Data/hora: 10/06/2024 02:48:03

Provedor de dados: | Gayana
País: | Chile
Título: | Alfred Russel Wallace and the Darwinian Species Concept: His Paper on the Swallowtail Butterflies (Papilionidae) of 1865
Autores: | Mallet,James.
Data: | 2009-01-01
Ano: | 2009
Palavras-chave: | History of evolution; Mimicry; Species concepts; Geographic variation; Taxonomic infation; Island biology; Lepidoptera.
Resumo: | Soon after his return from the Malay Archipelago, Alfred Russel Wallace published one of his most signifcant papers. The paper used butterfies of the family Papilionidae as a model system for testing evolutionary hypotheses, and included a revision of the Papilionidae of the region, as well as the description of some 20 new species. Wallace argued that the Papilionidae were the most advanced butterfies, against some of his colleagues such as Bates and Trimen who had claimed that the Nymphalidae were more advanced because of their possession of vestigial forelegs. In a very important section, Wallace laid out what is perhaps the clearest Darwinist defnition of the differences between species, geographic subspecies, and local ‘varieties.’ He also discussed the relationship of these taxonomic categories to what is now termed ‘reproductive isolation.’ While accepting reproductive isolation as a cause of species, he rejected it as a defnition. Instead, species were recognized as forms that overlap spatially and lack intermediates. However, this morphological distinctness argument breaks down for discrete polymorphisms, and Wallace clearly emphasised the conspecifcity of non-mimetic males and female Batesian mimetic morphs in Papilio polytes, and also in P. memnon, on the grounds of reproductive continuity. Finally, Wallace detailed how natural selection explains various forms of parallel evolution, including mimicry.
Tipo: | Journal article
Idioma: | Inglês
Identificador: | http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0717-65382009000300005
Editor: | Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Oceanográficas, Universidad de Concepción
Formato: | text/html
Fonte: | Gayana (Concepción)  v.73 suppl.1 2009