tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460788270738656369.post8412219658546504461..comments2023-12-24T07:02:43.274+08:00Comments on Catalogue of Organisms: Eureka! It's an Ant!Christopher Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11075565866351612441noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460788270738656369.post-51429283971758528792008-09-18T09:44:00.000+08:002008-09-18T09:44:00.000+08:00Does this mean the phenotype of interest here is t...<I>Does this mean the phenotype of interest here is the presence/absence of eyes and body pigments, rather than life-history per se?</I><BR/><BR/>Well, inasmuch as there is a correlation between life-history and phenotype, you're right.<BR/><BR/><I>Eyes seem like something that can be lost more easily than (re-)gained. Same with body pigmentation, to a somewhat lesser degree.</I><BR/><BR/>I agree with you. As I indicated in the post, I suspect that <I>Martialis</I> represents a derived lineage in its own right rather than a particularly plesiomorphic one.<BR/><BR/><I>Foraging habitat would seem to be a trait constrained by morphological traits, rather than something more-or-less free to evolve independently.</I><BR/><BR/>I would suspect that morphology would follow foraging behaviour rather than the other way around, but that's a whole different discussion topic.Christopher Taylorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11075565866351612441noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460788270738656369.post-55448871262148995382008-09-18T00:37:00.000+08:002008-09-18T00:37:00.000+08:00but ants that are both pale and eyeless are hardly...<I>but ants that are both pale and eyeless are hardly ever seen in the open.</I><BR/><BR/>Does this mean the phenotype of interest here is the presence/absence of eyes and body pigments, rather than life-history per se? There's an obvious corelation between eyes-and-pigments and foraging habitat, which allows us to infer with reasonable confidence the life-history of a species from a single collected worker.<BR/><BR/>Eyes seem like something that can be lost more easily than (re-)gained. Same with body pigmentation, to a somewhat lesser degree. Foraging habitat would seem to be a trait constrained by morphological traits, rather than something more-or-less free to evolve independently. <BR/><BR/>Does any of this rambling discussion bring us closer to a confident inference of the ancestral foraging habitat of ants 70 million years ago? I kind of feel like my brain is spinning its wheels here. Help?TheBrummellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08973380652057861796noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460788270738656369.post-32528088881652010532008-09-17T09:50:00.000+08:002008-09-17T09:50:00.000+08:00In ants, Hypogaeic and Epigaeic normally refer to ...In ants, Hypogaeic and Epigaeic normally refer to foraging habit. While most ants live in the soil, the Epigaeic ones forage in the open and the Hypogaeic ones rarely do. Some species do blur the line- these tend to be intermediate in morphology- but ants that are both pale and eyeless are hardly ever seen in the open.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5460788270738656369.post-5737478368011336322008-09-17T06:42:00.000+08:002008-09-17T06:42:00.000+08:00How, uh, hypogaeic is the hypogaeic life-style? I...How, uh, hypogaeic is the hypogaeic life-style? In other words, if we're thinking about how likely or unlikely a particular phenotypic change through evolution might be, I'd like to know how distinct from other possible phenotypic states that particular character state is.<BR/><BR/>Most ants that I've met (not that I've met many at all) seem to live underground, in burrows they excavate themselves. How many distinct life-histories are included in that description?TheBrummellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08973380652057861796noreply@blogger.com