IANABiologist, but there are a couple of stock answers to "how did X evolve?" that might be relevant here:
- Existing structures can be adapted to a new purpose. In this case, maybe the 'texture' you see originally evolved as a structural part of the exoskeleton. If it happens to look even vaguely similar to a leaf skeleton, and that provides a small camouflage benefit, evolution can fine-tune that resemblance into something much more impressive.
- A lot of natural structures that look extremely complex can be created by a very simple ruleset. A program to draw a simple leaf skeleton might look something like this:
program branchnetwork(o,d,l,c,b,a,r);
start;
begin at position o, pointing in direction d;
draw a line of length l, curving by factor c;
every b units, call branchnetwork(...) to create a side branch, with parameters set so that it sticks out from the parent branch at angle a, scaled down from the parent by factor r;
end;
IRL that 'program' is probably driven by things like local nutrient concentrations etc etc.
As a generic program this is useful for quite a range of things - it creates a fractal network that might be suitable for a structural support to hold a leaf rigid, or to distribute nutrients. It can easily adapt to new circumstances because it's controlled by a small number of parameters that allow for a wide variety of outcomes.
So in this case, what's probably happening is that InsectExoSkeletonBuild and LeafGrow are both running off the same algorithm. They have different needs, so they end up with different values for the parameters used by the algorithm - but make a few changes to those parameters and you can quickly end up with mimicry.
If you want to play with this, there's a nifty applet here: http://www.phy.syr.edu/courses/mirror/biomorph/
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Date: 2010-08-26 02:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-26 05:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-26 05:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-26 08:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-27 12:04 am (UTC)- Existing structures can be adapted to a new purpose. In this case, maybe the 'texture' you see originally evolved as a structural part of the exoskeleton. If it happens to look even vaguely similar to a leaf skeleton, and that provides a small camouflage benefit, evolution can fine-tune that resemblance into something much more impressive.
- A lot of natural structures that look extremely complex can be created by a very simple ruleset. A program to draw a simple leaf skeleton might look something like this:
program branchnetwork(o,d,l,c,b,a,r);
start;
begin at position o, pointing in direction d;
draw a line of length l, curving by factor c;
every b units, call branchnetwork(...) to create a side branch, with parameters set so that it sticks out from the parent branch at angle a, scaled down from the parent by factor r;
end;
IRL that 'program' is probably driven by things like local nutrient concentrations etc etc.
As a generic program this is useful for quite a range of things - it creates a fractal network that might be suitable for a structural support to hold a leaf rigid, or to distribute nutrients. It can easily adapt to new circumstances because it's controlled by a small number of parameters that allow for a wide variety of outcomes.
So in this case, what's probably happening is that InsectExoSkeletonBuild and LeafGrow are both running off the same algorithm. They have different needs, so they end up with different values for the parameters used by the algorithm - but make a few changes to those parameters and you can quickly end up with mimicry.
If you want to play with this, there's a nifty applet here:
http://www.phy.syr.edu/courses/mirror/biomorph/