Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
And in a week or two, this submission will evolve only slightly and will reappear, slightly reworded, as another species of submission! Ain't evolution great.
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.
--
Why didn't you know?
are racist...
they've decided to fork?
- passion
I am sure that given enough time, scientists can plug holes in the theory of evolution and answer questions that critics throw at it [...]
I find your faith refreshing...
FTA
The other mechanism that can theoretically divide a species is "reproductive isolation". This occurs when organisms are not separated physically, but "choose" not to breed with each other thereby causing genetic isolation, which amounts to the same thing.
Does this mean that geeks are soon to speciate and then ultimate fail as the male/female ratio is horrendously out of wack?
Evolution isn't a "theory" in that sense of the word, any more than the theory of gravity is "just a theory". Both are fact as far as the scientific community is concerned. And what could be worse than hell? Could it be ignorance?
Read the sig, read the sig, ziggy ziggy ziggy zig!
Please make sure your kids get taught every possible theory or you will probably wind up in hell... or worse.
I refuse to worship a god that claims to be all-loving, but threatens us with eternal torture if we don't do what he says.
>"But speciation has never been observed" has been the strongest rallying cry of evolution-deniers for more than a century...
And it has been a falsehood for at least half that time. Speciation has been observed in both the field an in the lab... repeatedly. Creationists trumpet the no observed speciation line until they are called on it, and then it becomes, "But they're still [fruit flies, fish, whatever]," The moving goal posts are the hallmark of creationism.Remember, the "scientists" at the Institution for Creation Research have to sign an oath that nothing they "discover" will ever conflict with a litteral interpretation of the Bible.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
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.
Suppose u have a huge roulette wheel with 10,000 numbers around it and u spin it and it arrives at a number, lets say 6283. The probability of it arriving at 6283 is 1/10000. But it did happen didn't it?
Life on earth is similar to it and if you want to look at all the failed attempts, take a telescope and see how many planets and stars have inhospitable planets. Those show the other cases in which the right mix didn't work out.
Also, remember that once evolution gets started, it's anything but random and probabistic. Natural selection and survival of the fittest pushes life to better and more complex forms.This space for rent.
This article from the BBC is misleading. I tracked down the original article in Nature.
The researchers didn't actually unlock any major secrets. It is no secret that two species who would not produce viable offspring together will try to avoid mating with each other. There are various mechanisms for doing that - having different wing colors so that species can distinguish their optimal mating partners is one method. If the two species are geographically separated, there is no need to develop other methods of separation, and thus their wing colors can look similar. There is nothing new about this.
Also, the BBC article never explains that the speciation of these butterflies occurred while they were geographically separated (this is called allopatric speciation, and the Nature article specifically states that the butterflies evolved this way). The species only developed different wing markings when they came back into contact with each other. This makes a lot of sense - they were now genetically very different, and offspring between members of different species would not be successful, so they needed ways of telling each other apart.
It's a nice finding, but certainly not the unlocking of a major secret.
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.
That might actually apply to humans as well. I mean take Conservatives and Liberals. They engage in different physiclal activities and (mostly) breed within their own groups. So will the two eventually evolve into seperate species, Homo Conservativis and Homo Liberalis? Probably, however, due to the high population denisty among humans they will also be unable to escape having to interact with each other. So the two resultant species and their behavioral patterns will influence each others evolution won't they? I mean you would for example expect the Homo Conservativis to evolve sophisticated selective hearing in order to avoid hearing anything that Homo Liberals might say that contradicts with their religious ideas while the Homo Liberals will grow thick Neanderthal like skulls due to Homo Conservatives incessantly thumping theim on the head with a Bible.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
IMO, the true scientist witholds judgement until the experiments have been done and the data is in front of them.
OK, bring on the experiments. Describe an experiment that can be used to disprove design in a given organism. If you are unable to do this, then -- at the most fundamental level -- ID is not amenable to the scientific method, and is not worth any further scientific enquiry.
So, name the experiment. Go on, I'm all ears.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
People who dismiss concepts like 'intelligent design' out of hand may often like to refer to themselves as scientific, but in fact dismissing something like that out of hand is the very reverse of scientific.
Your confusing dismissing after evaluating and dismissing out of hand. Havign 0 predictive power, 100% made up rationalization, and lacking any evidence it's very scientific to reject that theory.
Perhaps a redefinition of science is in order, something closer to the definition of religion... 'Thou shalt not challenge the orthodoxy.'
A common logical fallacy used by pro-ID people. How ever using the exact same criteria you use to evaluate all scientific theory, ID fails very very badly. The scientific community is not like the libral literary community, everybody is out to "revolutionize" the community with a new idea. It might be contriversial but if it passes the tests placed on it, it will eventually be accepted.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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.
While we see plenty of beauty and elegance, we also see large numbers of botches: mistakes no intelligent designer would ever make. Examples include the human back, which is flawed enough to keep chiropractors in business because we descend from four-legged creatures and the back isn't really optimized for walking on two legs. But there are bigger ones: the nerve that connects the larynx to the brain goes through the heart, both in the human and the giraffe. We have a blind spot in our eyes because of the way the optic nerve is connected, though it isn't hard to come up with a design that lacks this flaw.
Evolution will get rid of botches that interfere with survival and reproduction, but it's neutral with respect to botches that are just annoying. And that's what we see.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [as the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I'm the designer.
That's a know bug
Send me a patch and I will merge it.
Ploum.net.
Science starts from the standpoint that everything that can be observed can be explained. Religion starts from the standpoint that some things cannot be explained. The two are reconcilable only to the extent that ideas can be accepted without need of explanation -- in other words, Not Very Far At All.
:) It is of course possible that life on other planets could be wholly or predominantly left-handed.}
The problem I have with the idea of "intelligent design" is that it breaks several important rules, not the least of which is the KISS principle. The need for an Intelligent Designer rests on the notion of Irreducible Complexity. But there is no irreducible complexity in nature. On the contrary, an Intelligent Designer would introduce irreducible complexity.
The Universe embodies the principle that simplicity is beauty. {Why does the pressure in a fluid act equally in all directions? Because it was simpler than favouring a particular direction. Why does light travel in straight lines? Because it was simpler that way. Why do men have nipples? Because it was too complicated for them not to.} If we take that logic to the extreme, it is simpler for the universe to have created itself somehow {and here I am making no assumptions about the process by which this might happen}, than for a creator to have been created as an intermediate step. My assertion is: There is no process that could have created a creator, that could not instead -- and more simply -- have created a fully-formed universe.
{The predominance of D- over L- enantiomers in nature is not evidence for Intelligent Design. It can be shown by analysis of potential reaction mechanisms that right-handed would favour right-handed and vice versa. It is probable that the primordial soup was close to racemic, but somehow more D- than L- proto-organisms survived and eventually L- forms became extinct. It ought to be possible to synthesise and culture the opposite enantiomer of an existing DNA sample, resulting in a "left handed clone". Pending the perfection of the necessary equipment, this must be left as an exercise for the reader
The argument against life being created by random chance ignores the obvious fact that the improbable event has already happened. In fact, given the sheer magnitude of the universe, it was close to inevitable that life would develop somewhere. Remember that the many necessary attempts were taking place in parallel, not in series {if you throw six dice at a time, the odds favour at least one of them being a six}. And not everything in the process is truly random: certain chemical elements are predisposed to bond in certain ways.
Remember also that radioactive decay events, which we know today trigger genetic mutation, would have been more common the further back in time we travel. We cannot know for certain {though we might infer from decay products} whether or not some especially radioactive isotope existed in the past but has become completely exhausted today.
{I realise that there are quite a few dangling "somehows" in this essay. It is not my intension to offer explanations for them here. These are "closing" rather than "opening" questions, which is to say that the answers will not in and of themselves raise further questions.}
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
"What are the chances for life to live on this earth? If it were too cool, or too warm, all species would be extinct. A little closer- or farther from the sun, *poof*. A little more of this gas, or that, or different weights in the forces."
;-)
Logical fallacy.
If conditions were even slightly different at any point in the history of the universe, all current species would be extinct. You can't say our current ecosystem contains all possible species for every possible set of environmental conditions and physical laws, so you can't say that no life would exist, merely that our current form(s) of life wouldn't.
We evolved in these conditions - it's no surprise that we're extraordinarily tightly bound to them. You're confusing cause and effect.
For another example, riffle through a pack of cards and pick one. Put it back and do it again. You pick the four of clubs, followed by the ace of hearts. So what?
So what? At this point, the four of clubs is looking around and thinking "Wow, what are the odds, eh? The chances of me and Ace here existing are 1 in two thousand and four!. Yeah, but the chance of "two cards being picked" is pretty much 1:1 (leaving aside the possibilities of spontaneous combustion or weird quantum tunneling effects half-way through
You're looking around, assuming this is the only way "life" could possibly ever evolve, and positing the fluke was down to an intelligent creator.
First off, we still don't have a complete understanding of what even constitutes "life", so you can't claim a definite conclusion of any kind. All you can do is construct theories, using rational, logical inference and falsifiable hypotheses.
Secondly, it could well be that "life" is merely an emergent property of a sufficiently complex organisation of matter left for a long enough time, in which case the chances of life appearing in the universe would be about 1:1.
Short answer: Science teaches us to adopt the leading falsifiable hypothesis only until a better one comes along. In other words, keep investigating, and don't ever assume you know the complete answer.
Religion teaches us unsubstantiated irrational heresay from thousands of years before the scientific method, and expects us to treat it as the final answer. In other words, shut up, sit down and stop asking awkward questions.
"I just know that there is a Big Mind behind it all."
No, you think there's a Big Mind behind it all. This is the central point of ID/creationism/religious zealotry of all types - a complete inability to differentiate between "know", "believe, based on the preponderance of evidence" and "believe, with no evidence whatsoever to support your conclusion".
I have no problem with someone believing whatever they like - it's when they mistake that for "knowing" and attempt to force their own irrational beliefs on others that I feel compelled to stand up.
"Then what's the point arguing about it? Like ants arguing about the demi-god roaming around the garden making large craters.."
Amen to that - it's essentially unknowable, so it's not science, but philosophy. If Creationists/ID-proponents wanted religion discussed in Philosophy I'd have no problem.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself