rationalskepticism.org

sprite wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:

sprite wrote:So to go back to the antler analogy, while the differences in the existence/physical structure of the antlers will affect the behaviour of the sexes, these behavioural differences would then be a product of learning? The females don't compete for males because they don't have antlers and learn that they don't so don't try to fight. The males learn they have antlers and that they can use them in competition with other males. Ummm....

Or we could say that the ancestor had males that competed by knocking heads. Some genetic variation occurred where some individuals developed hard growths on the head. This would initially have occurred in both sexes. Sexual selection and the action of establshed mechanisms to sexually limit the expression of genes that are adaptive in one sex but not the other leads to gradual increase over time of the evolution of the male antlers and the absence in the female.
I.e the behaviour of male-male competition shaped the selection of the genes for antlers in males while females did not have the same behaviour so the antler development was selected against.

Indeed - so we would have two equally plausible hypotheses. We would need to test them to figure out which is which.

You really think we need to test whether male deer evolved antlers and then started using them in competition with males? Why did they not continue to develop in females if they had no costs? And this would, of course, be going back to the first ancestor where the antlers evolved, not the current species where the sex-limited mecahnisms are already in force.

You think only male deer ancestor evolved the antlers first from the start and then it was case of 'uh, what shall I do with these?'

If we wanted to take a simplistic understanding of evolution then we could frame the question in that way yes - in the same way we could ask "if the eye evolved, then what use is half an eye?". The point is that we'd need to establish a number of things before we could figure out how the behavior came about. For example, we'd need to figure out whether antlers developed as a result of this behavior, or whether this behavior co-opted horn-like growths on the head to produce antlers. And even if we could figure out the two, we'd still need to establish whether the "knocking heads" behavior is something which has evolved, or whether it is a learnt behavior - i.e. just because the antlers have been selected as an adaptive trait, does not mean that the behavior has equally been selected.

sprite wrote:A lot of resources go into building antlers.
The novel trait would have been in both sexes to start with.
It would have been selected against in both sexes if it had no advantage to either.
It was selected against in females.
It was selected for in males.
It was therefore connected to the differences in behaviour of the two sexes that were there at the start.
The antlers are regrown for each mating/rutting season - again, clearly connected to male-male competition.

In caribou both sexes have antlers though the males have theirs for the rutting season and the females have theirs for the winter.
They were selected for in males due to their advantage in male-male competition, something which existed before the antlers evolved.
They were not selected against in females - or they may have been in the ancestor but again appeared in the caribou female and were then selected for in the females but with a quite different ontology than in the male, again no doubt connected to sex-limitation mechanisms - the female advantage was experienced in the winter months in competition with males over food.

Interestingly, you'll note that none of this suggests that there is an innate "knocking heads" behavior, which is supposed to be the point of the example.

sprite wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:The orgasm is not a behavior, so even if you could find evidence that the evolutionary path of the orgasm was different and that adaptations produced changes in males and females, this does not show that the behavior preceding the orgasm (the behavior that is rewarded) is an adaptation.

To claim that it is is a severe misunderstanding of evolutionary and behavioral theory.

So transporting sperm to eggs is not an adaptation??????????????

How the fuck do you keep reaching these conclusions?

sprite wrote:
We have this rather obscure nature of your use of 'biology' and 'evolved' which is far from clear and 'adaptation' is never used.

I'm using their standard usage in reference to behavior. "Biology" refers to the general bodily functions, "evolved" refers to behaviors that have specifically come about as a result of evolutionary processes, and "adaptive" refers to those behaviors which have evolved as a result of natural selection.

sprite wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:

sprite wrote:So the female damselflies do not have a mating adaptation regarding what the male looks like in terms of the dark colour of the wings in these two species. There is also female preference for darker wings but the darkest wings belong to the other species.
So what do we actually have going on here with this 'learning'? We have a damselfly female with a mating preference for darker wings. If she is just with her own males, no problem. But when in an area with another species that is externally much the same as her own she mates with them too. Then his genitals do not match her evolved preference in her species. She can now distinguish between her own and the other species.

There was no overall preference for darker wings - the preference changed depending on their learning histories.

No. From the paper:

This suggests that the allopatric C. splendens females perceived these conspecific males with enlarged wing patches as extra attractive mates............

The strong positive female responses in allopatry suggest that female preferences are open-ended in favor of an exaggerated version of the basic male signaling trait in C. splendens, that is, the dark wing patch. Sexual selection will not conflict with
species recognition in these allopatric populations, because of the absence of heterospecific C. virgo males. Allopatric C. splendens females can and do thus show an increased preference for large dark wing patches, because they do not run any risk of mating with a heterospecific males. Although one might expect a conflict between species recognition and sexual selection in sympatry (Fig. 2B), such a conflict would not exist in allopatry at all, because there are no C. virgo males. This is the most likely explanation for the open-ended preferences in allopatry in which females clearly preferred males with entirely melanized wings.

And immediately before that:

In sympatric populations,
C. splendens females respond negatively against large dark wing
patches typical of C. virgo males (Figs. 2B and 3). Presumably,
these sympatric females perceived males with entirely dark wings
as being heterospecific (C. virgo) males and therefore rejected
them (Figs. 1A and 3). These results are entirely in line with our
previous study from a single sympatric population and confirms
that the dark wings function as a sexual isolation character between
these species (Svensson et al. 2007). Here we extended
this experiment and found that the same pattern of strong female
species discrimination holds true across three different C.
splendens populations that are sympatric with C. virgo (Figs. 2B
and 3).
In striking contrast to this strong sexual isolation in sympatry,
allopatric females do instead show a positive preference
for males with entirely dark wings (Figs. 2A and 3). Females
from allopatric populations respond significantly more positively
to such males than they do toward the normal (conspecific) male
phenotype which carries only a small wing patch (Figs. 1–3).

There was no overall preference for dark wings.

sprite wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Insane reinterpretation of the data... You're completely misunderstanding what learning and behavioral adaptations are.

Really??????????

Again from the paper:

The mechanisms for such aversive learning are still unknown, but they might have their origin in the physical interactions the males during the cage exposure experiments. For instance, heterospecific males might clasp females differently than conspecific males, or there might be a poor mechanical fit between the genitalia of males and females in the heterospecific couples (McPeek et al. 2008). Slight interspecific differences in fine-scale genital morphology (McPeek et al. 2008), might be perceived as tactical cues by females. There might also be behavioral differences between the species in how the different male types interacted with the females. These factors could provide the negative feedbacks that shape the final mate preferences in females, and the result might be an increased aversion against heterospecific males in sympatry.

So the very extensive and widely documented incredibly diverse genitalia in insects - when the bodies are otherwise indistinguishable - and the connection between this and the females choice of the sperm used, and between this and speciation etc etc plus this clearly happening here is to your mind 'insane'.

Indeed, and the quote you presented contradicts your interpretation - they do not suggest that this form of discrimination learning is a result of an evolved behavior.