Slashdot Mirror
Bacteria Encrypts Sperm, Encourages Speciation
Loiosh writes "EurekaAlert has an interesting short report concerning sperm.
Scientists have found the most convincing evidence yet that a parasite can contribute to splitting a species in two, thanks to a phenomenon where a wasp's damaged sperm can be "rescued" or fixed only by mating with particular females. A bacterium called Wolbachia prevents the successful development of embryos in matings between two very closely related wasp species that could otherwise produce viable offspring. Instead of merely helping its host compete against non-infected hosts as many parasites do, Wolbachia actively seeks to eliminate non-infected hosts by stopping them from reproducing. To do this, the parasite alters the sperm of its male host, rendering it infertile when paired with an uninfected female. If, however, the male mates with an infected female, the damaged reproductive cells are "rescued" by the female's parasite. It's as if the bacterium encodes the sperm cell, rendering it useless unless it encounters the de-coding bacterium from another infected wasp. The result is that infected males can only impregnate other infected females, not uninfected ones, and makes it difficult for uninfected females to find a compatible mate."
...i stand before nature with wide open eyes...isnt it i-n-c-r-e-d-i-b-l-e???
this is sure interesting. first goat sex, now wasp sex.
So this is why there are so many variations of Unix and Linux--species splitting!
---Any philosophy that can be put "in a nutshell" belongs there.---
So does this mean that the US government is going to attempt to put restrictions/bans on the export of certain bacteria out of the country? Screen anyone leaving the US to make sure that they are not carrying this dangerous form of encryption within their bodies?
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Wow, this sounds like something that those wonderful people who develop biological weapons would love to get their hands on. Especially those with racial issues. Then they could ensure that the gene pool of their culture remains "pure" from adulteration by "lesser" beings...
Seriously though, this sounds like it has all kinds of ethical implications in the wrong hands. If someone thinks that a certain group shouldn't be allowed to spread their genes throughout a population, then a variation on this which lives in human hosts could ensure that if said group is infected then they can never breed outside of that group again. I can think of several groups that would probably love to get their hands on this kind of capability.
It just goes to show that Nature is still millions of years ahead of our best weapons developers when it comes to nasty techniques...
I'd like this explaned in terms of Alice, Bob and Eve.
I figure which ever way you look at it, Bob's going to be a pretty lucky guy.
But if I were Alice I wouldn't stand for this kind of philandering.
Pretty Good Parasite
Just imagine what the RIAA and MPAA could do with this idea. Hope they don't read /....
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I generally find myself getting strange looks when I talk about things like this. But I think this is just awesome. It continues to amaze me how much scientific knowledge we are gaining all the time. I mean, who would even think of running an experiment on this.
It is kinda weird to think about what implications this might have though. If this sort of thing would really cause an offshoot of a species, maybe we as humanity were caused by some diseased apes.
This is sort of an encryption thing I guess. I mean the bacteria could itself wait until a properly infected host mates and then deposit its own bacteria into the fertilized embryo that would carry the bacteria to future generations there by causing a mutated species to occur. But if this species is succesful and surpass the original species would it be considered evolution? or maybe just one of those freak occurences that just happens?
It is good to hear about these sort of weird happenings and other cool things at Slashdot. Keep it up people I would hate to actually have to put a TV card in my computer to watch tv. Cant do both, tv is behind computer, although I could set up 2 mirrors to display the tv output on the wall above the computer monitor thereby not having to put a card in the computer. huh?? ok its too late and I need sleep. Later All
Lord Arathres
stainless steel
Therefore, if a species is split into the ones suffering from parasites, and the ones not, one would expect the ones not suffering from parasites to prevail. As the two segments of the species would be identical otherwise, speciation having only just started, this means that the parasitical section is less fit, and will die out.
Regarding humans, I wonder if it is possible that this process is happening to us, if true? Africans and Asians suffer greatly from parasites, much more than we in the west do, & it may be possible that this is causing them to speciate very gradually. Something to think about, anyway.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
If these trials are successful, the government plan to infect the rest of the UK population with different strains of the bacteria. They intend to prevent the demise of the well established class system by only allowing subjects to mate within their own social group. It is hoped that by recreating the strict class system that existed in the times of The Empire, the UK may once again become a major world power.
--
--
Donald "Don Juan" Kerr
Great news... Now I can say that I'm promoting the evolution of the species by not having that nasty rash down there treated.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
You just have to go back and forth a few times, but it comes out intelligible in the end.
Well there's hope for you yet. Just head on over to San Francisco and you can find many "women" who are infected with the "flu"
Oh great, encrypted sperm - does this mean we'll now all need a munitions licence to carry gonads across national borders?
Gives a whole new meaning to "playing with your weapon"...
-- Hi, I'm a
This reminds me of an old MSDOS virus that modified your FAT disks such that only computers infected with the virus could read the disks! So people with infected computers would reach the conclusion that there was something wrong with the un-infected PCs. Then they might offer their boot disk to the owners of un-infected PCs - "Try this... If it works, there's something wrong with your DOS disk"... And the whole cycle repeats :-)
Do you remember what this virus was called? Perhaps there were many that used this strategy.
YES! That's what the DVD-CCA/SDMI/CPRM proponents are! BACTERIA!
Wolbachia. Nature's DMCA.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Wolbachia actively seeks to eliminate non-infected hosts by stopping them from reproducing.
Substitute "Microsoft" for "Wolbachia" and "Windows" for "infected" and suddenly the PC market begins to make sense...
heh.
-the wunderhorn
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
That's similar to geeks:
In order to find a partner one geek specimen has to find a female infected with the same "IRC channel" germ.
Distributed.net released today the Beta version of its newest distributed code-cracking project. Code-name Get Lucky, it will help millions of men whose sperm has been encrypted by malicious bacteria. "This is a very important project" the team leader said Thursday, "this isn't just cracking encryption to see if we can do it. THis is a race against time." Apparently the winning team will split a $50 million reward, reportedly sponsored by anonymous sources.
I wonder what the vector for the bacterial infection is in the first place. It certainly isn't sex - otherwise the mating of an infected individual with an uninfected would infect the latter.
In a sense, it is sort of fitting, seeing as there are a number of wasp species that reproduce by laying their eggs in other animals (spiders, larvae, etc... depending on the species of wasp). Now there is a species of wasp that is itself a host to a parasite that modifies its reproductive behavior.
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
Also, the FSF is sponsoring the new GSG - (GNU Sperm Guard) software. It's a full replacement for the proprietary virus...
The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...
SIG: HUP
Choosing a mate in thes times are already so difficult what with Aids etc. now we have to be sure the partner is not infected by some such parasite/virus. Or maybe by then cloning would help.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
His laptop was of course infected, and I didn't know about boot sector viruses then (I had just started out as a temp that summer) so I fdisk'd /MBR his drive. Boy was he pissed. :)
Hey with a bacterium like this, we could wipe out royal families all over the world!
Or, yo express it even better, your view of the evolution is a little too naive.
First, nobody is out there "judging" creatures to see if they pass some kind of evolutive finals.
There are probably uncountable instances of parasitic relations where the existence or absence of the parasite has absolutely no influence in the creature survival capacity.
In this particular case, the bacteria probably installed itself by sexual transmission and probably gave some benefits to the host. Some hosts would not be afected. From there on the host population would be forever separated, even before any other speciation occurrred.
I will refrain from commenting on your last paragraph. But be careful with this line of reasoning. You are on the very edge of racism there.
...I can imagine Richard Simmons taking full advantage of this.
"Oh! Oh! Oh Mr. Guaaaaaard sir!! My sperm is enryyyypted! If you'll give me a cavety search I'll give you a saaaaaaample!"
But when you think about it, this sort of thing would make sense. If you based your encryption on some random individual's or animals or even plants DNA sequence, wouldn't that be much more complex than even the most hard core encoding we can use now? Of course, I have a hard time with anything more complex than pig Latin.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
You know, this means bacteria are now protected under the DMCA and the use of penicillin is a felony or something.
Does this strike anyone as a really interesting form of birth control? Step one: man infects self with bacterium, becomes infertile with uninfected women. Step two: man dates uninfected women without fear of offspring. Step three: man finds woman he really really likes, they form a reasonably permanent relationship. Step four: couple decides they want children. Step five: woman infects self with bacterium. Step six: procreation.
Only problem is it only works for one generation, assuming the infection is passed from mother to child. But if it isn't, or if a woman can be "cured", then it could be really cool....
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
I'm a computer geek who works in public health so I've been following the Wolbachia story for some time.
"Splitting a species in two is probably just a side effect of the bacteria's reproductive method, of their way of eliminating non-infected hosts."
Note that infected females can still breed with uninfected males, so the bacterium's "strategy" is to eliminate uninfected offspring. If speciation per se was beneficial to its strategy you'd expect infected females to be unable to breed with uninfected males.
This really is old news. As the article states, the effect was first discovered by entomologists in the 1950s and finally attributed to Wolbachia in the 1970s despite the fact that it was isolated in mosquitoes in the 1920s. Mosquito research is not the most aggressively funded field despite that the mosquito kills more people than any other animal on earth. Most animals we think of as "dangerous" (like sharks and grizzly bears) don't even come within five orders of magnitude of the Anopheles mosquitoes.
Wolbachia infects the reproductive organs of a wide variety of arthopods where it pulls a number interesting reengineering stunts, such as enabling virgin births.
Wolbachia has some interesting public health implications. Somebody did a paper last year that showed that some worms in the genus that causes river blindness have evolved to become dependent upon Wolbachia for survival -- and Wolbachia can be killed by tetracycline. Eighteen million people in Subsaharan Africa are infected with Onchocerca, which to date has had no effective treatment. This has tremendous economic impact in an underdeveloped region.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Bacteria, Nothin'! It's much more difficult to face humans who are trying to prevent me from mating!
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
D'oh! Tried HTML formatting! Lemme try again.
:) And don't try to put that code into the DNA sequence of a bacteria -- I've already patented the idea in a partnership with Amazon and Altavista (for search indexing of DNA)
#ncludeiway
oidvay ntiway ainmay()
{
rintfpay("elloHay orldWay!/nay");
eturnray();
}
And any errors in the code have nothing to do with the fact that I've not coded in C in over a year. It's uh...part of the encryption
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Freedom: "I won't!"
This discovery could have great impact on how human beings use contraception. Every man could be infected with a modified parasite (modified just for that person) and then he will not have children until he really wants to and his mate also really wants, at which point she only has to be infected with the properly DNA modified parasite that would work with only her man. There will be no unwanted pregnancies, and both parents mutual consent would be needed to have a child. Of-course the child will inherit the parasite but that is just good for the next phase of contraception.
You can't handle the truth.
Wow, this is sick - a perfect example of biological warfare. Doesn't bacteria have any ethics?
(At least I didn't say petrified. oops.)
attaches itself to existing system, prevents it from interacting with noninfected systems...
*** ***
In this case the thing is reversed - it's the male that's locked (no reproduction) and the female has to have the key (be infected).
Maybe nature can invent the thief (or the locksmith).
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
This sends ice down my spine.
Only one thought in my mind:
. o O ( the descolada virus? )
Before I part with'em: two pennies weigh ~4.996+/-0.014g, have a zinc core, and the face of Lincoln. You can keep 'em.
I carry all forms of parasites. Will design any encryption algorithm to decript any eggs. :)
Hooray! A new potential bioweapon!
If you can't fight your opponent, breed him out of existance.
Wow, there are so many exciting ways to die on this planet.
-
"Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" - RWE
Wait, let me get this straight. On the frontpage of /., there is a story about a bug and its bug. A wasp that can't get its groove on because because of bacteria. Ok. Great.
Where is the frontpage mention of the instant orgasmatron that is being researched for women that can't have an orgasm??
...
BZZZZZTT!
Rami
--
rJames.org - illustration
Soon we're all going to have ear infections that prevent us from hearing music unless we've paid for it!
Ask Paul Erlich, who said in his book Extinction: "We have yet to see a single instance of speciation in the animal kingdom".
It just doesn't happen in animals these days. Happens in plants, sure, but they have a different DNA structure than us. Come on, give up on the pipe dream of spontaneous speciation as an explanation for the diversity of species. It's beginning to sound as dated as spontaneous generation, which Pasteur and others blew away 150 years ago.
QH
www.backwoodsengineer.com
To be Numbered
A Standard for the Transmission of Encrypted IP Datagrams on WASP
Status of this Memo
This memo describes an experimental method for the encapsulation of IP datagrams on WASP (Wide-Area Sperm Protocol). This specification is primarily useful wooded areas. This is an experimental, not recommended standard. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Overview and Rational
WASP transmissions offer encryption with the complexity of DNA encoding with the convenience of naturally-occuring encoding methods via reproductive methods. The connection topology is limited to any vessel which may carry the encrypted datagrams; however, encryption and decryption of the data must be done within the confines of the reproductive genitalia of a WASP carrier. Thusly, the throughput of data is limited to the ability of the WASP to make the necessary connections with other WASPs during the transmission interval. Note that high-bandwidth transmissions are not recommended, as the carrier may die from repeated use and packets will be lost.
Frame Format
The IP datagram is submitted in the form of a complex protein strand which the WASP ingests. This is then translated into a DNA fragment in the SM (Sperm Module) and encrypted by the bacterial cultures within the host carrier. Transmission may then commence. During transmission, various system messages may be transmitted via broadcast datagrams. Some of these possible messages are:
- "0100: SYSTEM: HONEY HAVE YOU COME YET?"
- "0233: SYSTEM: WATCH WHERE YOU'RE POKING THAT THING!"
- "0355:
/dev/penile0: Device not responding"
- "0556: module 'p0rn' not found: Unable to continue"
Upon transmission to the receiving host, the datagram is decrypted using similar methods and produces the requested result.Discussion
Transmission quality of service (QoS) is dependent upon the level of low-lighting and available singular-typed WASP carriers. High transmission rates are most often found in alleys behind popular adult establishments and in dorm rooms of universities.
Security Considerations
Security is guaranteed by the complex encoding system; however, precautions should be made to keep such transmissions away from RAID devices, as this could cause premature data loss. Other outside influences, such as TROJAN viruses, may keep the data from reaching its intended recipient.
Blog,Twitter
There are still differences in the DNA, otherwise we'd all have the same range of colouration, right? Even people in places which have very little outside contact show marked differences in their DNA over time, due to having a smaller gene pool.
So there are differences despite their not being different species.
And yes, wasp chemistry and human chemistry are different. But that doesn't mean it's not possible, and now that there's a working example it gives researchers something to work from and towards...
I once read about a virus that scrambled the files of a particular app (Lotus 1-2-3, I think) when they were saved and unscrambled them when they were loaded. If you removed the virus, you couldn't read your files :-). You also couldn't share them with uninfected users. I can't think of another virus you might need to be infected with!
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
This is signing, i.e. there is no encoding going on, merely some info is added to the package such that it won't work without the added info.
-Shieldwolf
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
W. spp. have been found in an amazing number of Arthropods...and has, as mentioned great implications for evolutionary studies. You can check out this, this or this for a couple of interesting articles on the subject.
Its really not old news either, the extent of Wolbachia infections is not known (if 10% of species are described you can hardly know if the other %90 are infected). Note that there are many "species" of Wolbachia as well, perhaps not even related (in the same genus) and that hosts may be infected by multiple "species" each combination of which may have different effects! What this comes down to is that you basically need to overlap two phylogenies (family trees/networks etc.) now to get a picture of what's going with regards to the evolution of your target organism. Really cool.only infrmatn esentil to understandn mst b tranmitd
Someone spent an aweful long time watching wasps mate to figure this one out. I find that a little, disturbing...
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
I can see it now:
SWM seeks infected female for fun,
companionship, procreation.
Must have own Wolbachia. Hornets need not apply.
Just wait, 2600.com will get sued for posting a copy of DeWolbachia on their web site.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Have we tried this with AIDS yet? Might be that a male with AIDS and a female with AIDS produces a child without AIDS. Interesting story anyways.
-Nicholas Blasgen
My wife and I had given up after 7 years of natural and artificial means for impregnation. We've finally had a beautiful girl, but I wonder if this was a contributing factor in our difficulties.
The most likely impediment up to now had been the acid/alkaline incompatibility between my wife and myself. But that didn't really hold well during artificial insemination.
I'm glad to see that we're still plugging away at mysteries of this aspect of nature.
I've been way too busy to do anything about it; but this reminds me of a plot-line I was contemplating... A sci-fi spy type novel set in the not-so-distant future, where our hero has an encrypted message hidden in his DNA. A message that can only be decrypted by the DNA of another person, a woman, who he searches for throughout the planet for some reason of international importance... :)
hmm, could be a pretty good porno too
"I've seen plays that were more exciting than this.
Honest to god... Plays!" Homer Simpson
We have yet to see a single instance of speciation in the animal kingdom
Of course, we have only been observing for less than 10 thousandths of a percent of the duration of time over which there has been life on earth. Makes it a little difficult to observer what is anyway an inherently slow process.
I stared at one of my pot plants for a whole week recently. I did not see it grow AT ALL. So all these people who keep telling me that plants grow must be smoking something - it clearly just does not happen.
Come on. Speciation HAS TO happen, given the current system and the rules that act on the system, its as natural as the idea that if pizza-eating people don't like olives, then the last remaining pieces of pizza when everybody has taken their share of a pizza with olives on is the one that has the most olives on - the "fitness function" of the pizza. Its the same idea. To say that the principles of evolution are bogus is to say that people will choose pizza pieces randomly, regardless of how many olives each piece has. Thats just ridiculous.
...amazing that RL mirrors fiction.
I can't wait to see the next generation of scr1p7 k1dd135 with this one. 1 0wn j00, p3t3r n0rth!
---- Just another spud server.
It's important to remember that this article is discussing two separate species of wasp. Quoting from the article:
Bordenstein, O'Hara and Werren needed to look at the numerous genetic barriers that kept the species from interbreeding and determine which one came first. They found little difference in the mating rituals and preferences of the two species, suggesting that those were not enough in themselves to force speciation. Also, hybrids of the two species were not sterile--an early sign of speciation--and the hybrids were relatively healthy. In contrast, the presence of Wolbachia was the single highest barrier to the interbreeding of the two species, and thus, it is likely the oldest barrier.
hey!'s post:
Note that infected females can still breed with uninfected males, so the bacterium's "strategy" is to eliminate uninfected offspring. If speciation per se was beneficial to its strategy you'd expect infected females to be unable to breed with uninfected males.
The absence of a barrier between infected females and uninfected males is beneficial to Wolbachia and encourages speciation. Such a barrier would not be beneficial to host or parasite, because it would result in "instant" speciation and inbreeding. The scientists are trying to demonstrate that the "one-way" barrier does encourage gradual speciation by eliminating the possibility for certain males to breed with certain females. There's a difference between "engourage" and "cause".
What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?
Well, even assuming that was correct when he wrote that, that was twenty years ago. Maybe science has spent that time discovering new things? The way science works, a twenty year old book never has any sort of veto authority over new facts and new discoveries.
And, in any case, nothing in this wasp/bacteria tale deals with 'spontaneous' speciation, it deals with an identifiable factor which is providing the barrier to breeding that can facilitate a process of speciation. A process, not a miraculous, spontaneous event.
Oh. Care to explain what features of the DNA structure of the animal kingdom it is that prevents new species from being created?
Because, from everything I've read, species creation has been a constant process over the last 3 or 4 billion years or so. Existing species die out, leaving ecological niches where a new species can get a toehold, and the process of mutation and selection gives rise to species that can take advantage of the opportunity.
Nature hates a vacuum, as they say.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Awesome... but stallman already invented this. It is called the GPL.
Something like this came to evolve in the same way that everything else did. Nature runs *trillions* of experiments at a time, ruthlessly ditching the results of the ones which don't measure up, which is the vast majority of those trillions. A very small minority of those trillions get to reproduce, and their offspring get to participate in the nex round of the game.
Nature has been running this game for billions of years. Some of those experiments, especially for bacteria, can take as little as 20 minutes to run. That's 26,280 generations a year, times 3 billion year or so. *Lots* of time.
Mankind hasn't invested one quadrillionth of the effort or resources in developing living things that nature has, and I can't imagine we ever will.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Ideas similar to this were suspected of being researched in South Africa during the 80s.
Click here to read an article about this at britannica.
Don't be so sure that nobody would try to emulate this bacteria, there is a great deal of racial and religious hate out there.
Some people have said that anti-biotics can fight this, well if the bacteria made people of a certain race permanently infertile, an anti-biotic won't help in any way.
After all, there are 6 billion humans alone, and every one of those humans harbors on average 10^14 bacteria, or ten times the number of actual human cells. For human-hosted bacteria alone, that makes 6*10^23 bacteria, or 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That's 600 billion trillion bacteria living on humans alone. If we count all organisms living on the planet, that figure will probably go up by at least another factor of billion, or more.
So nature is running perhaps a million trillion trillion experiments at once, or more. There is no mystery at all that with that much going on at any given time, and with each of those experiments building on the successful results of some of the million billion trillion trillion experiments that went before, that nature should figure out how to let a bacteria fuck with a wasp's reproduction system.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
After all, that bit about a million billion trillion trillion experiments that went on before is assuming that each experiment takes a year to run. Some will take longer, most will take far less. Let's say that every thing living today benefits from a lineal subset of the million trillion trillion trillion experiments that went before.
Random chance throws some variation into those experiments, but I don't call the fact that a million trillion trillion trillion experiments has led to some good results chance, I call that inevitability.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Main Entry: parasite
Pronunciation: 'par-&-"sIt
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French, from Latin parasitus, from Greek parasitos, from para- + sitos grain, food
Date: 1539
1 : a person who exploits the hospitality of the rich and earns welcome by flattery
2 : an organism living in, with, or on another organism in parasitism
3 : something that resembles a biological parasite in dependence on something else for existence or support without making a useful or adequate return
>The only standard that decides whether the >parasite's host is likely to prevail over a >competitor without the parasite is whether the >parasite is helpful or harmful. Does it help the >organism survive and reproduce, or not?
It wouldn't be a parasite if i helps the host out. Since it would be making an "adequate return"
So what would it be called in that case. (Biology was a long time ago, and I don't remember.)
Then they could ensure that the gene pool of their culture remains "pure" from adulteration by "lesser" beings...
I know this idea doesn't work, but let's assume it does
This means that this "pure race" won't be capable of breed with "lesser races", but this "lesser races" could mate with other "lesser races", making these races stronger just by numeric force and genetic diversity. In the long term the extincted race would be the so called "superior".
(I don't care about grammar, so what?)
Kilroy was here!
ERIC
---
We play to learn. Some just need to learn to play.
'final' means 'the last', not 'the latest'...
Nice try, might even work if "now" was all we had, but we have palentological evidence of speciation rates in the past. And, far and away, most of the speciation happened during one little 2-million-year (+/- who you ask) slice of time: the Cambrian explosion. There is no phyla of life on earth today that was not present at the Cambrian Explosion. What is the explanation of this 'flowering' of new phyla, and the loss of phyla in 480 million years since? The biological establishment says, 'Evolution was efficent then.' Poppycock. What caused it to be 240 million times more efficient? Can't say it was the atmosphere or insolation, because the sun has been steadily getting brighter, while the greenhouse effect has been getting less efficient (the so-called "Amazing Double Coincidence"). What was it, then? Pansperima? Too many problems, radiation and all that. Intelligent design? "Bah, too religious." Too easily dismissed is more like it.
To say that the principles of evolution are bogus is to say that people will choose pizza pieces randomly, regardless of how many olives each piece has. Thats just ridiculous.
What is ridiculous is for the establishment to keep asserting that something random is going on, with so much evidence of something intentional. Not only are there serious problems with the efficiency of Darwinian evolution (ala the Canbrian explosion), the long-in-the-tooth origin-of-life assumptions don't square with the facts: DNA reads like verbal information. Don't talk to me about Paley's 'watchmaker' argument; I refer you to somebody a little more recent: biochemist Michael Behe, whose book, Darwin's Black Box has been the shot heard 'round the world in molecular biology.
Or, how about this: the utter, erm, lifelessness at the 1999 12th International Conference on the Origin of Life. I have it on good authority that the Miller-Urey experiment is now being downplayed as fundamentally flawed, and the "bright star" graduate students have fled the field like rats from a sinking ship.
All this is to say one thing: sometimes science isn't about science; it's about scientists, and protecting the status quo. If we truly wish to boldly go where no one has gone before, let's come up with theories that square with the facts, and not clutch at straws in buttressing a failed theory like spontaneous speciation.
www.backwoodsengineer.com
Thanks for the reply. I think we can all learn in this kind of forum.
And, in any case, nothing in this wasp/bacteria tale deals with 'spontaneous' speciation, it deals with an identifiable factor which is providing the barrier to breeding that can facilitate a process of speciation.
Whoops! That statement (as well as the article) assumes that speciation is facilitated through the isolation of breeding stocks from each other. We have two problems here:
1. We are using evidence that fits the conclusions of our assumption to prove our assumption. Bzzt, circular logic, thanks for playing Boole's Buzzer today.
2. The massive infusion of new phyla in the Cambrian explosion cannot be explained by the isolation of breeding stocks. Even though the planet was just recovering from a "Snowball Earth" episode, the are widespread biodeposits during this period, indicating a stable ecosystem filled with complex organisms. What's more, this stable ecosystem didn't have to endure Darwin's millions-of-years "cut and try" approach, it was stable early on in the 2-million-year window about 480 million years ago.
A process, not a miraculous, spontaneous event.
But, wait, that's a contradictory statement! IF speciation is driven by a mindless process, it should be spontaneous, in the sense of occuring without outside intervention. Just species popping up all the time, wherever the process is allowed to work its special magic of DNA differentiation. Here's the problem: we have palentogical evidence of discrete speciation EVENTS, not a continuous ebb and flow of species.
Something is wrong with the model, and facing the facts compells us to admit it.
Because, from everything I've read, species creation has been a constant process over the last 3 or 4 billion years or so.
No, sir. I think the Cambrian Explosion is played down in the textbooks, for this very reason: it stands ready to skewer some very sacred cows.
www.backwoodsengineer.com
Huh?
That doesn't in any way contradict the notion that separation of breeding pools facilitates speciation. The Cambrian explosion is fascinating and there is obviously a lot to be studied there, but who ever said that evolution was allowed only one trick?
It's manifestly obvious that the process of evolution is susceptible to contingency. It happens all the time.. a virus mutates in a way that allows it access to an entirely new population of carriers, or it is merely brought into close enough contact with a new and vulnerable population, and you have plague. That plague may wipe out 75% or more of a population, giving tremendous evolutionary advantage to those whose genetics happens to afford some resistance or resiliance to the infection.
It is clear that discrete events can occur that force the ecological system out of a state of stability and into a chaotic period where living organisms have to adapt to the new reality, or perish (rabbits in Australia, anyone?). That is not inconsistent with the idea that separation of breeding pools can facilitate speciation. Biology is one of the most complex of subjects, and the number of processes and mechanisms that swirl around in the ecology are legion. Every mutation has an opportunity to change the playing field to a greater or lesser extent.
Perhaps I misspoke. I meant 'spontaneous' to mean 'without cause' and some shading of 'instantaneous'. The notion of 'outside intervention' is so unnecessary to my understanding of the world that it never occurred to me that one would read 'spontaneous' as meaning 'without outside intervention'. I believe speciation is always for cause, and that if we are fortunate enough to have intimate knowledge of a particular population as it goes through a speciation event that the reasons for the speciation can generally be observed.
In addition, two points about speciation events. First, speciation events may be slow (or fast) on a human timescale, but they are bound to be very fast on the geological time scale that most paleontology deals with. Second, if you stretch your point of view out long enough, you'll see the continual process of the ebb and flow of species I have been speaking of. Not a constant ebb and flow, in the sense of an unvarying rate of change, but continual and continuous in the sense that the process of species being born and destroyed has never yet ceased on Earth.
Well, something is wrong with the simplified model we are talking about here, yes. I'd recommend Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett if you want a really good description of the structural nature of species and the process by which a genetic population drifts and clumps. It intelligently deals with some very important questions, like, 'what is a species?', that are really essential background for this kind of discussion.
It is a rather unworthy argument to simply fall back on calling your opponents cowards and liars. If there is a good argument to be made against some particular facet of evolutionary theory, it would be better to spend your energy finding the evidence to demonstrate your point of view, rather than disparaging others. It's hard work, because there is a mountain of evidence on the side of the modern evolutionary synthesis, but if you find something that others have missed you will surely make a great contribution to the world of science. If it turns out that you learn enough to doubt your current position, then that would also be valuable. Sacred cows certainly are troublesome, no matter whose side they are on.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX