cifically evil. Hauser Chapter 1. Nature’s secrets 21 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012767 What’s it for? About 50 million years ago, a family of insects — the Phylliinae — evolved a distinctive piece of anatomy: a body that looks like a leaf. They also evolved the capacity for catalepsy or statuesque stillness. Their

ure from predators will, in turn, push for new evasive tricks, thus initiating the classic cycle of predator-prey evolution. What is adaptive for the Phylliinae today, may not be adaptive tomorrow. The comparative study of the Phylliinae raises a class of questions posed by all evolutionary biologists, indep