motorollin wrote:
- - - - - - - - - I would expect this to lead either to an extinction of the caterpillar species in favour of the butterfly/moth species, - - - - - - - -
But that's not what evolution did. Your process says that at one time only caterpillars existed. Then, through evolutionary pressures some caterpillars evolved or branched out into a separate species (butterflies say). Evolution would require the existance at some point, of caterpillars and butterflies as two different animals, together with some 'intermediate' forms (stubby-winged caterpillars say), analogus to the 'missing link'. Each separate species would live and die separately with no interconnection between them. That's not what happened. Metamorphosis is a mechanism used by thousands of species to develop from the infantile form into an adult. It's their life cycle. Of course evolution generated all these mechanisms. Where it got involved in your scenario was in the generation of lepidoptera from segmented worms, which in turn came from from molluscs. Next was the differentiation of caterpillars into moth and butterfly larva as separate families of insects.
Cheers, JaX
