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I have read somewhere that a butterfly might be two animals that combined together. One animal was a worm-like creature and the other an insect.

And the insect basically hatched inside the worm. Somehow they combined into one creature.

Is there any truth in this? Wouldn't this mean a catterpillar and a butterfly would have different DNA?

But in that case why would a butterfly lay eggs that turned into caterpillars?

zooby
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    Can you please provide a link to where you read this from? – WYSIWYG Aug 19 '19 at 09:04
  • From what I remember about the theories of metamorphosis, the butterfly at the worm stage just has underdeveloped wings. Basically all body parts of the butterfly are already present at worm stage. – Nav Aug 21 '19 at 09:15

1 Answers1

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There was a paper by: Donald I. Williamson, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) August 28, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0908357106, and communicated by Lynn Margulis.

Lynn Margulis, as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, could publish papers in PNAS without adequate peer review. Members of the academy were afforded this honor, because they have achieved the highest levels of science, and supposedly, have few peers who can review their work.

Margulis was known for her work on the origin of mitochondria from the engulfment of prokaryotes, and also the Gaia hypothesis (that the Earth is itself, a living organism). That may have predisposed her to the ludicrous idea that butterflies were the result of some strange symbiosis from onycophorans (Velvet worms).

The whole thing was a huge embarrassment to PNAS, and Margulis. It would never have been published if it had been objectively peer reviewed, and was formally rebutted as wrong, and without any merit whatsoever. See: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/controversial-caterpillar-evolution-study-formally-rebutted/

Karl Kjer
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    Pity cos it's quite an interesting idea even if it's not true! – zooby Aug 19 '19 at 01:07
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    Re: "Lynn Margulis, as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, could publish papers in PNAS without peer review": Do you have a source for that statement? The blog post that you link to says something quite different, namely that members could select the reviewers for peer review. (Additionally, per that post, Margulis originally made it sound like she had selected an unnecessarily large number of reviewers and then cherry-picked the few favorable reviews -- which would have been even worse -- but subsequently clarified that that was not actually the case.) – ruakh Aug 19 '19 at 09:27
  • The Scientific American blog you link to is confused and positively misleading. It complains that Margulis "handpick[ed] its peer reviewers." Well, duh. That's just a heavily loaded way of describing exactly what the journal's handling editor would have done with a normal submission. Three people declining to review because they had no time is utterly irrelevant. – David Richerby Aug 19 '19 at 09:44
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    @zooby Look at chloroplasts and mitochondria - we're pretty sure the weird kind of symbiosis did happen there. Both still retain their own DNA (though of course, it's only a small fragment of what was there before the endosymbiosis and millions of years of evolution happened). There are also some very interesting colonies of single-celled organisms - e.g. the Portuguese man 'o war; each cell has its own DNA (they're all the same species), but is also differentiated based on its location within the colony. Looks like a potential step between colonial microorganisms and multi-cellular life :) – Luaan Aug 19 '19 at 10:52
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    Good points. I added the modifier "adequate" to peer review. However, I disagree with the idea that editors always "hand pick" editors for the purpose of predicting a desired outcome. I was an editor of Systematic Biology for 15 years, and the only hand-picking I did was to ensure that they were qualified and objective. – Karl Kjer Aug 19 '19 at 13:32
  • Moths also undergo metamorphosis, so this merger would presumably have happened before the divergence between the moth and butterfly species. – Barmar Aug 19 '19 at 15:05
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    @DavidRicherby the journal's handling editor is free to choose reviewers, but that is a very, very different thing to an author (or author's representative as the case may be here) chooses the reviewers. While I can suggest reviewers when I submit, that doesn't mean I get to pick them! So choosing three people who already reviewed positively and then sending the reviews to the editor is a recipe for disaster. I don't see anything wrong in the SciAm blog post. – terdon Aug 19 '19 at 16:37
  • @KarlKjer Right but "hand-picked" is just a loaded way of saying "picked". It's always "by hand". – David Richerby Aug 19 '19 at 16:42
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    @DavidRicherby hand-picked implies they were carefully chosen not because they were experts but because they could be relied upon to give favorable reviews. That seems like a very correct use of the term. It's supposed to be loaded since, apparently, Margulis chose folks who would say the "right thing". – terdon Aug 19 '19 at 16:48
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    @terdon I think you're confusing "cherry-picked" and "hand-picked". The latter just means chosen by a person, using their skill and judgement, as distinct from being chosen by some automatic system or process. – David Richerby Aug 19 '19 at 22:35
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    @DavidRicherby yes, it can mean that. But it also means selected for a special purpose. – terdon Aug 19 '19 at 23:11
  • @terdon and in addition the linked article stated that the method of publication used by Margulis will be terminated, though it was not in response to this specific incident. This was back in 2009 so thankfully this weird system is now closed from further errors. – Nelson Aug 20 '19 at 02:52
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    @zooby how to make butterfly-like creatures that are actually symbiotes of two organisms might be a viable question for [worldbuilding.se] – John Dvorak Aug 20 '19 at 15:11
  • "Pity cos it's quite an interesting idea even if it's not true!" good for sci-fi and fantasy literature, horrible and out of place in science. – Geeky Guy Aug 21 '19 at 14:17
  • What's the definition/role of "communicated"? I guess it's similar to co-authoring. – pogibas Aug 21 '19 at 14:22
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    "Communicated" means that the author contacted Dr. Margoulis, and she submitted the paper under her unique privileges as an academy member. It is not similar to co-authoring. More like sponsoring or promoting. – Karl Kjer Aug 21 '19 at 20:06