Posted on 04/02/2009 12:31:06 PM PDT by JoeProBono
Many animals are colorful to demonstrate fitness and health to one another—the robin's red breast is a sterling example. But pigment, like everything else in the body, comes at an energy cost.
For animals that live in the dark, such an expense is unnecessary, so most are pale and colorless. Yet caecilians, amphibians with earthworm-like bodies that spend most of their lives underground, are bafflingly colorful.
Combining information about caecilian behavior and evolutionary history, researchers Katharina Wollenberg at the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany and John Measey at the South African National Biodiversity Institute suggest that just a little bit of light exposure was all it took for color to evolve in these animals.
Above, the caecilian Boulengerula boulengeri, found in the cloud forests of Tanzania, is blue—and blind. Since its bright colors are not demonstrating fitness to blind kin, researchers think color might have evolved when its distant ancestors spent time on the surface.
got it.
Relatives of yours?
“dirt cakes” are always a hit at the civil engineers parties i attend. OK, the beer is a hit, the dirtcakes get a glance and a nod.
Stalker Alert!
If they don’t have features they don’t need, it’s evolution.
If they do have features they don’t need, it’s evolution.
Dang! Imagine the fish you could catch with that last honkin’ worm!!!
For example, why are carrots orange? Not only are carrots blind, but the orange part is underground.
In the case of plants, I figure that certain useful compounds, for plant growth or protection from bacteria or foraging animals, happen to have specific colors, in some cases for specific reasons, such as protecting from excess solar radiation.
In the eyes of the evolutionist all questions lead to one answer, evolution.
Carrots are domesticated plants. In the wild, the plant which we know of as the "carrot" is called Queen Ann's Lace. It's tap root is comparatively white, with, perhaps, a very slight orange cast from the presence of small quantities of the pigment carotene), much like a turnip. Over the many years that carrots have been under domestication artificial selection has produced the high carotene versions with which we are so familiar. Perhaps carrot breeders liked the orange color or thought that it made the carrots more appetizing or desirable.
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