Evolution

Further to Basener stands his ground at Skeptical Zone: Fisher’s Darwinian theorem is clearly false, here is Part 2: Defending the validity and significance of the new theorem “Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection With Mutations, Part II: Our Mutation-Selection Model by Basener and Sanford: In short, we agree with JF and ML that our paper does not show that deleterious mutations necessarily result in declining fitness. However, we have clearly falsified the converse claim, which is that genetic variance plus selection necessarily result in increasing fitness. If Joe F and Michael L write a response, we politely request that they provide quotes from our paper that support their claims that we argue that fisher’s FTNS “is the basis for all Read More ›

So labelled in the first vid below. The reader who sent this clip commented, “As I watched the video in amazement, the thought that those creatures are the result of random Darwinian processes didn’t even cross my mind. Whereas, the thought that God is one incredible artist did cross my mind!” At times, jellyfish almost seem like they are not part of the same world of life forms as ourselves. Not because they are boneless and brainless but because they just seem so different. It feels easier to understand an ant or a squid, even though they are very different. See also: Grand evolution theory for complex animals in ruins; fossil is, in fact, a jellyfish Sponges definitely oldest animals, Read More ›

Readers may remember Nick Matzke, especially for getting a publisher to abandon the Cornell University papers and for other contributions to Darwinism. A reader now writes to tell us that two Field Museum researchers have just published a critique of Nick Matzke’s (probable) most important contribution to research so far. “Conceptual and statistical problems with the DEC+J model of founder-event speciation and its comparison with DEC via model selection” by Richard H. Ree, Isabel Sanmartín, Journal of Biogeography. 2018 Abstract: Phylogenetic studies of geographic range evolution are increasingly using statistical model selection methods to choose among variants of the dispersal-extinction-cladogenesis (DEC) model, especially between DEC and DEC+J, a variant that emphasizes “jump dispersal,” or founder-event speciation, as a type of Read More ›

It’s too cool a concept for accuracy to matter. Further to “Remember the ‘developmental hourglass’? Well, not so fast,” Jonathan Wells writes to point out that vertebrate embryos more closely resemble each on another than do their adult forms only if one carefully cherry-picks the desired stages, which are long after the beginning of development. In Zombie Science, he writes, — In 2008, University of Chicago historian Robert Richards published a book defending Haeckel against charges of fraud. According to Richards, Haeckel’s drawings were no less accurate than those of his contemporaries, including the people who criticized him. 37 Cambridge historian Nick Hopwood also defended Haeckel against the fraud charge in a 2015 book that included several pages criticizing Icons of Evolution as Read More ›

From Tyler O’Neil at PJ Media, in support of Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design , including evolutionary creation: Deborah Haarsma, president of BioLogos, argued that the scientific theory of evolution is compatible with biblical creation. She made a clear distinction between Darwinistic evolutionism — which uses evolution to disprove God — and the scientific theory, which does not necessarily have theological implications. “Thus, evolution is not a worldview in opposition to God but a natural mechanism by which God providentially achieves his purposes,” Haarsma wrote. She presented the theory of accommodationism — that God spoke in scripture in a way that the Jews and Christians would understand at the time. God has revealed Himself in two books: Read More ›

One would almost think they were the necrotic mainstream media. From Douglas Axe at ENST, on BioLogos’s Dennis Venema’s critique of his book Undeniable at what sounds like an attempted thugging: First, considering the critical view I take not just of Darwinism but also of the academic echo chamber that, with iron-lung-like artificiality, allows this otherwise dead theory to persist, it should be clear that I wrote primarily for people outside the echo chamber. The exclusion of anyone who fits that description from providing even one of the reviews of my book therefore raises questions about the true intent of the exercise. Second, although I was offered the advantage of having the last word, my response was restricted to about Read More ›

Further to the question of whether evolution is random, a reader draws our attention to a 2015 post by Ann Gauger at ENST: Mutation, drift, selection, and environmental change all play a role. Three out of these four forces are random, without regard for the needs of the organism. Even selection can be random in its direction, depending on the environment. So tell me. Is evolution random? Most of the processes at work definitely are. Certainly evolution won’t make steady progress in one direction without some other factor at work. What that factor might be remains to be seen. I personally do not think a material explanation will be found, because any process to guide evolution in a purposeful way Read More ›

“The hourglass model of embryonic evolution predicts an hourglass-like divergence during animal embryogenesis – with embryos being more divergent at the earliest and latest stages but conserved during a mid-embryonic (phylotypic) period that serves as a source of the basic body plan for animals within a phylum.” Well, not so fast: From Hajk-Georg Drost, Philipp Janitza, Ivo Grosse, and Marcel Quint at Current Opinion in Genetics & Development: • Developmental hourglass patterns are not specific for animals. • In plants, developmental hourglass patterns are associated with embryogenesis and post-embryonic phase transitions. • Morphological and transcriptomic patterns can be uncoupled. • The organizational checkpoint hypothesis proposes that developmental reprogramming inevitably results in evolutionarily conserved transition periods. The developmental hourglass model has Read More ›

From David Reznick and Joseph Travis at Science: Questionable predictability is not specific to stick insects. Nosil et al. analyzed data sets for other long-term studies of evolution in various species, including Galapagos finches and the peppered moth, and show that they also offer low temporal predictability. In these cases, the likely cause is also multiple forms of selection the strength of which varies over time. These results show that an iconic example of a simple trait subjected to a single agent of strong selection is actually much more complicated. Similar lessons have been taught by other seemingly simple phenomena. For example, the complex ways in which known agents of selection on the color polymorphism of Cepaea snails meant that Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: “It’s exciting and significant to find a living family of giant viruses with eukaryote-specific genes in a form that predates the latest common ancestor of all eukaryotes,” says Albert Erives, associate professor in the Department of Biology. “These viruses are like time machines that tell us more about how life on our planet came to be.” In the study, Erives analyzed the genome of a virus family called Marseilleviridae and found it shares a similar set of genes, called core histones, with eukaryotes. That places Marseilleviridae, and perhaps its viral relatives, somewhere along eukaryotes’ evolutionary journey. “We now know that eukaryotes are more closely related to viruses,” says Erives, “and the reason is because they share core histones, Read More ›

From Oxford University Press, Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by Daniel J. Nicholson and John Dupre, – A radical new conception of biology and the metaphysics of the living world – Offers a new kind of process philosophy with a naturalistic grounding – The Introduction provides a state-of-the-art survey to orient readers new to the topic Here’s the abstract from a chapter by Daniel J. Nicholson, “Reconceptualizing the Organism: From Complex Machine to Flowing Stream,” This chapter draws on insights from non-equilibrium thermodynamics to demonstrate the ontological inadequacy of the machine conception of the organism. The thermodynamic character of living systems underlies the importance of metabolism and calls for the adoption of a processual view, exemplified Read More ›

No really. From Evolution News: You thought you’d heard it all? All the desperate materialist theories seeking to explain the burst of biological novelty some 530 million years ago that Meyer writes about in Darwin’s Doubt? You were wrong. Along comes Lund University in Sweden with a “Novel hypothesis on why animals diversified on Earth.” Get ready for the cancer theory of the Cambrian explosion. Can tumors teach us about animal evolution on Earth? Researchers believe so and now present a novel hypothesis of why animal diversity increased dramatically on Earth about half a billion years ago. A biological innovation may have been key. [Emphasis added.] Not many of us who have seen friends suffer or die from cancer would Read More ›

From Nancy Pearcey, author of Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, at CNS: What Was Darwin’s ‘Original’ Thought? Original thinking? The truth is that there was little about Darwin’s scientific theory that was original—and the part that was original was not scientific. The idea that organisms undergo minor variations was not original. For millennia, farmers and breeders have known that they could induce minor changes in a breeding population (typically a species or genus). This process also happens in nature, where it is called microevolution. What was original was Darwin’s proposal that the same minor variations might accumulate via undirected natural selection to originate completely new organs and body plans (generating higher taxonomic categories such as Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The number of recognized mammal species has increased over time from 4,631 species in 1993 to 5,416 in 2005, and now to 6,495 species. This total includes 96 species extinct within the last 500 years, and represents nearly a 20% increase in overall mammal diversity. The updated tabulation details 1,251 new species recognitions, at least 172 unions, and multiple major, higher-level changes, including an additional 88 genera and 14 newly recognized families. The new study documents a long-term global rate of about 25 species recognized per year, with the Neotropics (Central America, the Caribbean, and South America) as the region of greatest species density, followed closely by tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and the Indo-Pacific. Previous sporadic releases Read More ›

When it’s this imprecise, is it still science? From ScienceDaily: Flowering plants likely originated between 149 and 256 million years ago according to new UCL-led research. The study, published today in New Phytologist by researchers from the UK and China, shows that flowering plants are neither as old as suggested by previous molecular studies, nor as young as a literal interpretation of their fossil record. We used to hear the term “literal interpretation” in a different context. “The discrepancy between estimates of flowering plant evolution from molecular data and fossil records has caused much debate. Even Darwin described the origin of this group as an ‘abominable mystery’,” explained lead author, Dr Jose Barba-Montoya (UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment). Invoking Darwin Read More ›