| dc.description | Soon after his return from the Malay Archipelago, Alfred Russel Wallace published one of his most signifcant papers. The paper used butterfies of the family Papilionidae as a model system for testing evolutionary hypotheses, and included a revision of the Papilionidae of the region, as well as the description of some 20 new species. Wallace argued that the Papilionidae were the most advanced butterfies, against some of his colleagues such as Bates and Trimen who had claimed that the Nymphalidae were more advanced because of their possession of vestigial forelegs. In a very important section, Wallace laid out what is perhaps the clearest Darwinist defnition of the differences between species, geographic subspecies, and local varieties. He also discussed the relationship of these taxonomic categories to what is now termed reproductive isolation. While accepting reproductive isolation as a cause of species, he rejected it as a defnition. Instead, species were recognized as forms that overlap spatially and lack intermediates. However, this morphological distinctness argument breaks down for discrete polymorphisms, and Wallace clearly emphasised the conspecifcity of non-mimetic males and female Batesian mimetic morphs in Papilio polytes, and also in P. memnon, on the grounds of reproductive continuity. Finally, Wallace detailed how natural selection explains various forms of parallel evolution, including mimicry. | |
