Slashdot Mirror
Rate of Evolution Metrics Observed
eldavojohn notes an article up at Science Daily on research demonstrating that smaller animals with warmer blood evolve faster than larger, colder animals. From the article: "Across species from fish to mammals, they found that rates of protein evolution showed the same body size and temperature dependence as metabolic rate. Specifically, their mathematical model predicts that a 10-degree increase in temperature across species leads to about a 300 percent increase in the evolutionary rate of proteins, while a tenfold decrease in body size leads to about a 200 percent increase in evolutionary rates."
Using the estimated rates, scientists projected evolution to have started about 6,000 years ago. ;)
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
I wonder if this has to do with survival rates; shorter lifespan vs longer lifespan, more active vs passive animals, more energy vs less energy?
GPL Deconstructed
Evolution is just a theory! I live in Kansas and my teacher was forced to tell me that!
Excuse me, that is Intelligent Design Metrics thank you very much.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
This does enplane why fat Americans don't seem to change. Loose weight and evolve!
Let me enplane individual organisms do not evolve. Even very very large ones like the average American.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Interesting to note that humans have a lower body temperature than most mammals, actually that's one of the reasons we can get leprosy and almost no other animal can carry it, armadillos being the exception, it thrives in cooler temperatures.
more cell division, shorter lifespan, and more more abundant reproduction. All of these mean mutations collect in the population faster. Bacteria evolve much faster than mice, BTW, and they're not warm-blooded since they have no blood. Yet, they reproduce at a much faster rate and the mutations add up faster.
I didn't read TFA, but TFS tells us nothing common sense and a basic high-school understanding of biology couldn't predict as a hypothesis. That someone has gathered evidence to support the hypothesis empirically is pretty cool, though. Even what seems apparent should be tested, or it's not really science.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I think you have to factor rate of reproduction into this. Whales and elephants don't breed often; that would retard the propagation of genetic changes. Smaller mammals like mice and rabbits tend to breed very often, allowing them to propagate genetic changes faster and more often, making it easier for them to weather (no pun intended) changes in the environment. I don't know how this would factor to "cold-blooded" animals.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Except that the evidence has tipped heavily in favor of dinos, or at least a large number of families of them, were, in fact, warm-blooded.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
My college buddy's ferret had a fever once. Before it was over she evolved wings, grew a sixth digit on each paw, became super-intelligent and built an interociter which she used to summon a rescue saucer from a race of hyper-sapient star-ferrets.
A computer model, or any model for that matter, doesn't "demonstrate" anything, other than the fact that that model will give those results with this input. By definition, a model isn't really the phenomenon it represents. Models "predict", it's only by measurement of the actual phenomena is a prediction or hypothesis demonstarted to be true/accurate.
This is why a lot of folks are uncomfortable with the "fact" that global warming is caused by human generated greenhuse gasses - the only "fact" is that computer models show this. We can't test that theory in any meaningful way, so we need to work with what we've got, but I can't help but think the Goreacle and Leonardo DiHybrido would do better by not focussing on "proving" something that essentially can't be proven until after the results are in - i.e. a thousand years from now.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
> So that means the dinosaurs (huge cold blooded reptiles) were an evolutionary dead end?
Dinosaur Spokesman: We had a good what, hundred, two hundred million year run? How long you human critters been around? Two mil? Odds on making it to three?
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
that word theory. i'm not sure it means what you think it means.
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
Dinosaurs weren't reptiles. There's more and more evidence that shows that they were warm-blooded. And dinosaurs didn't really disappear. They just look different now. Step outside and look at all those feathered things flying around. Those are modern dinosaurs.
Could it be that the more cold-blooded animals do not evolve as a species because they evolve as individuals?
Phenotypic variation is not evolution. Most complex animals show some geneomic expression variation through out it's life. In fact your expression of a lot of hormones and cellular products will vary immensely until you are very dead. It's not just a reptilian thing.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
smaller got eaten by bigger, and generally, hot is tastier than cold.
It *does* mean that smaller animals can evolve faster if under lots of evolutionary pressure. Note that since smaller animals tend to breed faster, this is already the case.
The cake is a pie
During the extended sunless period after the K-T boundary impact, most any animal that wasn't a scavenger found themselves at an evolutionary dead end.
Look asshole, maybe to you a whale/elephant hybrid is "retarded", but to me, it's "fucking awesome".
or, (if you prefer a less vulgar joke)
Man, I really gotta start watching the Discovery Channel more often. I always assumed that whales and elephants didn't breed at all, but "not often"? Wicked!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
That's good, out-of-the-box thinking, but it's not quite right. As others mentioned, individuals don't evolve; groups of individuals evolve. Individuals do change over time, but evolution refers to changes more at the genetic level, which can only take place in groups. My first thought on this is that the data may have been affected more by rates of reproduction--insects evolve much faster than humans because their generations are much shorter, for instance. But there may be something else going on here, too, related to the regulated metabolisms of mammals.
Using the term "evolutionary rate" is pretty misleading: whats happening is that the genomes are changing faster, but almost all of that change isn't from any selective pressure. Its mostly "neutral drift", things changing randomly in a way that does not impact the fitness of the organism.
I knew from the article this would turn into a creation vs evoloution conversation. But this really does bring up a rather intresting question. If large species take longer to evolve then how can it be possible that human beings "being rather large in comparison" be more advanced then smaller animals, who first of all have been on th eplanet alot longer then upright standing . Is it simply a matter of brain mass. Would it not make sense that they would have evolved to have oposable thumbs before us?
By this method of classification, plants ans animals should be called "modern bacteria."
This really came as a surprise to me when I toured the new evolution exhibit at the Chicago Field Museum last year. When I was a kid (in the 80s), the line was that dinosaurs branched into two evolutionary paths, reptiles and birds. Now this exhibit plainly states many times, "Dinosaurs were birds." Not being quite as into dinos as I was when I was seven (and obsessed), this was news to me.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
The fact of evolution does show that certain evolution-denying cults have at least one false claim in their creeds, but that's a far narrower conclusion than what you suggested.
Nice troll, though.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
--That's right, survival of whoever is luckiest to set of genes. And when those genes are the ones that allow you to "compete and survive", those are the lucky ones. If a mutation was part of that package of lucky genes, and you reproduce successfully, and that mutation becomes standard equipment, we've just seen evolution.
Then the author says "the outcome is not determined by the 'fitness' of a particular trait, in terms of whether the trait affects an animal's ability to compete and survive."
--That's wrong! Like above, it's mutation, from whatever cause, that "drives" evolution, if you will, but it's natural selection which "channels" that drive into actual evolution.
He's right when he says mutation is a driving force in evolution. But he's wrong when he seems to write off the other hypothesized "driving force" in evolution: environment, i.e. necessity.
But, when do these "protein mutations" actually manifest in evolution that actually changes the whole of a group of organisms? When that mutation is something useful in the environment!