fan.

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