myrmepropagandist on Nostr: This is confusing because it's hard to know if a feature is "retained" or ...
This is confusing because it's hard to know if a feature is "retained" or "redeveloped" (convergent and parallel evolution) -- but even supposing we can be certain it was retained calling these ants primitive can obscure their high degree of adaptation.
For example Gigantiops destructor could be called "primitive" for being a solitary hunter (or maybe solitary hunting is just a strategy that works in some contexts but not in others?) yet destructor has the best vision of all ants. 2/
Published at
2024-01-06 11:44:38Event JSON
{
"id": "e6d1c333787e6dbe66ddcde29c5b01ee0ea4e3ef935caf2ad51f49cd0367a90e",
"pubkey": "c054144d7615820eaa2322e78ba10e111c44219059482b21ba71e51a9729f40b",
"created_at": 1704541478,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"e",
"7da8cddb7653666f9f7611333f6cb0f3a5e02a33bf3476b8dad404ab958bf859",
"wss://relay.mostr.pub",
"reply"
],
[
"proxy",
"https://sauropods.win/users/futurebird/statuses/111708830327743424",
"activitypub"
]
],
"content": "This is confusing because it's hard to know if a feature is \"retained\" or \"redeveloped\" (convergent and parallel evolution) -- but even supposing we can be certain it was retained calling these ants primitive can obscure their high degree of adaptation. \n\nFor example Gigantiops destructor could be called \"primitive\" for being a solitary hunter (or maybe solitary hunting is just a strategy that works in some contexts but not in others?) yet destructor has the best vision of all ants. 2/",
"sig": "a45f5dc296a4de78346231168d4046f16f0c5ea60f6e76c32fc56bd9bdeb3b1f6c6d458a5ed10d2210fa58972fd2ef117e1d65a91033e5f82a8b0fb85f731d79"
}