Abstract
MR. COCKERELL is not quite accurate in saying that I have “adduced the production of honey-dew by aphides as a difficulty in the way of the Darwinian theory” (NATURE, vol. xlvii. p. 608). In the passage to which he alludes I have said, that the relationship which in this matter subsists between ants and aphides is one of the very few instances where it can be so much as suggested that the structures or instincts of one species have exclusive reference to the needs of any other species. Therefore, even if this suggestion were not thus opposed to all the analogies of organic nature, “most of us would probably deem it prudent to hold that the secretion must primarily be of some use to the aphis itself, although the matter has not been sufficiently investigated to inform us of what this use is” (“Darwin and after Darwin,” p. 292).
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ROMANES, G. The Use of Ants to Aphides and Coccidæ. Nature 48, 54 (1893). https://doi.org/10.1038/048054c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/048054c0
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