From: Jkr438@aol.com
Date: Tue 06 May 2003 - 08:11:03 GMT
[I hope this isn't a repeat message. The first one didn't seem to go through
the way I expected it.]
In a message dated 5/5/2003 8:16:43 PM Central Daylight Time,
rrecchia@mail.clarityconnect.com writes:
Thanks for the effort Chris. Don't sweat it too much. I may try to look
Wilson after I finish his book and I'll see if he has any examples
Jake, I think the term "atavism" is fairly close to what I'm looking for,
but it doesn't seem quite the same. Atavism would seem to cover the stage
where the spotting mechanism disappears with point mutations but not the
potentially quicker re-evolution of the spots again when the environmental
condition for their selection reappears.
The book 'Darwin's Cathedral' by the way has more to do with cultural
selection of religions. The idea for latent adaptation came when he was
discussing guppy species differences in response to different types of
predation. Because the differences in predation seem to me to be things
that might fluctuate within the environment on a fairly frequent basis I
thought something like a 'latent adaptation' might end up present within
the species.
[Jake] I don't think I have ever heard a term for this decreased
manifestation time which you describe. Perhaps you might consider coining
one? Chris's explanation of the hox genes probably provides an excellent
explanation of the underlying biological mechanism that produces both
atavisms and the manifest suddenness with which they can appear compared to
the longer time it took the original ancestral form to appear.
It also may present interesting memetic parallels, if you accept an analogous
role of written texts in religion to DNA sequences. Certain texts may fall
into disuse only to get revived later on in some mutant resurgence of
fundamentalist fervor.
Thanks for the brief summary. I have heard of the book, and it sounds like
it belongs in my "to read" stack.
-Jake Sapiens
Church of the Virus
http://virus.lucifer.com/
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