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Butterfly Unlocks Evolution Secret
Anonymous Coward writes "The BBC has an article about a dramatic discovery in the quest for understanding evolution. From the article: 'Why one species branches into two is a question that has haunted evolutionary biologists since Darwin. Given our planet's rich biodiversity, "speciation" clearly happens regularly, but scientists cannot quite pinpoint the driving forces behind it. Now, researchers studying a family of butterflies think they have witnessed a subtle process, which could be forcing a wedge between newly formed species.'"
Mutations occur, and when they occur in parallel for members of the same species, and those mutations survive into succeeding generations, you achieve speciation. End of story. What am I missing?
Now, if you want to talk about butterflies and evolution, then answer for me how it is that butterflies could have evolved in the first place. You're talking about a two-stage organism here, one stage does nothing but eat, the other stage does nothing but procreate. Which came first?
If it was the caterpillar, how is it that it suddenly figures out how to create a cocoon, lay dormant for a winter, then emerge as a completely different creature? They obviously had the means for procreation on their own, so why bother becoming a butterfly?
If it was the butterfly, why even bother with the caterpillar stage? If you can already fly around and stuff, why bother crawling?
People cite all these other examples trying to bring down evolution, and to me they never succeed, it's obvious to me for instance how eyes evolved. But caterpillars turning into butterflies still boggles my mind.
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Why didn't you know?
Hold on here. I'm not going to in any way turn anti-Christian here but there are some misconceptions I'd like to clear up, not with your post but in general since you brought up the topic. First of all, evolution exists. Every year humans slowly but surely get taller. It happens. Evolution is a varifiable fact. Second, it's exactly like you said. There's no reason religion and science need to clash with eachother. If you view genetic mutation as the will of God, everything works out just fine.
I don't mean to seem condesending but I taught a class for my chruch's bible school this summer. I was teaching 6th and 7th graders. The material I was supposed to present to them would have easily been disproven by any 4th grade science textbook (well maybe not one from Kentucky). The worst part was that the kids were clueless. I asked how long ago they thought Jesus died. One of them in all seriousness thought Jesus died 30 years ago. Yeah that's right, we love Jesus because he stopped Hitler!!! I told them Jesus was a Jew and they didn't believe me till I got a Bible to show them. I'm sorry. I don't know if it's bad parenting or what but if we're to have an open discussion on evolution or any other subject that's touchy for the chruch we need to have some basic understanding about religion itself.
Similary there is a LOT of evidence for evolution all around us. The theory part is just how it works and this is a new step in that direction
Also, I meant 'undisprovable theory of intelligent design' not 'unprovable'. Evolution is easily disprovable, just find human remains in a dinosaur, or humans at the same level and dating in the ground as a dinosaur before the supposed advent of primates, or find highly advanced related creatures all which lived at the same time in earth's crust. In other words, dig dig. But how the hell would one go about disproving intelligent design?
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I wonder if this has any impact on the view of racism?
Racism is a *very* touchy subject, and I may get flamed just for bringing it up, but doesn't this sound like butterfly racism? If this were, in fact, a provable, natural, biological mechanism, then, wouldn't we, as biological organisms, be falling prety to much the same effect? Isn't racism a social form of speciation?
What impact would this have on the ACLU? Hiring quotas? The civil rights movement in general?
I'm not suggesting that racism is good. But, might these be related?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
In higher order animals, such as Orcas, behavioral differences can bring about the separation into two species. There are two distinct groups of Orcas, those which hunt fish and those which hunt seals. These two behaviors are fairly different, as fish hunting Orcas herd schools of fish to make consuming them easier. Seal hunting orcas are know to "dive" several feet onto ice flows to catch seals. They also thrash seals around in the water to subdue them. These two groups do not mix as their learned behaviors and sub-environs are different. It is easy to imagine that these two groups are slowly diverging, as they engage in different diets, breed within their own groups and engage in different physical activities.
Of course, I am a physicist and a mathematician. All of my bio-knowledge comes from The Discovery Channel.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
There is no genetic diversity once a 'breed' is established, I would imagine. They are bred to have the same physical and mental attributes each and every generation. They are bred to be the same as they have been established, which means no more diverging from the main K-9 line.
On a side note, this sort of in-breeding and gene stagnation has negative evolutionary consequences. Although the dog might be 'fit' to reproduce now since humans do the selecting and breeding, it is less and less fit to survive. For example, bull dogs are starting to have heads that are too large for them to even lift. Daschunds have extremely long backs that easily have problems. Cocker spaniels have ear infections because of their long ears. Most major breeds have bad allergy problems as well. Mutts are usually healthier animals since there is more genetic diversity, but nobody wants a mutt.
I forgot what the evolutionary term is, but there is a certain point when a limited population becomes extremely dangerous for the survival of a species. Apparently the cheetahs just got by after we pruned off most of them. You need a fairly large gene pool to get a new species. This in-breeding thing is pretty dangerous.
The same thing is happening with all of our domesticated fruits and vegetables. Bananas are more and more susceptable to fungi and other pests. I read an article a few years ago about how bananas as we know them will eventually become extinct.
Which brings us to an even more interesting question: how is selective breeding and modern medicine degenerating the human gene pool? Are we going to be muscle-less blobs that can't survive without robots? Are we going to be so stupid that we need computers to run our lives? Or is that only going to be the Slashdot population, and the 'beautiful' people will become more cosmetically disfigured by gigangic breasts and other such desired features? Is that how human women got such big titties in the first place, at least in certain lineages?
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
Why is it that animals that are "domesticated" or mostly live in close cooperation with human societies, like pigeons, develop highly variegated markings?
Think about it, cats, dogs, chickens, pigeons, cows, all of these exhibit wild variation in marking and coloration when they live with humans. Even humans themselves seem to have more variability when compared to other primates.
Perhaps human ecosystems and breeding have removed other pressures so the marking variations are more likely to express? I dunno. Just an observation. Any geneticists or evolutionary theorist out there have any ideas about this?
Then you've got tandem sequence repeats... which is a whole 'nother story, but they are very susceptible to DNA copying errors and you can evolve e.g. a very different curve of a dog's snout in a century by selecting for different lengths of tandem repeats.
Yes, all this stuff is on the web. Everything you need to completely and authoritatively refute every argument made by creationists (the "intelligent design" brand or the traditional) is on the web.
(Okay, who's the Slashcode nitwit whose filter cancels the <i> tag when a list is started?)
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Hrm. I watched Mississippi Burning last night and one thing that struck me dumbfounded was the irrational hatred towards blacks shown by the white protagonists in the film.
That article makes me wonder whether racial hatred is in part inspired by this "team strip" concept in the butterflies. In other words, the white protagonists are acting on their animal instincts to use "reinforcement" (as the article calls it) to encourage speciation.
I'm aware there are countless other factors involved in racial bigotry, including the fact that the white supremacists are a bunch of pathetic losers, but I'm always interested in scientific rationales for seemingly irrational behaviour.
Okay, how about this:
Wave two pencils in front of a person, about 30cm apart. Then, have them cover one eye and step away slowly, while looking at one pencil tip, until they can't see other due to their blind spot.
Now, ask a squid to do the same thing.
Guess what? Squids have no blind spot, because the optic nerve and blood vessels connect to the eye without interrupting the potosensitive cells.
An intelligent designer (when hypothesizing that the designer was the same for both) would not have produced a defective eye for humans when they designed it properly the first time (only the day before).
Of course, not only humans have a blind spot; all vertbrates do. Likewise, many creatures other than squids do not suffer from blind spots-encumbered vision.
You can easily disprove intelligent design, because both "intelligent" and "design" (not to mention the other attributes of the particular designer that most folks seem to have in mind) imply certain conditions that their designs would have to exibit relative to other designs by that same author.
I know your comment is more of a joke and less a serious comment. But just want to point out something I've read before. Beauty is actually average... that is, people with average measurements - distance between the eyes, facial features, etc., etc. are perceived to be more beautiful than those with un-average features. Perhaps being average also means you are the most healthy and there are exceptions of course. Because of this, it's possible that ugly + ugly = beautiful, especially if the two ugly's are on opposite ends from average.
You are confusing dogma, spirituality and science.
You see, religion is like a banana. It tastes good and does good. Our western modern society is actually based on this banana. However, in time people have thrown the banana and kept the skin. This has been an awful waste, because the skin is not edible and gives a stomach ache. But this makes people hold on to the skin even more, because now they've lost the banana! They even start arguing what part of the skin is "the best"..
Basically, "the skin" is symbols, traditions, flags, icons, etc. It's just a wrapping paper. You unwrap the package, and then throw away the wrapping, not the other way around.
Spirituality is what this banana consists of. It is based on direct experience. Everybody has some spirituality, even if it's just to accept that they have a daily life where they go to work and party on weekends. You cannot argue against somebody's direct experience..
Science is trying to make everybody agree on the same reality. Sadly however, in the process, science has thrown away much of the banana-core too, confusing it for the skin..
Basically, our whole "modern" society has thrown away the banana. The result is higher rates of depression, cancer, stress, suicides, etc. This is because of lack of spirituality and roots in this world. A feeling of alienation and that we don't belong here.
So you see, I accept both spirituality and science as complentary, thus my world is bigger than if I had just accepted one or the other.
What is needed at this time, is to globalize spirituality. Find a set of human values we all agree on and nurture and cultivate that, and cherish each other's different worldviews. Otherwise, the negative trends will just become worse.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/