
A Textbook Evolutionary Story About Moths and Bats Is Wrong - Yossi_Frenkel
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/textbook-evolutionary-story-wrong/600295/
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ncmncm
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.

~~~
trentlott
> 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

~~~
ncmncm
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.

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

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jessaustin
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.

~~~
ncmncm
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.

~~~
jessaustin
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?

~~~
ncmncm
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.

~~~
jessaustin
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.

