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Squirrels Evolving to Suit Global Warming?
Gavinsblog writes "New Scientist is reporting
that using a technique called quantitive genetics, researchers have found that
due to the effects of global warming, female squirrels now give birth on average
18 days earlier in the year than their great-great-grandmothers. Is global warming
also affecting human evolution?
"
"
What i dont get: where did they get the information that these changes are "due to global warming" ?? It's not like you can interrogate a squirrel to ask them why his genes are different.
Probably the scientists saw the correlation with the changing climate and wrote that this would be 'a possible cause for that'. Journalists normally twist the meaning and content of scientific reports to make a nice headline, eventuakky becoming "Squirrels Evolving to Suit Global Warming".
Generally, one cannot claim that species evolve for some purpose, and even if it would be so, then how do you prove that any change in genes is due to some cause??? It's all just correlations and some hopeful guesses, if you ask me.
Well, for one thing a lot more people are driving SUV's than in their great-great-grandfathers (& -mothers) days. Does that count as human evolution?
As for the giving birth earlier in the year, the figures are not in yet on that.
More accurately, New Scientist reports that Red Squirrels in the Yukon are evolving due to local climate change. Which it proceeds to call global warming.
Is global warming also affecting human evolution?
There ain't no such thing as human evolution (anymore).
The evolution is a trials and errors process. During the duplication of DNA sometimes something goes wrong and the result isn't a perfect copy of the original.
This is called a mutation.
As a result some function of the organism is different. The change may be beneficial for the organism or it may render it handicaped. For every positive mutation there are houndreds of thousands negative mutations.
Who's to tell which mutations are positive and which are negative?
Natural selection.
If/when a particular mutation has some features that allow it to dominate gene pool it is positive. If the mutation causes premature death, sterility etc the faulty genes do not enter the gene pool. This is negative.
In order for humans to evolve we would have allow natural selection to work. We don't do this. It is not the survival of the fittest for a long time.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
"Is global warming also affecting human evolution?"
The envionment really stopped effecting human evolution once we started to manipulate it, so it is unlikely that you will see any similar effects in humans. If it gets to hot for us, we just crank up the AC.
I remember seeing this in gray squirrels growing up on the farm 30+ years ago. If food is available early then the squirrels had their litters early. If there were bad rains late in the season and the first litter was drowned, etc. then a second litter was usually delivered.
I wouldn't call this anything evolutionary. It is interesting that their instinct takes care of this for them, but it isn't any kind of change. We have been lucky over the last few years and have had short winters (at least in the southern US) and that has changed the beginning of spring and most likely the birth dates of some animals.
I bet that they spent a ton of federal money on that study too. Just another waste of taxpayer money trying to prove that God doesn't exist.
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
For NASDAQ that is, they have been hit twice by those cute furry things. Once in 1987 and then again in 1994.
:)
In the UK office we still joke about it, much to the annoyance of the management
Did this change how they taste?
;)
If it's "Just like turkey!" or "bison!" I'm going to have to file a complaint with Darwin.
Don't mess with "Just like chicken!"
I work on a Help Desk, that's my excuse...
Grimwell - old, cranky, mean, obsessive
Yes. We get hungry for squirrel chili about 18 days sooner 'round here.
Huh! I thought squirrels were doing well by foecasting if we would have a bad winter; now they are telling us we're going to have a tough millenium!!
-------------------------
A person of moderate zeal
Clearly GAWD-DUH is changing these little squirrels to fit his heavenly PLAN-NUH. Oh, he works in mysterious WAYS-UH. All of those SINNERS who believe in EVOLUTION-NUH will be shown the folly of their ways when the find themselves burning in the unholy HELL-FIRES of HELL-UH!!
Anyone notice that city squirrels sometimes now pause on the dividing lines on streets? It would be an interesting experiment to transplant some UK city squirrels with US city squirrels to see if the side of the street we drive on is being genetically encoded.
Species change in relation to their environment for reasons other than evolution. It's a fairly standard survival adaptation, but it can make for changes in species that people often think are best attributed to evoltion.
In general, someone whose parents are both Pygmies but who grows up in Spain is going to end up being average height. Turns out a large portion of the reason why pygmies tend to be so short is their diet.
Hey, that's it! I know understand why American youths today are so much more obese than of 30 years ago. It's not the sugar in our diet, the super-sized fries (always countered by the giant Diet Coke(R)), lack of self-control or self-esteem, or video games that cause it.
Global warming is why we Americans are becoming fat-asses. This also probably explains why the rate of teen pregancy is on the rise, and the increasing use of heroine.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
How do we know that it isn't premature births among squirrels that's causing global warming?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Generally, one cannot claim that species evolve for some purpose
;- )
My dad claims the human body evolved so it would fit perfectly on a motorcycle...
You can't take the sky from me...
Of course the extra body heat they are giving of, not to mention the methane from extra farts.
.... the B.V.I.
...I MEANT to say I'll bring the research assistants you bring the sterilizing solution. Yea... yea... that's the ticket.
And of course more & larger squirrels mean larger fartier Foxes.
MORE GLOBAL WARMING...
Quick tell the newspapers, we will be on the morning news tomorrow. Government grant by Thursday...
I say the only place we can do research is ohhhh
I'll bring the girls, you bring the booze.... Er... wait
D.A.K.D.A.E.---- Deny all Knowledge, Destroy All Evidence
Evolution is inevitable, even for humans.
Evolution is the irreversible generational genetic differentiation within a population. Offspring are different than their parents and their offspring also differ from them. Over time this process should lead to a heterogenous genepool, loaded with variation.
The Theory of Evolution is that natural selective processes (or unnatural ones for that matter) act differentially on these differing offspring leading to gradual changes in the population's genome, and LESS variation in the genepool. This process presumably effects the adaptive success of a population in its current environment.
Cummulatively, as this proceeds and as populations extended across numerous environments persist. Local population changes can lead to patchy geographic distributions of genontypes within the population as a whole. This in turn can yeld speciation.
It happens whether we want it or not.
I have a small ($3 million) study grant from the E.P.A. and after careful study and review I've determined that global warming is caused by squirrels having their litter earlier and earlier.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The point is the fact that humans change their environment rather then adapt to it, whether it be with AC, buffalo skin tents, white clothing or even a simple structure made from fallen branches. The last major physical thing we "adapted" to would probably be UV radiation and the production of vitamin D (hence the reason people have different skin colors).
Is global warming also affecting human evolution?
In other news, scientists report that human evolution has taken its course and human many baby females will be able to reproduce every 18 days once they reach pubirty, effectively overpopulating the planet and showing it who's boss...
It just occured to me that climate-specific traits such as this one may be "purposely" fluid. It would make sense in that climate/environment tends to change quick relative to evolution (Ice ages and the like). A survival trait would be to lessen the preservation of a specific birthing pattern (or make it able to vary fairly quickly).
In order for humans to evolve we would have allow natural selection to work. We don't do this. It is not the survival of the fittest for a long time.
Firstly two-three hundred years is not a long time for a long-lived species like us, and secondly more than half of the human race still lives in third-world conditions where a fair percentage of chidren born do not live to breed themselves. Even in the first world many people do not have children (by choice). Thus selection still affects the human race.
You cannot halt natural selection, you can only change the selection criteria.
Then why hasnt squirrel season opened sooner?
If you really want to know the truth about squirrels ask someone from VillePlatte,La
They get off work and school for opening day. But then if global warming hits Louisiana like its aparently hitting canada all our squirrels will be dead after one 150 degree summer. Got to 115 here last year.
Hyperthetical example. Say there is gene A. 50% of humans have it. It alters personalities in a subtle way. Personalities have a demography effect on how likely that person is to reproduce. There is statistically no way demographic ratios of human genes are going to stay static, even on a millennia-by-millennia basis.
The world has been warming up and animals have been adapting. Does that mean Republican corporatists have been belching out billions of tons of CO2 for the last 15,000 years? Or that the earth's climate changes along what can best be described as a sine wave?
It's about TIME the grrrls got equal time in movies.
I've been investigating gestation periods with a variety of squirrels in the Ohio Valley, and not only haven't the periods changed over the last 10 years, but I haven't been able to get a single one pregnant yet.
Maybe it's me.
The article is a bit thin on details. I presume the experiment kept test squirrels from each generation in a controlled temperature environment to ensure these aren't just squirrels with a "bonk when it's warm enough" gene? I've not seen squirrels with diaries, so I'd assume their behavior in these cases was controlled by their environment more than their genetic make up.
This doesn't need a genetic explanation. Maybe if an earlier birth is advantageous, then any mutations that help with this would become the norm. However, they may just be adaptive to the conditions. The fact that I have white skin is genetic, but the fact that I get up early on a Monday to put the garbage out isn't.
The only thing funnier than a moron is one that thinks he has some shred of intelligence, you know who you are.
You know that, with a sig like that, you will have to be sooo careful... Because there are few things as insufferable as an intelligent person who is so arrogant as to be incapable of admitting that he will occasionally make moronic mistakes.
There's a little moron in all of us.
Almost exactly what I was about to post.
... the mutation causes premature death, sterility etc the faulty genes do not enter the gene pool ... we would have allow natural selection to work. We don't do this ...
I'm glad you don't let sterility stop you from reproducing. Fight da man!
(Premature death, either. Boy was that a bitch.)
...I hear that they're less likely to be married at the time. ;)
if you think about it, human evolution is already being affected. with all the time we spend in-doors/clothed, it's no wonder that we're losing body hair. men that go bald aren't inferior to those with a full head of hair, they're just a little higher up the evolutionary ladder.