Re: Plants The sixth sense

From: Alektra at aol.com on 2002.02.01 at 14:59:31(8115) Selective breeding is incredibly detailed. There is a crab in Japan which has the design of a very detailed medieval Japanese helmet on its back. It is known that fishermen habitually threw back the crabs with helmet-like markings. As time went on, the fishermen got more picky, because more and more of the crabs started to have more and more detailed helmet designs. Eventually the design became startlingly detailed. So, there was natural selection for nodules, and then there was natural selection for yellow nodules-- or perhaps by chance, there was a plant with yellow nodules that survived, thrived, and multiplied. Natural selection is every bit as tough as a plantsman who culls his seedlings. +More In a message dated 2/1/2 3:57:03 AM, ptyerman@ozemail.com.au writes: << My thoughts on that were..... I know that the fittest survive and therefore go on to reproduce, but the natural chances of a particular vine producing nodules that mimic the eggs of their only predator is phenomenally small. There has to be some way that they register the presence of these eggs and more importantly their COLOUR. Nodules occuring naturally on a wine is "relatively" possible I suppose, but then colouring the same colour and shade as the eggs? How is this explained? I cannot see any other explanation than that they have some method of sensing their surroundings in a far more thorough method than we realise, including colours. >>

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