Abstract
IN answer to Mr. Ainslie Hollis, I should like to observe that, in my opinion, the theory of natural selection is not “seriously assailed by investigations into the formation of galls by insects.” On the contrary, in reply to what appeared to be a challenge from Mr. Mivart, I pointed out the manner in which natural selection might here be fairly supposed to have operated. But, while doing this, it appeared desirable to add that the case is a highly peculiar one. If galls were merely amorphous tumours, or even if they presented but as small an amount of specialization for the benefit of the larvæ as is presented by animal tissues for the benefit of their parasites, the case would not be so peculiar. But the degree of morphological specialization which the “pathological process” presents in the case of some galls—and this, of course, for the exclusive benefit of the contained parasites—is very remarkable. And although I doubt not that it is but a higher exhibition of the same principles as obtain in the case of animal tissues and their parasites, it is a case of much greater interest from the Darwinian point of view. For, if the explanation given in my last letter be accepted, the facts show how enormous must be the power of natural selection in building up adaptive structures, seeing that it can do this in so high a degree even when working, as it were, at the end of a long lever of the wrong kind—i.e. acting indirectly on the vegetable tissues through the benefits thereby conferred on their animal parasites. I am not aware that there is any other instance of “symbiosis” where so high a degree of adaptive specialization is presented by one of the “partners” for the exclusive benefit of the other.
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ROMANES, G. Galls. Nature 41, 174 (1889). https://doi.org/10.1038/041174b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/041174b0
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