The Greatest Show from Darwin 4-Anglerfish

The Greatest Show from Darwin to Dawkins
4. Anglerfish

Among the sea of examples of artificial selection, we finally come across an evolutionary example in the natural environment. An amazing angler fish is waiting for prey on the seabed. Like some other inhabitants of the depths, this fish lures the victim with its own glow. Its elongated spike-fin provides shelter to bacteria, but not to everyone, but only to those who are able to give out light in payment for shelter. This amazing spike is so well located that everyone who swims to the light will fall right into the mouth of the angler fish, as soon as it starts to draw water into itself.
To complete the picture, a quote from Dawkins about the intricate ways of natural selection: "Would we say here that small prey fish "select" more and more attractive baits, just as peahens select for more and more attractive peacocks, and gardeners for more attractive roses? It would be hard to understand why not.

The victim fish really selects the most "attractive" angler fish for breeding through a roundabout way of selection for survival, feeding them! Anglers with unattractive baits are more likely to starve to death and therefore less likely to breed."
A wonderful example. Indeed, who doubts that natural selection will support those individuals whose rod is better? We can only sympathize with those whose rod is not good enough to feed.
Variability on the face, with the survival rate of the better equipped, too, there is no doubt.
Natural selection works. It's even a shame, the first example and immediately to the point. The promise, of course, must be kept, but for the sake of the purity of the experiment, at least let's trace the evolutionary fate of our amazing fish.
So, an individual who has received a worse rod than a competitor will naturally attract fewer victims and, accordingly, eat them less. Consequently, it will not reach the same size as the owner of the best equipment.
She will not be able to reach a two-meter length, like her luckier relatives. So what? Will it kill her?

If we assume that fish have a complex nervous organization and can be terribly jealous, then it is quite possible… But since the encyclopedias do not tell us about this, the anglerfish will live.
The trick is that a meter-long individual will throw less eggs than a two-meter one, and in the far, far future its offspring will theoretically have to give way to the offspring of an anglerfish with better equipment.
This example clearly shows how subtly natural selection should work.
Now let's go back to the individual who got the best rod. Let's look forward, say, a million years and assume that the rod has been consistently improved.
What of the fact that this rod will reach a meter long or will shine like a lighthouse? Will the anglerfish become someone else because of this?
No! No matter how perfect the device for luring victims has become, as he was an angler, so he will remain.
Maybe I'm wrong, but the evolutionary example somehow let me down a little. In any case, when at the end of the twentieth century it was discovered that the average height of men over the past hundred and fifty years has increased significantly (depending on the country by ten to fifteen centimeters), the world was not shocked by the appearance of a new species. Scientific journals were not full of screaming headlines about homo-gigantus. Everyone was talking only about ordinary acceleration and it never occurred to anyone to draw any radical conclusions from this.

Forgive me, dear professor, but I don't see much difference between the increase in height in men and the spike in angler fish. I apologize to those who were offended for the women who were not noticed in the acceleration. The reason is not disrespect, but the fact that reliable statistics were conducted only on conscripts, and since women were not conscripted into service in the dense nineteenth century, nothing can be reliably said about their anthropometric data. But to be extremely honest, I will only say that during the time that I personally observe the girls, they have grown significantly in my eyes.
And what about the anglerfish? The respected professor did not leave us any other arguments about the evolution of this amazing creature. It's a pity, because it would be a special pleasure to follow the scientific thought that explains the appearance of the glowing spike from a scientific point of view.
In any case, it seems to me that the episode when a certain creature acquired a rod is more interesting. After all, that moment can be considered evolutionary. Isn't that right?
Well, well, do not give up the case halfway? Let's follow the algorithm proposed by Darwin and see how everything should have happened.
A long time ago, millions of years ago, in our galaxy, a predatory fish had a fin process. In its rudimentary form, of course, which only after many generations will become a full-fledged rod.
At what point did this happen? In the bottom darkness or closer to the surface? At the bottom, her ancestors would not have survived without a special device, and no one needs a luminous chandelier near the surface. Most likely, from generation to generation, the ancestors of the anglerfish sank deeper and deeper, gradually getting used to the increasing pressure and the gathering darkness, until somewhere on the border of pitch darkness they had to stop waiting for something unprecedented that would help them move further into the darkness.

In this twilight zone, the struggle for survival became especially acute due to the extreme conditions. And here, unfortunately, our fish have not yet appeared any mechanism for luring food. What should they do? Maybe continue to fight for survival, relying on the good old skills: speed and maneuverability.
But one day, or at least a beautiful night, one of the fish had offspring with an unusual fin process. What's unusual about it? Yes, only that it is located in an unusual place and prevents you from swimming quickly. Despite the fact that it is most likely quite small and does not have a glow that could lure someone to lunch.
"Where do such fantasies come from?" you ask.
Purely from theory. We are not having fun with fantasies, but we are applying theory to the angler fish. The changes should be so small that they are almost imperceptible. And the process plus luminescent bacteria is a very noticeable, at least, double mutation, which cannot be called a simple language.
How can such a predator with a wayward appendage get food? Maybe the same as all his ancestors? However, the process reduces the speed characteristics and, therefore, does not contribute to good nutrition. Even if we assume that it was initially so flexible and thin that it affected the speed very slightly, this still does not make it at least somewhat useful.
And according to the theory, just as in the case of selecting the best rod, natural selection should consistently reject the worst fin.
And we will never see it glowing?
What should be done? The anglerfish exists (at least, videos and photos with it suggest such an idea), and natural selection should not have allowed it to appear.
Let's not be too picky and assume that in this case a large and rather complex mutation took place, as a result of which a full-fledged rod immediately appeared, equipped with a special gland that is filled with bioluminescent bacteria.

Well, natural selection has already happily picked it up and began to develop it, because a device that attracts food directly into the mouth cannot but cause universal delight.
Skeptics will object: they say, the probability of such a complex mutation is minimal. Not only is the mutation double, but it also concerns unrelated areas. Where is the fin at all, and where are the bioluminescent bacteria?
Ha, let's say we have millions of years left! Will the one in a million probability suit you?
Well, is that all? Unfortunately, no. It remains not to forget about a very important condition.
An accident! Mutations must happen by chance.
How do we distinguish a random phenomenon from a non-random one? We look, for example, at a fisherman who takes a fishing rod in his hand, baits it and starts fishing. Clearly, his actions are not accidental. There is reason and calculation behind them. Now we look at the monkey, which turns the same fishing rod in its paws until it breaks and guess that the monkey's actions are random.
In relation to the angler fish, the appearance of the rod in the right place is not accidental. In order to recognize it as accidental, it is necessary that this fin process first tried many other places before it took its rightful place.

Natural selection will reject all unnecessary mutations. Really, who needs the light from the rod on the anal fin? You can't really feed yourself with such a device. But when it appears in the right place, then the selection will not fail.
This is, apparently, what a difficult path, consisting of a long series of complex mutations, the ancestors of the anglerfish, who live exclusively in the twilight zone, had to go through in order to bring us closer to the uninteresting fact that was proposed as a justification for the theory.
Why did Dockins omit such a difficult period for evolution? Maybe because he himself claims that "Mutations are random changes in genes that make up the raw material for evolution due to non—random selection. In nature, large mutations rarely survive, but geneticists love them in laboratories because they are easy to study."
The ocean is not a laboratory, and survival, as well as the probability of a long sequence of complex mutations, does not really fit into the proposed scheme.
What can shed light on the appearance of the long-suffering anglerfish?
Skeptics are hard to convince of anything until they see the evidence with their own eyes. That's why they are skeptics. For my part, I can offer a fairly simple way, moreover, without digging into prehistoric sediments in search of transitional forms.
From the point of view of the probability of accidents, a million years in the past covering millions of attempts to originate a rod is equivalent to millions of attempts in living individuals (no matter which ones – this is a case!).
By the way, to look for evolutionary forms only in the past means to believe that evolution is over. Do not look for transitional forms among living beings – doubt evolution!

What is the most numerous commercial fish? Cod, herring, sprat? It doesn't matter! From the point of view of the purity of the experiment, it is even better that the resulting sample is not a predatory fish, since the presence of such a mutation in predatory fish cannot be reliably recognized as a random event, since the fact that the rod can be used may imply intent in nature.
But the appearance of a rudimentary rod in some herring, sprat or pink salmon fully corresponds to the concept of chance. Of course, natural selection will not allow this mutation to gain a foothold in subsequent generations, because it is unnecessary.

So we don't need it. One mutant sprat is enough for us!
A million fish — this number hardly exceeds the monthly turnover of an average fish processing plant. I am sure that the earnings of employees of such an enterprise are small and a modest grant of several thousand dollars to search for a sprat with a rod would make a proper impression on the workers of the industry, and a healthy research passion would greatly diversify their monotonous work.

No need to break spears. Just a few thousand dollars and proof of the appearance of the angler fish in our pocket! And while the grant has not been appointed, we will have to move on to search for other, less controversial examples.

* - I apologize for my English. I would be grateful for the corrections.

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