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Evolution Can Occur Much Faster Than Previously Thought (ox.ac.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: An Oxford study on chickens discovered that evolution can make significant changes to a genome in as little as 15 years. "For a long time scientists have believed that the rate of change in the mitochondrial genome was never faster than about 2% per million years. The identification of these mutations shows that the rate of evolution in this pedigree is in fact 15 times faster." Professor Greger Larson, senior author on the study, said, "Our observations reveal that evolution is always moving quickly but we tend not to see it because we typically measure it over longer time periods."
See the Earth is only 4,000yrs old :)
The long term changes in DNA didn't always get there in a straight line. So measuring over a shorter time would indicate a faster rate of change. But interesting nonetheless.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Well considering that for the longest time, fossils were our main source of viewing evolution through time, of course it would seem to be slow. Who knows how many speciation events happen and die off before being able to leave a mark in the fossil record.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
15 years? The researchers observed 2 SNPs in a population of chickens over 50 years; which is "15x faster" than the previous estimate of 2% evolution every million years. There also wasn't much selection on these chickens, as they were lab chickens, so even less-fit mutations would persist. One SNP was non-synonymous (meaning it results in a codon change), and one SNP was synonymous (no codon change).
I'm not seeing where they got "Significant changes in 15 years" out of the article.
Nobody has thought for decades that evolution is a slow continuous process. Rather that it has periods where nothing much happens, then there's a spurt of changes, then another period of calm.
Pick the right time interval and duration and you can see either one or the other, as you want. Great way to make data fit your favorite theory :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I've read that chickens were domesticated from the "red junglefowl (Gallus gallus)". According to one source, they were domesticated in China in 8000 BCE. They've been selectively bred over a long period of time. So my point is, trying to draw conclusions about natural mutation rates from an animal that has been intentionally altered by selective breeding over thousands of years is flawed. Drawing conclusions from some animal that is relatively untouched by civilization and has only been changed by its environment would be acceptable. But trying to use a chicken as a test subject sounds like someone had an agenda and was trying to intentionally create controversy.
The chickens with mutations were kept for further study and their genes live on.
The other chickens are thrown away.
There appears to be a survival advantage.
Domesticated animals have changed significantly in the past few few decades let alone the past few thousand years. Modern broilers (meat chickens) can't even self procreate due to the changes but also grow from chicks to food in a couple months. Dairy cattle are another example, Today 9.3 Million dairy cattle produce 59% more milk than 25.6 Million cattle produced in the 40s. This isn't limited to animals, grain producing plants have significantly changed since the 30s, corn specifically has went from around 25 bushels per acre in the 30s to over 140 bushels per acre today. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of farming could have told you this. It should be noted though that while these plants/animals work well for modern farming, most would almost certainly go extinct after a few years without human care due to their extreme specialization (grain production, milk production, meat production, egg production etc).
Ah. The selfish mutation.
That's not the criteria for evolution.
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46 & 2.
The mechanisms for Evolution itself should also be under selective pressure. I would expect that traits, that allow for a quicker adaption to a changed environment, are a huge improvement of fitness. One example seems to be sexual reproduction as this allows for mixing of different sets of traits and allows sexual selection. But there should be other mechanisms as well. Random mutation seem to be quite ineffective, mechanisms that cause more specific mutations with a higher likelihood of increasing the fitness should be possible.
Jan
Within 15 years, Europe will not have any more white people.
We've never observed evolution yet
Wrong
some scientists only assume it from observed differences in the fossil record.
Not "assume", "infer", and anyway decades of molecular biology, genetics, and genomics have proven at least as useful as fossils. My favorite example here.
Bah, it only took the Colonel six years to breed the octochicken. Standing 18" tall, this 8-legged, 4-breasted behemoth has been bioengineered to deliver searing hot salty deliciousness to a bucket near you.
Evolution defined: The theory of evolution by natural selection, first formulated in Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species" in 1859, is the process by which organisms change over time as a result of mutations in heritable physical or behavioral traits. Mutations that allow an organism to better adapt to its environment help it survive and have more offspring.
There's a common misconception that fear can cause your hair to turn white. It's wrong, but true. What happens is that your hair us going white. It's 10% white, and nobody notices. 30% white and people can see it clearly, but don't point it out. But when you are at 30% white and have a strong fear event, you can have some hair fall out. The hair that falls out is disproportionately non-white. So it gives the appearance of a sudden whitening of your hair, caused by fear.
And my first thought on this was the same thing. Random mutation is long-term. But when a selection event happens, the "hidden" trait isn't created, but selected for. There is no "evolution", but a selection pressure that reveals the previous mutation as a preferential trait, making it appear to happen suddenly and revealed by the "cause" but not actually caused by the "cause".
Learn to love Alaska
Their understanding of this phenomenon is slowly... well, you know.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
Evolution would have to happen very quickly for such a diverse variety of people to descend from just Adam and Eve in only 6,000 years.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
The study did not observe evolution. Not one single biological trait conferring a survival advantage was detected. All that was observed were two mutation of unknown origin. The authors surmise "paternal leakage", but nobody really knows the source of the mutations. The act of mutation itself was not observed. It was only detected by comparing samples over a long time span.
This is similar to what astronomers' do when they "blink" star fields -- switching between early and late images to make any change easy to pick up visually. When a change is picked up, the astronomer knows nothing about the cause, only that the change occurred.
But here we are, science and media over-reaching. The researchers themselves asserting that evolution is happening, and happening faster than before. We've never observed evolution yet -- some scientists only assume it from observed differences in the fossil record.
Why do scientists feel the need to over-reach in their conclusions? I can only guess. Funding, probably.
We have not only observed Evolution, we have taken it into our own hands in many ways. Consider the many breeds of dogs, all of them 100% of dogs are descended from Wolves. Human beings created dogs from wolves through selective breeding.
You are 100% wrong when you say we have not observed evolution.
Selective breeding is not evolution. First, it's not random and undirected, a requirement for evolution. Second, it creates no new traits. Selective breeding can only select among traits already existing in the genome.
Human-directed gene splicing is not evolution either. It's intelligent design.
Wolves and dogs are the same species. Wolves and dogs are interfertile, meaning they can breed and produce viable offspring. In other words, wolves can interbreed with any type of dog, and their offspring are capable of producing offspring themselves. While it's likely true that men domesticated dogs from wolves, no additional functions were added to create a dog. Rather, functions were subtracted from wolves to produce dogs.
An essential aspect of evolution is that it is a random processing, not the result of conscious decisions by another organism.
Take only six days and be impossible without an intelligent designer? Didn't think so.
Who is "we," kimosabe? Because the repeated emergence of antibiotic resistance, for example, is observed evolution. Then, if you're going to hang your hat on supposed horizontal gene transfer for antibiotic resistance, there's that niggling problem of emerging resistance to antimalarial drugs...
You-we may never have observed evolution, but medical-we certainly has.
By seeing your comment through a very, very thick principle of charity lens, I'll say you are correct that that evolution BY NATURAL SELECTION requires SURVIVAL-BASED SELECTION OF random mutations.
Evolution is a more general concept, and is not even limited to biology.
"it's not random and undirected, a requirement for evolution."
Counterpoint, by J. B. S. Haldane:
"Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public."
From one of the articles:
More specifically, we estimated the mitochondrial mutation rate, tested for instances of non-maternal inheritance, and examined the degree to which mitochondrial mutations were responsible for the divergent phenotypes of the two selected lines.
OK, as a layman, I've seen documentaries or even read magazine articles about using a mitochondrial clock. They use this to do things like guesstimate the time of the last common ancestor of humans and chimps for instance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mitochondrial_molecular_clock.
So this seems to just be another study showing the trickiness of using that 'clock'.
The paper is here but it is probably paywalled. (I have institutional access, so I'm not sure what that link will do to people who don't.)
This is part of an ongoing debate about rates of evolution. To a large extent it was kicked off by a 2005 paper by Simon Ho et al. (Ho is second author on this paper.) They observed that estimates of mutation rates derived from studies over short time periods are much higher than mutation rates derived from studies over long time periods. Short time periods are up to a few thousand years, e.g. comparing populations that have been separated by for a few thousand years, or ancient DNA compared to modern DNA in the same species, or multigenerational studies over a few years or decades such as this one. Long time periods are from comparing species whose common ancestor is typically millions of years ago.
This apparent acceleration in mutation rates is controversial.
I'm going to read the paper now, so I may have more to say later.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
We have better than 2 dozen scientifically confirmed speciation events fully documented and available in the literature in the less than 200 years we've been watching.
Evolution is a fact. There are entire branches of biological sciences based on it that would not be viable sciences without the existence of evolution. Those branches of science have a direct effect on you several times a year and one day they might cure your cancer. To deny evolution denies the reality around us every day.
Gravity is also a theory. Santa Claus is very real. As real as God. I believed in Santa until the age of 5, God -- 25. I cannot explain the discrepancy.
Not one single biological trait conferring a survival advantage was detected.
True, but that wasn't what they were looking for.
The authors surmise "paternal leakage", but nobody really knows the source of the mutations.
False. The paternal leakage was as well as detecting the mutations (and detection was enabled by the mutations.) It is not put forward as an explanation.
We've never observed evolution yet
False. Evolution in HIV adapting to evade drug therapy can be seen in time series of samples taken from a single patent (and this has been replicated many times.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Selective breeding is simply a matter of guided evolution.
In the wild, environmental pressures (food availability, etc.) 'select' traits suited to surviving said pressures at least until breeding age.
In selective breeding, environmental pressures (people) select traits, and attempt to get them to pass on through breeding.
The genetic mechanism is identical for both, only the method of 'selection' differs. Both are examples of evolution, though the latter rarely goes so far as to split off into a new species, because the desired traits tend to coalesce long before that.
Name one of your dozen proofs of speciation, and one instance where modern medicine depends upon evolution being a fact. Evolution is a theory, and a poorly, supported theory with tons of failed predictions. It's not, in fact, empirical science. Evolution is a religion.
Oh, and the 'different races' among humans are *also* examples of evolution.
Lighter skinned 'races' have less melanin, because in less sunny climates, they get less ultraviolet light from sunlight, which inhibits the production of Vitamin D. Melanin blocks ultraviolet light, so people with lower concentrations of melanin in their skin, produce Vitamin D more easily in those climates. Shortages of vitamin D cause all sorts of health issues, leading to reduced suitability for individuals with darker skin. As a result, people with genetics for lighter skin survived to reproduction age more often, and the trait was passed on more successfully to the point that it became the dominant (most common) trait over time.
Closer to the equator, on the other hand, darker skin has its own advantages (less susceptible to sunburns, for example), and remained the dominant trait in the sunnier climates (Africa, Australia, etc.).
Vitamin D is currently gotten mostly through our diet, so the environmental effects of skin color are drowned out these days.
HIV is a virus. It's not alive, and hence can't "survive". Viruses are DNA clockwork mechanisms that can't reproduce without hijacking a host cell, and thus can't enter the realm of biological evolution, which aims to explain the origin of life, not clocks.
We have already observed recent mitochondrial evolution in the human population, with a few mutations specific to Polynesian populations that must have arisen during radiative settlement a few hundred years ago:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/jour...
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Viruses meet all the requirements needed for evolution to apply to them.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment
E. coli evolved to eat a new chemical (citrate). It developed a new enzyme to do it. E. coli was previously defined as not being able to eat citrate. By the former definition, it has evolved into a new species.
How is antibiotic resistance a loss of function? Troll better, please.
Name one of your tons of failed predictions of evolution. Be careful, I'll be able to tell if you're blaming a failed prediction of some not-evolution theory on evolution.
There is no requirement for something to be alive for it to evolve.
The requirements for a system to evolve are pretty simple:
1. Some aspect of it must reproduce.
2. During reproduction, a "child" is similar to the "parent".
3. Sometimes traits change randomly.
4. Death happens.
Systems well outside the domain of conventional biology can experience evolution.
Also... evolution does not in any way seek to explain the origin of life. You're thinking of abiogenesis, a distinctly not-evolution area of study.
Several of them are listed here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faq...
An essential aspect of evolution is that it is a random processing, not the result of conscious decisions by another organism.
What you've just described is in no way an essential aspect of evolution. It isn't even part of evolution. If some change in a population is the result of concious (or unconcious) decisions by another organism... evolution has still happened.
What I don't understand, is if it takes so many generations for a mutation that may or may not do anything, how do you explain complex functions that require thousands of beneficial mutations before the new functionality actually causes a survival benefit. I can't see how it would ever happen.
It's like throwing match sticks on a floor hoping one day it makes a sentence. You may after billions of attempts get a letter, but you will never achieve a whole sentence when those partial non beneficial mutations that are yet to form a beneficial structure are mutated back out again.
46137
Selective breeding is not evolution. First, it's not random and undirected, a requirement for evolution. Second, it creates no new traits. Selective breeding can only select among traits already existing in the genome.
Evolution isn't random and undirected. Random mutation paired with non-random selection results in evolution in the way it is conventionally thought of. Selective breeding changes the populations being selected, so does result in evolution.
So, you folks finally watched X-Men?
It's like throwing match sticks on a floor hoping one day it makes a sentence. You may after billions of attempts get a letter
Weird, I seem to always get an "I" on my first attempt with a single match...
The authors of the paper are talking about evolution, not "Darwin's evolution". We don't hold Darwin as a figurehead. He had some good ideas, but we've learned much since then.
Thrown away? not KFC'd?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I'm not the one asserting that evolution is a fact. The person making the positive assertion has the burden of proof. The challenger is not obligated to prove the negative (e.g. evolution is not a fact).
I always get to this point with evolutionists. They claim proof, but never deliver. That means they lose.
"evolution is a religion" you must be one of the potential Republican presidential candidates.....
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Have you been playing with your name to create a handle for /. Is your name really Michelle Bachmann?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Name-calling is the last bastion of the man without an argument.
By that definition, a quartz crystal evolves.
Evolution requires adding information content. There is no evidence that viruses (or any actually living things) increase information content between generations. Mutations have only been observed to reduce complexity, and thus information content.
Humans and chickens are in a symbiotic relationship. We use them for food, they use us for getting more chicks. So chickens will evolve to be more tasty (because we select them that way), while we evolve to digest chickens more effectively and become less sensitive to the diseases they carry (because they select us this way). That we perceive to be in charge and are doing this "consciously" (whatever that means) is irrelevant from an evolutionary perspective.
When Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species he avoided discussing the origin of life. However, reading other texts by Darwin, and correspondence he exchanged with friends and colleagues, reveals that he took for granted the possibility of a natural emergence of the first life forms. As shown by notes from pages he pulled from his private notebooks, Darwin was convinced that âoethe intimate relation of Life with laws of chemical combination, & the universality of latter render spontaneous generation not improbableâ.
And your childish misrepresentation of the facts, frequent confusion of "evolution" and "the theory of evolution", and willful ignorance of the accurate prediction made by the theory of evolution are the first bastion of an idiot with an axe to grind. Were you abused by a biologist as a child? Maybe one killed your Pa?
Evolution, on the other hand, requires a gain of functional systems for bacteria to evolve into new bacterial kind, and ultimately, higher organisms.
Evolution doesn't go to the direction of higher complexity but to the direction of higher rate of survival. In this context it would be very much better to talk about eukaryotes instead of bacteria just avoid getting embarrassed in the inter-tubes.
Thrown away? not KFC'd?
Obviously not, because they weren't mutants.
The study did not observe evolution. Not one single biological trait conferring a survival advantage was detected.
Evolution requires that there is some selection process that reduces the number of offspring of some individuals, causing the other individuals to pass on their genetic traits to the next generation.
This is exactly what's happening here: the smallest birds are not allowed to reproduce, causing the birds to grow gradually bigger and bigger. In theory, one could breed ostrich sized chickens this way, that would be unable to mate with normal chickens, starting a new species.
All that was observed were two mutation of unknown origin. The authors surmise "paternal leakage", but nobody really knows the source of the mutations.
Point mutations are usually caused by DNA duplication errors. The protein machinery is basically driven by random motions (i.e. heat) and electrical potentials (i.e. chemistry), so it's actually amazing that the error rate is so low. That's because the protein machinery has evolved several safeguards and self correcting mechanisms, billions of years ago.
As for the paternal leakage, that has nothing to do with the mutations. During mammal/bird cell division, the mitochondria of the sperm (paternal) are normally discarded, and the embryo only contains mitochondria that are copies of the egg's (maternal). In very rare cases the paternal mitochondria somehow survive and end up in the offspring.
complex functions that require thousands of beneficial mutations before the new functionality actually causes a survival benefit
Complex functions like an eye?
A mutation that results in a single light-sensitive cell can give a blind creature a survival benefit, because it can now detect if something is obscuring light (perhaps a predator).
Another mutation turns this into 2 cells, or 3, or more. Better light detection.
Another mutation makes a small depression at those cells location. Better light focusing.
Lots of mutations later you have a fully functional eye.
Each step provides survival benefits.
The hint is: "the rate of change in the mitochondrial genome." Darwin didn't have access to the 20th century research. You might as well say that an astrophysicist argues for Plato's model of the universe if he quotes Plato in his introduction.
Invisible sky wizard!
Citation needed. Antibiotic resistance plasmids do not cause the normal proteins of the bacterium to become non-functional. They add capabilities to organisms that did not have those capabilities before.
Also, producing more of a protein does not equal "defective proteins." Genetic upregulation of protein expression is still a mutation.
You honestly have no idea what you're talking about, and it's very evident to the rest of us.
What I don't understand, is if it takes so many generations for a mutation that may or may not do anything, how do you explain complex functions that require thousands of beneficial mutations before the new functionality actually causes a survival benefit. I can't see how it would ever happen. It's like throwing match sticks on a floor hoping one day it makes a sentence. You may after billions of attempts get a letter, but you will never achieve a whole sentence when those partial non beneficial mutations that are yet to form a beneficial structure are mutated back out again.
You understand correctly. It is extremely rare if non-existent for even small non functional changes. All changes have some intermediate functional state. You can have horizontal transfer in some cases, but this does not imply you get a free lunch, nor does an inactive or 'junk' sequence acquiring an advantage.
It's also beneficial to note that with organisms like bacteria, over long periods of time, it's not billions of attempts, not trillions, not quadrillions. It surpasses quintillions of attempts for a single species and all it takes is one success to fix it in a population. It's a massively parallel process and just because humans often are extremely poor at conceptualizing it, that does not invalidate reality.
Another name-caller! This behavior just weakens your argument. I suggest you stick to facts in evidence.
...bacteria, despite their great production of intraspecific varieties, exhibit a great fidelity to their species. The bacillus Escherichia coli, whose mutants have been studied very carefully, is the best example. The reader will agree that it is surprising, to say the least, to want to prove evolution and to discover its mechanisms and then to choose as a material for this study a being which practically stabilized a billion years ago (Pierre-Paul Grassé, Evolution of Living Organisms, New York: Academic Press,1977, p. 87).
Science has closely studied two genera of bacteria to gain an understanding of antibiotic resistance: Escherichia and Salmonella. While driven by expediency -- many people become ill from these organisms, so antibiotic resistance can be easily observed -- researchers have looked for, but not found, the smoking gun of evolution in antibiotic resistance. In speaking about Escherichia in an evolutionary context, France’s renowned zoologist, Pierre-Paul Grassé, observed (and here's your citation):
Although E. coli allegedly has undergone a billion years’ worth of mutations, it still has remained “stabilized” in its “nested pattern.” While mutations and DNA transposition have caused change within the bacterial population, those changes have occurred within narrow limits. No long-term, large-scale evolution has occurred.
He goes on to say:
"Mutations, in time, occur incoherently. They are not complementary to one another, nor are they cumulative in successive generations toward a given direction. They modify what preexists, but they do so in disorder, no matter how... As soon as some disorder, even slight, appears in an organized being, sickness, then death follow. There is no possible compromise between the phenomenon of life and anarchy." (1977, pp. 97-98 )
James F. Crow, head of the Genetics Department at the University of Wisconsin and an expert on genetic mutations, states it even more emphatically:
"Almost every mutation is harmful, and it is the individual who pays the price. Any human activity that tends to increase the mutation rate must therefore raise serious health and moral problems for man." (James F. Crow, "Ionizing Radiation and Evolution," Scientific American, vol. 201, September 1959, p. 138).
and elsewhere...
"A random change in the highly integrated system of chemical processes which constitute life is almost certain to impair it-just as a random interchange of connections in a television set is not likely to improve the picture." James F. Crow (Professor of Genetics, University of Wisconsin), "Genetic Effects of Radiation," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, no. 14, 1958, pp. 19-20
I can provide many, many more citations of biologists and biochemists not finding evolution in antibiotic resistance. Can you provide any citations where evolution has been proven?
Maybe I am missing something here. But the article is referring to mutations in mitochondrial DNA, not nuclear DNA. Its the DNA in the nucleus that determines phenotypes in the resulting organism. So mtDNA mutations do not result in "evolution" in the common use of the word. Now the mitochondria are essential for aerobic respiration, so its possible there could be an improvement in function from mutation, but the vast majority of the time it will have no effect, or kill the organism.
Maybe its valid to extrapolate mutation rates of nuclear DNA from the mutation rates of mtDNA, but from a high level this looks dubious.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Chickents just doesn't sound like it'll resonate with the public in quite the same way.
But you can't argue with the math!!!
From the summary: (One million years) x (2% rate of change) x (fifteen times faster) = 15 years for evolution to happen.
PROOF that the world could indeed be a mere 6000 years old. Because, 6000/15 years = 400 evolutions, and 400^2 (because of sexual reproduction) = 160,000 species. Way more than I've ever seen. Heck, most zoos only have a few dozen. CASE CLOSED.
(No need to check that math. I hear the editors are experts and would never let an error creep into print.)
A citation in this century would be far more useful.
From their perspective, you're the one with the extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence... that you are then failing to provide as an argumentative point. A great deal of proof for evolution has been delivered to you in this forum, but you either are unable to or simply choose not to understand or believe it. This is not their problem.
How does a quartz crystal reproduce with heredity transmission of mutations (items 1-3)? Plenty of mutations have been observed to increase complexity. The simplest of those are gene or chromosome duplications, but you're choosing to ignore those for some reason.
Couldn't faster evolution develop as a trait, to evolve out of certain situations? If so, it is entirely possible that the earlier rate of evolutionary growth was correct and what we should be looking at is rate of rate of evolution.. but maybe rate of rate of evolution is also changing, in which case we should be looking at rate of rate of rate of evolution.. but maybe....
Flies/ frogs and other small lifeforms have been shown to evolve on much shorter timescales than 15y
No - Darwin's title is more properly interpreted as "how species came about", which does not mean "how life came to be". Oftentimes, organisms grow more complex over time, but not always.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
And yet, regardless of what Darwin did or did not believe, the modern theory of evolution does not address the origin of life. Abiogenesis is its own thing, and involved substantially less evidence and more guesswork.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Speciation in a vertebrate. You may also find this website educational.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
I assumed there was a rule against using medical experiments as food, but I could be wrong.
Ask the Fukushima residents about extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence.
The evidence for a tsunami on the scale that occurred was not extraordinary, so the reasoning went that such an extraordinary event would not occur.
Yet once the event happened, the probability that it happened went to 1.
The reasoning behind "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is basically saying that your priors are so close to 1 almost no evidence will change your mind. See Cromwell's Rule...
Thats a naive statement. A light sensitive cell is not one mutation. Even to sense light and have that connect to a decision making system is a again thousands of unrelated mutations finally forming a functional structure.
46137
Hi mbeckman,
It was interesting to see you were initially modded to about 4 insightful, and now -1 troll.
I though your comment was good. It is almost like evolution is a religion that cannot tolerate any amount of critique or debate.
Very Sad.
46137
I said "ultimately" evolution seeks to explain the origin of life. It hasn't a clue yet, but it's run down many blind alleys (Miller/Urey, for example). no evolutionist thinks that there is any other explanation for life than random chance. They just can't come up with a workable hypothesis. However, ask any evolutionary scientist if he thinks devine creation is a reasonable explanation for the origin of life, and you'll hear a resounding "No. Evolution will, though."
I appreciate your considered reply; but it does sound non sensensical.
If I took the linux kernal, and made copy errors every so often, you are saying I would eventually get a 3D image processing library? And that all those copy errors wouldn't increase system entropy?
46137
I asked rahvin112 to "Name one of your dozen proofs of speciation, and one instance where modern medicine depends upon evolution being a fact." I'm still waiting for him/her, or anyone, to put up.
Apparently, the evolutionist have chosen "shut up".
The Stebbins theory you cite is not an example of speciation. It's an example of a hypothesis that has very little evidence supporting it. Certainly no direct scientific observation. The absence of data is not data.
There is some conscious selection, some goal, that individuals of a species are exercising when they reproduce or choose whom to reproduce with. A bird might be wrong when choosing a mate based on colors, colors may not indicate the best traits for survival. The birds make choices, based on their own internally-defined goals, which may or may not agree with what you think they should choose based on your criteria of how evolution progresses.
The Slashdot editors have unlimited mod points. Usually they are not so obvious :)
I asked an epicyclist if planets could move in anything but circles and got a resounding "No!".
I'd really like to see you ask an evolutionary scientist about their opinion on the start of life. Divine creation is not a reasonable scientific explanation for the origin of life, because it's not scientific in the slightest. It's possible that's how life actually started, but it's not a reasonable scientific explanation. Moreover, evolution right now does not seek to explain the origin of life. It may in the future, but that seems unlikely.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
I named one proof of speciation. We've also seen it in bacteria numerous times (including, yes, gain of function!). However, speciation is expected to be a long process, based on the mutation rate we see in DNA. It's not surprising that we don't have many examples in larger organisms. As for modern medicine - proteins and processes conserved by evolution are the reason a lot of antibiotics and antiviral medicines work (and yes, while viruses aren't "alive" in the conventional sense, they do replicate and are under selective pressure, and thus can evolve). Evolution is the reason animal models for disease are informative, but not perfect. Evolution is the reason we test some things in monkeys, and why they give us more accurate results than mice do. Evolution is why bacteriophages could be an excellent way to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but regulatory processes have (somewhat understandably) hampered that. Evolution is the best explanation we have for why muscle physiology is so well conserved, and why a lot of mammalian physiology is conserved across species. Evolutionary principles have guided some really neat antibacterial and antiviral compounds that look promising. In short, evolution has had an enormous impact on modern medicine.
Before I spend any more time on this "debate" - are you actually willing to change your mind? So many people who don't believe in evolution aren't. No amount of evidence is enough to convince them. Are you one of them, and if not, what evidence would you need?
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Divine creation is not necessary for there to be goals in lifeforms.
We don't know why particles choose one state or another. We can use the word "choose" when describing their behavior, because it's as good a hypothesis as any.
The origin of the choice does not have to be a God. Jains have no divine creator, for example. Choice exists for Jains, goals exist, but there is no divine creation postulated.
Evolution as a theory does not rely on -- or even permit -- organisms as individuals to effect progress through choices in mating. Choice is irrelevant. Evolution states that progress occurs purely on the basis of statistical availability of "fitter" mates.
i wasn't name calling, just trying to find a reason for your ideas
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
It's well-supported by anatomy, physiology, and genetic studies, but okay. Here are some examples of speciation in plants and other insects, with more references. I do still encourage you to look at this site.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
This is an interesting paper, but is addressing the question of new species creation by changing the definition of what a species is.They say as much in their introduction:
Although approximately 150 years have passed since the publication of On the origin of species by means of natural selection, the definition of what species are and the ways in which species originate remain contentious issues in evolutionary biology. The biological species concept, which defines species as groups of interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups, continues to draw support. However, there is a growing realization that many animal and plant species can hybridize with their close relatives and exchange genes without losing their identity.
I'm asking for evidence of speciation where genuinely new species have evolved, based on the classical definition of species as inter-breeding populations.
When you say you want evidence, do you mean direct observation, or genetic, physiological, and fossil evidence? And since you want to use the inter-breeding population definition, I assume you're only looking for evidence in living things that sexually reproduce?
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
I think the difference about a scientist and a religious person about the origin of anything is essentially similar. The scientist will say: "it just happened", the religious person will say "God". They mean the same thing.
when those partial non beneficial mutations that are yet to form a beneficial structure are mutated back out again.
If the mutation is beneficial it will spread to the population and mixed with other mutations. How likely it is to get a reverse mutation in a whole population to the exact same gene for everyone? It's like trying to hit a specific match stick in a set of huge piles with a throwing needle, over and over again.