Slashdot Mirror
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.
You're getting cause and effect backward.
Perhaps you should be looking at whether more people order air conditioning in their SUVs than their grandparents did. I remember the days of my youth with 475 AC. (4 windows, 75MpH) I'm not sure how to quantify the AC my grand/great-grandparents used on the California trip in their covered wagon.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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
Reminds me of a bumper sticker someone suggested for people who drive SUVs:
"Who cares about Global warming? I've got AC!"
Humans evolving? Maybe not. Evolution depends on stress from the environment (to severely paraphrase the theory). If the environment isn't changing, there's no "pressure" to force evolution.
Thanks to human inginuity, we can bottle ourselves up in nice little climate-controlled houses, eat carefully prepared and nutritionally balanced foods, get regimented exercise, and receive all manner of medical treatment that cancel out pretty much everything that evolution has to work with.
=Smidge=
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
Thanks to human inginuity, we can bottle ourselves up in nice little climate-controlled houses, eat carefully prepared and nutritionally balanced foods, get regimented exercise, and receive all manner of medical treatment that cancel out pretty much everything that evolution has to work with.
all humans have SUVs and AC?
That actually sums up pretty nicely why the rest of the world don't like americans:
if they haven't got a SUV with AC they're not really human.
=>If they're not really human why don't we shoot them and take their oil for our SUVs?
"I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." -George H.W. Bush
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.
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...
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).
...I hear that they're less likely to be married at the time. ;)