Jules Poirier lectures in British Columbia

mel turner mturner at snipthis.acpub.duke.edu
Mon Sep 18 00:16:46 EDT 2000


In article <amg39.REMOVETHIS-AAA43C.23363617092000 at newsstand.cit.cornell.edu>, 
amg39.REMOVETHIS at cornell.edu.invalid wrote...
>In article <39c58d4f_1 at news1.prserv.net>, scott at home.com wrote:
>> In <amg39.REMOVETHIS-62773D.21591816092000 at newsstand.cit.cornell.edu>, 
[snip]

>> >> 14.Describe one insect that was transitional between a non-flying
>> >> insect and a flying insect.
>> >
>> >A gliding insect.
>> >
>> Amazing!
>> 
>> So not only is flying a convergent feature,
>> but so is the actual transition from gliding
>> to flying.

How do you get "convergence" from that? As far as we know, flight in 
insects arose just once, in the early ancestors of the huge group 
Pterygota. He's just saying that the origin of insect flight would 
have involved a gliding intermediate stage [much as it would in the 
three separate origins of vertebrate flight]. 

>Yup.  It's just useful to not die when falling off something high, I 
>guess.

Although insects are most often small enough that that's not 
a danger.

>> >> From what creatures did butterflies evolve?
>> >
>> >I don't know.
>> >
>> Some butterfly-like ancestor.
>
>Someone else indicated that it was probably a moth of some sort.

Me, probably: 
Message-ID: <8q1c7r$am7$1 at news.duke.edu>
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=670714488

The point was that "moth" is just a word for "any Lepidoptera that 
isn't a butterfly [Papilionodea]". Some groups of "moths" are 
evidently closer relatives of butterflies than they are of the 
other groups of moths.

cheers



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