The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th EditionDarwin, Charles
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The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition
Darwin, Charles
Evolution (Biology); Natural selection
With these facts before me, I believe that natural selection, by acting
on the fertile ants or parents, could form a species which should
regularly produce neuters, all of large size with one form of jaw, or
all of small size with widely different jaws; or lastly, and this is
the greatest difficulty, one set of workers of one size and structure,
and simultaneously another set of workers of a different size and
structure; a graduated series having first been formed, as in the case
of the driver ant, and then the extreme forms having been produced in
greater and greater numbers, through the survival of the parents which
generated them, until none with an intermediate structure were
produced.
An analogous explanation has been given by Mr. Wallace, of the equally
complex case, of certain Malayan butterflies regularly appearing under
two or even three distinct female forms; and by Fritz Müller, of
certain Brazilian crustaceans likewise appearing under two widely
distinct male forms. But this subject need not here be discussed.
I have now explained how, I believe, the wonderful fact of two
distinctly defined castes of sterile workers existing in the same nest,
both widely different from each other and from their parents, has
originated. We can see how useful their production may have been to a
social community of ants, on the same principle that the division of
labour is useful to civilised man. Ants, however, work by inherited
instincts and by inherited organs or tools, while man works by acquired
knowledge and manufactured instruments. But I must confess, that, with
all my faith in natural selection, I should never have anticipated that
this principle could have been efficient in so high a degree, had not
the case of these neuter insects led me to this conclusion. I have,
therefore, discussed this case, at some little but wholly insufficient
length, in order to show the power of natural selection, and likewise
because this is by far the most serious special difficulty which my
theory has encountered. The case, also, is very interesting, as it
proves that with animals, as with plants, any amount of modification
may be effected by the accumulation of numerous, slight, spontaneous
variations, which are in any way profitable, without exercise or habit
having been brought into play. For peculiar habits, confined to the
workers of sterile females, however long they might be followed, could
not possibly affect the males and fertile females, which alone leave
descendants. I am surprised that no one has advanced this demonstrative
case of neuter insects, against the well-known doctrine of inherited
habit, as advanced by Lamarck.
_Summary._
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