scholarly journals Field book of insects : with special reference to those of north-eastern United States, aiming to answer common questions /

Author(s):  
Frank E. Lutz
Author(s):  
Leo W. Buss ◽  
Philip O. Yund

Many symbiotic organisms are narrowly distributed on one or a few host species. These associations are intriguing, as they invite the development of hypotheses regarding the pattern and process of speciation and serve as laboratories for the testing of methods of phylogenetic reconstruction (Kraus, 1978; Futuyma & Slatkin, 1983; Stone & Hawks worth, 1986). The evolution of host-specificity in the sea may be expected to be severely constrained by the difficulty of achieving reproductive isolation in taxa whose gametes are freely released into the water column and/or whose larvae are potentially widely distributed (Scheltema, 1977). Yet this difficulty may well be overestimated, given the recent demonstrations of limited gamete (Pennington, 1985; Yund, in press) and larval dispersal (Knight-Jones & Moyse, 1961; Ryland, 1981; Olsen, 1985; Jackson & Coates, 1986; Grosberg, 1987). Indeed, if gamete and larval dispersal are as limited as has recently been contended (Jackson, 1986), local isolation of populations may be a routine occurence, offering repeated opportunities for speciation.


One of the most remarkable evolutionary processes, the more striking since it has occured before our eyes, has been the rise and spread of melanism and melanochroism amongst the Lepidopetera. Commencing about 1850 in the Manchester area in England with the Geometrid moth Amphidasys betularia L., which yielded the black form carbonaria Jord. ( doubledayaria Mill.), this development has proceeded so rapidly, and become so widespread, that now there is scarcely a country in Northern and Central Europe which does not produce its quota of melanic insects. Moreover, the same state of affairs exists in the North-Eastern United States, although there the number of species affected, up to the present, is not so great as in Europe. Another important feature about these changes lies in the circumstance that, almost uniformly, in Europe and in the United States, the first species to exhibit melanism in any given area have been Amphidasys betularia and Tephrosia crepuscularia . From the beginning, the Geometridæ, more especially the subfamily Boarmiinæ, have provided not only the bulk of the melanic varieties, but also the greatest numbers of individuals. In many areas, as for example in the case of A. betularia and Y psipetes trifasciata , only black examples occur. Nevertheless, other groups include species which have gone black; for instance, the Noctuidæ present black forms of Aplecta nebulosa Hufn., the Cymatophoridæ of Cymatophora or F., the Arctiidæ of Spilosoma lubricipeda L., the Gelechiidæ of Chimabacche fagella F., and so on.


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