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The impossible predicament of the death newts

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Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#171

Post by thaumasiotes »

dragonwriter wrote: post #161
the_af wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Let me see if I follow: once the snake population has the warning coloration, and predators know not to eat them, then individual snakes being successful at eating poisonous newts is unrelated to the snakes living long enough to pass their genes (i. e. being successful in terms of natural selection). So a snake which has the right colors will be successful, regardless of its diet. I wonder, is there a po…

> I wonder, is there a point where mimicry can fail? Can predators at some point start to eat the mimics? The same sources of variation which provide the variety for evolution to work on to evolve avoid eating things with this appearance behavior will also provide variation that evolution can work on to evolve back to do eat things with this appearance behavior; the frequency with which eating causes death vs. the de…

That's all true, but I should point out that there are finer grains of behavior, and some of them asymmetrically make it easier to learn that "actually it's OK to eat those". Predators could evolve the ability to tell the difference between mimics and originals (which is generally rare but extant; consider how human children are taught to tell the difference between coral snakes and king snakes, or how certain birds can reject eggs that they didn't personally lay, but most can't), or they could evolve the behavior of "don't eat things that look poisonous, unless you're really hungry" (which is not rare, and which doesn't work well in a low-mimic environment, but does work very well in a high-mimic environment).

As you note, the behavior you end up with is determined by how much stress the mimics place on you.

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#172

Post by arp242 »

lurquer wrote: post #123
arp242 wrote: post #5

> Meanwhile, evolving resistance also comes at a cost. We don’t know that directly, but we can infer it pretty well. If resistance to tetrodotoxin were cheap and easy, everything would evolve it. [..] We don’t know, but we’re pretty sure there must be something. We know that garter snakes outside of the Pacific Northwest are much less resistant to tetrodotoxin. They’ll drop dead from doses that their Oregon cousins s…

> There is no disadvantage to being able to synthesise vitamin C, and no advantage in dropping the trait. So why did the trait of that mutant primate spread throughout the entire population? There should instead be a mixture of those who can and those who can’t synthesize vitamin C. (Indeed, one should perhaps not so blithely assume that there was sufficient fruit for everyone and so C didn’t matter… for it is precis…

There is no reason for it to spread, but also no reason for it not to. Presumably there was another (completely unrelated) trait, and it happened to spread because of that.

> There should instead be a mixture of those who can and those who can’t synthesize vitamin C.

Probably was for a long time. All of this happened about 60 millions years ago. It's been a while.

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#173

Post by ashoeafoot »

arp242 wrote: post #5

> Meanwhile, evolving resistance also comes at a cost. We don’t know that directly, but we can infer it pretty well. If resistance to tetrodotoxin were cheap and easy, everything would evolve it. [..] We don’t know, but we’re pretty sure there must be something. We know that garter snakes outside of the Pacific Northwest are much less resistant to tetrodotoxin. They’ll drop dead from doses that their Oregon cousins s…

Reptilian Predation squeezed mamalian reproduction into the fast and the furious . Meanwhile birds and turtles reproduce hapoy at methusalem ages. No creator, no design, just merciless pressure that stupidly rewards successful maiming to adapt.

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#174

Post by mattigames »

catlifeonmars wrote: post #153
mattigames wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The diminished muscles in our jaws are one of the direct causes we have bigger brains, source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4817-early-humans-swa... Humans evolved Wesker muscles to gain brain mass, source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/140527-br...

From the first article: > Humans owe their big brains and sophisticated culture to a single genetic mutation that weakened our jaw muscles about 2.4 million years ago, a new study suggests. _A new study suggests_ I don’t think you can treat these claims as categorically true. It’s plausible and probably warrants further study, like most things in biology. Edit: I could not read the second article you linked as it was…

So we are to believe evolutionary paths are free? A stronger homosapiens could have done much more in their lifetime than an equal specimen with the same brain matter but less muscles, even with all the niceties of common era I very frequently find myself in scenarios where being stronger would have helped, I had to move to a building without an elevator and had to carry the freezer, the washing machine and other stuff to the fifth floor, having more muscles certainly would have helped, more recently I found a screw I couldn't unscrew just because I lacked enough force (not because it was a stripped screw), just imagine the amount of scenarios I would find myself if we didn't had all this technology and kitchen appliances that we have this days? You think our manual farming ancestors didn't need all the extra help they could get? To me it's almost preposterous to suggest we gave up our muscles just because we didn't use them because we lacked reasons to use them.

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#175

Post by catlifeonmars »

mattigames wrote: post #174
catlifeonmars wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the first article: > Humans owe their big brains and sophisticated culture to a single genetic mutation that weakened our jaw muscles about 2.4 million years ago, a new study suggests. _A new study suggests_ I don’t think you can treat these claims as categorically true. It’s plausible and probably warrants further study, like most things in biology. Edit: I could not read the second article you linked as it was…

So we are to believe evolutionary paths are free? A stronger homosapiens could have done much more in their lifetime than an equal specimen with the same brain matter but less muscles, even with all the niceties of common era I very frequently find myself in scenarios where being stronger would have helped, I had to move to a building without an elevator and had to carry the freezer, the washing machine and other stu…

> So we are to believe evolutionary paths are free?

Huh? Where did I say that?

I was just pointing out you presented two claims as facts and the sources do not support your claims. Maybe there are other sources that do, but the two studies you cited make much weaker claims.

The news article titles misrepresent the findings in the typical way that news articles sensationalize and misrepresent science etc etc.

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#176

Post by nkrisc »

mekoka wrote: post #94
arp242 wrote: post #5

> Meanwhile, evolving resistance also comes at a cost. We don’t know that directly, but we can infer it pretty well. If resistance to tetrodotoxin were cheap and easy, everything would evolve it. [..] We don’t know, but we’re pretty sure there must be something. We know that garter snakes outside of the Pacific Northwest are much less resistant to tetrodotoxin. They’ll drop dead from doses that their Oregon cousins s…

I think it might be more useful to look at the author's claim from the other side of the lense. We do carry around barely useful traits, like resistance to toxins that we seldom come in contact with. We can assume that carrying such traits is cheap. If resistance to tetrodotoxin was one such cheap trait, it might have been more prevalent, but it's not so, it could be inferred that it's expensive. Or at least, not che…

> like resistance to toxins that we seldom come in contact with.

Is that because resistance to those toxins was strongly selected for in humans, or because the source of those toxins did not strongly select for effectiveness in humans?

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#177

Post by kylebenzle »

mekoka wrote: post #94
arp242 wrote: post #5

> Meanwhile, evolving resistance also comes at a cost. We don’t know that directly, but we can infer it pretty well. If resistance to tetrodotoxin were cheap and easy, everything would evolve it. [..] We don’t know, but we’re pretty sure there must be something. We know that garter snakes outside of the Pacific Northwest are much less resistant to tetrodotoxin. They’ll drop dead from doses that their Oregon cousins s…

I think it might be more useful to look at the author's claim from the other side of the lense. We do carry around barely useful traits, like resistance to toxins that we seldom come in contact with. We can assume that carrying such traits is cheap. If resistance to tetrodotoxin was one such cheap trait, it might have been more prevalent, but it's not so, it could be inferred that it's expensive. Or at least, not che…

You wildly misunderstood the topic being discussed and user above you is correct.

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#178

Post by kylebenzle »

mekoka wrote: post #115
pegasus wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That resistance to toxins we don't encounter often enough to constitute selective pressure, we carry around only if it's the accidental byproduct of another selected-for trait. Otherwise entropy would take care of it, sooner or later. Parent is right, evolution doesn't pay an annual subscription fee for some service which was useful in the past and might come in handy in the future.

You may just be trying to disagree with the author for sport. > we carry around only... Not true. We can carry resistance to some ancestral pressure which isn't part of the current environment. > sooner or later... Yes, sooner when it's costly, later when it's less so, through normal evolutionary pressure (entropy and all). The point is, most species at time T do carry traits that aren't that useful to them anymore.…

You really seem to lack any understanding of how evolution or biology work :(

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#179

Post by kylebenzle »

mekoka wrote: post #135
xenadu02 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is another case of a huge fallacy humans seem endlessly afflicted with: The Root Cause Fallacy. You are assuming there is but one cause for development and/or loss of resistance. There may not be much pressure to develop resistance to tetrodotoxin for most species. Simultaneously there might be a higher metabolic cost to retaining it for some species but not for others. It is also possible that resistance with l…

> You are assuming... I made no assumptions. As I pointed out to another commenter, you might be in too much of a haste to play at being a contrarian. It might be more useful to pay closer attention to what you're objecting to. Evolutionary game theory demonstrates that evolution is a matter of fitness payoffs. If cost of a trait increases, fitness is reduced. The prevalence of a trait in a fit population is indicati…

As a biologist, reading your comments is deeply distressing :(

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#180

Post by tim333 »

chrisweekly wrote: post #24
deadbabe wrote: post #12

Could being a toxic or venemous creature be bad for survivability of a species in the long term if smarter creatures discover you’re lethal and thus become determined to kill your kind on sight?

I'm curious about the broader concept of species intentionally killing other species for reasons other than food.

Cats kill things for I guess what you'd call fun, although it is food related as they hone their skills for when they may need them.
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