Hormones and Heredity: A Discussion of the Evolution of Adaptations and the Evolution of SpeciesCunningham, J. T. (Joseph Thomas)
Science
Hormones and Heredity: A Discussion of the Evolution of Adaptations and the Evolution of Species
Cunningham, J. T. (Joseph Thomas)
Endocrinology; Heredity; Hormones; Mendel's law
also endeavours to prove that the blindness of cave animals is no evidence
of the influence of darkness in causing degeneration of the eyes. He
refers to experiments by Uhlenhuth, who transplanted eyes of young
Salamanders into different parts of their bodies where they were no longer
connected with the optic nerves. These eyes underwent a degeneration which
was followed by a complete regeneration. He showed that this regeneration
took place in complete darkness, and that the transplanted eyes remained
normal when the Salamanders were kept in the dark for fifteen months.
Hence the development of the eyes does not depend on the influence of
light or on the functional action of the organs. But it must be obvious to
any biologist who has thoroughly considered the problem, that this
experiment has little to do with the question of the cause of blindness in
cave animals. No one ever supposed that cave fishes became blind in
fifteen months, or in fifteen years. The experiment cited merely proves
that in the individual the embryonic or young eye will continue developing
by heredity even after it is transplanted and in the absence of light. But
the eye of the Mammal normally develops in the uterus in the absence of
light.
In his remarks concerning _Typhlogobius_, a blind fish on the coast of
southern California, Loeb seems to be mistaken with regard to the facts.
He states that this fish lives 'in the open, in shallow water under rocks,
in holes occupied by shrimps.' According to Professor Eigenmann the same
species of shrimp is found all over the Bay of San Diego, and is
accompanied by other genera of goby, such as _Clevelandia_ and
_Gillichthys_, which have eyes; but these fishes live outside the holes,
and only retreat into them when frightened, while the blind species is
found only at Point Loma, and never leaves the burrows of the shrimp. It
would appear, therefore, that _Typhlogobius_ lives in almost if not quite
complete darkness, instead of being, as Loeb states, 'blind in spite of
exposure to light,' while the closely allied forms which are exposed to
light are not blind.
Loeb states, on the authority of Eigenmann, that all those forms which
live in caves were adapted to life in the dark before they entered the
cave, because they are all negatively heliotropic and positively
stereotropic, and with these tropisms would be forced to enter a cave
whenever they were put at the entrance. Even those among the Amblyopsidae
which live in the open have the tropisms of the cave dweller. But these
latter are not blind, and the argument only tends to show that the blind
fish _Amblyopsis_ entered the caves before it was blind. Nocturnal animals
generally must be said to be negatively heliotropic, but these usually
have larger and more sensitive eyes than the diurnal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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