Richard Prum: prediction

Transcript context

…Well, certainly, one thing about pollinator and plant interactions is that they are different species. From the pollinator perspective, the pollinator is getting food, nectar, and sometimes eating the pollen. From the plant perspective, the plant is getting animal aid in dispersing their gametes to reproduce with other plants. What is the plant doing? The plant is investing in another animal. In order to do that, it has to advertise its opportunity. This is really in the realm of advertising. What the flower really has to be is memorably rewarding. To me, that’s like going into the grocery store, and you look at a Coke can or a box of cereal, and there’s literally nothing on the can or on the box that will tell you anything about what the experience of eating or interacting with that product will be like. And that’s exactly what flowers are like. There’s a whole realm of this field in biology, trying to emphasize co-evolution, that particular flowers and particular pollinators interact. Of course, those do occur, but the vast majority of flowers are pollinated by generalists and the vast majority of pollinators are generalist pollinators, so they have to be memorably rewarding. Some of them are like Doritos — you’ll reach over and grab one, but it’s not really what you need. Then some products you’ll go further for because they’re really, really rewarding. This implies, actually, that bees are making choices. If bees were not making choices, then the world wouldn’t be full of beautiful flowers. All the flowers would be exploiting that one button that was the most efficient way to get that bee just to show up and feed. But of course, all the flowers would come to look like each other, and then they wouldn’t be carrying their pollen to another one of their same species, so the whole thing would fail. Bees are making choices, and they’re making aesthetic choices based on the memorably rewarding experience of using a flower. Of course, for a bee, a flower is like architecture plus olfaction, and actually electric. It turns out that hummingbirds and insects establish a static charge as they fly. As they approach the flower, it’s like when you rub a balloon on your hair. You can feel the balloon getting near your hair. Your hair starts to stand up or whatever. As they approach the flower, they can actually experience this electric charge. The hairs on their body stand up, so they can tell. And of course, when the bee forages at the flower, the charge is neutralized. They can tell how recently that flower has been visited — before they even get there — by the static force acting on their hairs. This is a subjective experience that really influences their choices in the world. What does that have to do with bird breeding, your question? Well, it has to do with the fact that we put the subjective experience of the animal at the center of our analysis. Indeed, that leads, I think, to a really accurate understanding of what’s going on in nature. has to do with the fact that we put the subjective experience of the animal at the center of our analysis. Indeed, that leads, I think, to a really accurate understanding of what’s going on in nature. Now, you mentioned Fisher. We didn’t talk about that, but what is a Fisherian process? A Fisherian process is a self-organizing sexual selection mechanism where genes for preference — liking long or short tails — become correlated with genes for the trait — having a short tail or having a long tail. Individuals who like long tails are going to find mates with them, and anyone who likes short tails are going to find mates with those. Those two forms of variation will start to co-vary, and that means when an individual selects on a mate, they’re also indirectly selecting on co-varying or correlated genetic variation for preference. That means the whole thing can just run itself, and of course, it does and produces a lot of diversity. Before we move on, let me put in a plug for your excellent and award-winning book, The Evolution of Beauty. Now let’s go to birding. Let’s say you’re a birder with a collecting mentality. Should it count if you only hear the bird, like a nightingale in a thicket?…

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