Evolution

Despite decades of public relations. From Chase Nelson at Inference Review: Haldane, one of the founders (along with Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright) of mathematical population genetics, was the first to quantify such a limit on the speed of adaptive evolution. He concluded that the cost of selection “defines one of the factors, perhaps the main one, determining the speed of evolution.” Cost was the main reason Motoo Kimura proposed the neutral theory of molecular evolution. Many others cite its importance. Nelson’s point is that “In general, the number of individuals combining several specific characteristics decreases exponentially with each additional requirement.” For one thing, the requirements must all work together in the same live body. For example, a beagle has Read More ›

From Andrew Masterson at Cosmos: In 1972 the eminent palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould and his colleague Niles Eldredge proposed an idea about the way evolution worked and, in so doing, sparked a fight of almighty proportions. No, it was not really an “almighty” row. It was a vulgar, vicious row between tenured Darwinists and an early group of evidence-seekers who were soon whipped into shape to support the party line. New modelling revealed by Michael Landis and Joshua Schraiber of Temple University in Pennsylvania, US, however, adds considerable extra weight to their case. They had better watch their step if they want to remain employed. Gould and Eldredge sought to explain so-called gaps in the palaeontological record – missing fossils Read More ›

Again. In his new book Zombie Science, biologist Jonathan Wells asks a simple question: If the icons of evolution were just innocent textbook errors, why do so many of them still persist? Wells gave a presentation about Zombie Science at the book’s national launch party recently in Seattle. Watch as Wells explores a new wave of icons walking the halls of science while putting some familiar corpses back in the grave. New topics include DNA, the human eye, vestigial organs, antibiotic resistance, and cancer. Looking past the current zombie outbreak, Wells offers a hopeful vision of science free from the clutches of materialist dogma. Wells himself is something of an iconoclast, railing against the tyranny of science’s Darwin-only advocates. His Read More ›

From Chase Nelson at Inference Review: ORIGINALLY PROPOSED by Motoo Kimura, Jack King, and Thomas Jukes, the neutral theory of molecular evolution is inherently non-Darwinian.2 Darwinism asserts that natural selection is the driving force of evolutionary change. It is the claim of the neutral theory, on the other hand, that the majority of evolutionary change is due to chance. Each individual in a typical mammal population has two copies of its genome in almost every cell. The exact DNA sequences they contain may differ as the result of mutations, random copying errors in which one nucleotide letter is replaced by another. Other changes can also occur, such as the deletion or duplication of larger DNA segments. The result is genetic Read More ›

Researchers: This system is exceptional in terms of the rates of evolutionary change and adaptive divergence, and it is likely that this may be due to the uncommon circumstances posed by the isolated and fragmented Galápagos landscape. At Molecular Ecology: Abstract: Beak shape in Darwin’s ground finches (Geospiza) is emblematic of natural selection and adaptive radiation, yet our understanding of the genetic basis of beak shape variation, and thus the genetic target of natural selection, is still evolving. Here we reveal the genomic architecture of beak shape variation using genomewide comparisons of four closely related and hybridizing species across 13 islands subject to parallel natural selection. Pairwise contrasts among species were used to identify a large number of genomic loci Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Evolutionary biologists have long assumed that when an individual of a species wanders into a different environment than it is adapted to, it will be at a competitive disadvantage compared to natives of the same species which are adapted to that environment. Studying fish in Canada, scientists found the opposite. … Evolutionary theory suggests that taking the fish that are adapted to the lake environment and placing them into the stream would put them at a competitive disadvantage compared with the residents. In the dog-eat-dog world of natural selection, outsiders are often poorly adapted to a new environment and less likely to survive or pass on their genes. In the case of the sticklebacks, that’s because the lake-adapted Read More ›

From Suzan Mazur, author of Paradigm Shifters, at Huffington Post: Suzan Mazur: Philipp Khaitovich et al. think neoteny affects the grey matter of the human brain but not the white matter. I gather you agree, but you see the issue as one of bioenergetics, involving mitochondria. You say neoteny is inherent in development of human brain regions where high energy demands are required for cognitive and memory-related functions. Is that right? Vladimir Skulachev: Yes. This is absolutely necessary for technical progress. By the way, I am now writing the next paper concerning the numerous common traits of humans and NMRs. It’s very strange but NMRs are much closer to humans with regard to several components of brain construction than to Read More ›

In the latest post at Design Disquisitions I focus on the excellent work on ID by British philosopher Peter S. Williams. He has published several papers, and has many high quality articles and media presentations on the subject. His work was instrumental in initiating my change of mind from theistic neo-Darwinism to design. Highly recommended stuff! Peter S. Williams on Intelligent Design  

From Griffiths University (Queensland, Australia): Fit and healthy Tasmanian devils are being taken down by deadly facial tumours that are attacking the “best” animals in the population, according to novel research led by Griffith University. The research, published in the scientific journal Ecology Letters, shows that devils that catch devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) have higher survival and reproductive rates prior to disease-induced death than individuals that do not become infected. Typically infectious diseases affect mostly older, younger, or less healthy individuals. However, the team of scientists from Australia and the US, led by Dr Konstans Wells of Griffith’s Environmental Futures Research Institute (EFRI), found that devils with higher fitness are at highest risk of infection and death from facial Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Bones are composites of protein fibers, collagen, and a biomaterial, hydroxyapatite. The more orderly the arrangement of the collagen fibers, the more stable the bone, but the more slowly it normally grows as well. The bones of mammals thus have a special structure. This allows them to grow quickly and yet remain stable. “We call this bone form fibrolamellar,” says the paleontologist. Together with his PhD student Christen D. Shelton (now at the University of Cape Town), the scientist looked at humerus bones and femurs from a long-extinct land animal: the mammal predecessor Ophiacodon. This lived 300 million years ago. “Even in Ophiacodon, the bones grew as fibrolamellar bones,” says Sander to summarize the analysis results. “This indicates Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The Garden of the Ediacaran was a period in the ancient past when Earth’s shallow seas were populated with a bewildering variety of enigmatic, soft-bodied creatures. Scientists have pictured it as a tranquil, almost idyllic interlude that lasted from 635 to 540 million years ago. But a new interdisciplinary study suggests that the organisms living at the time may have been much more dynamic than experts have thought. Scientists have found It extremely difficult to fit these Precambrian species into the tree of life. That is because they lived in a time before organisms developed the ability to make shells or bones. As a result, they didn’t leave much fossil evidence of their existence behind, and even less Read More ›

A reader offers an interesting quote from Denis Noble´s recent book on Karl Popper´s view of Darwinism ( Dance to the Tune of Life – Biological Relativity, page 199): It is not widely known that Popper gave an important lecture to the Royal Society in 1986 entitled “A new interpretation of Darwinism”. It was given on the presence of Nobel laureates Sir Peter Medawar, Max Perutz and other figures, and it must have shocked his audience. He proposed a completely radical interpretation of Neo-Darwinism, essentially rejecting the Modern Synthesis by proposing that organisms themselves are the source of the creative processes of evolution, not random mutations in DNA. He said that Darwinism (but I am sure he meant Neo-Darwinism) was Read More ›

For the last year or so I have been accumulating quite a number of YouTube playlists. Recently I’ve been trying to get it a little more organised and cleaned up, so I thought I would point readers to it as a resource. At the moment I have just under 40 individual playlists. I have created playlists for the key individuals in the ID debate (pro and anti-ID) and also have playlists for different issues that come up (e.g. Irreducible complexity, methodological naturalism etc). There’s also one covering the Dover trial, and any lectures and debates on the subject. For any other videos that don’t readily fit into other categories, I have a playlist of miscellaneous videos: ID YouTube Playlists I’ll Read More ›

From evolutionary biologist Richard O. Prum at the New York Times: Are These Birds Too Sexy to Survive? Natural selection can’t explain this. Wow. Careers have been wrecked over such departures from dogma. Most biologists believe that these mechanisms always work in concert — that sex appeal is the sign of an objectively better mate, one with better genes or in better condition. But the wing songs of the club-winged manakin provide new insights that contradict this conventional wisdom. Instead of ensuring that organisms are on an inexorable path to self-improvement, mate choice can drive a species into what I call maladaptive decadence — a decline in survival and fecundity of the entire species. It may even lead to extinction. Read More ›

Recently, Barry Arrington noted Walter Myers III’s response to at Barbara Forrest, on the question of whether “ the success of science compels acceptance of metaphysical naturalism.” Her name keeps turning up, actually. A friend writes to note her endorsement of a new book, by Guillermo Paz-y-Mino-C and Avelina Espinosa, Measuring the Evolution Controversy – A Numerical Analysis of Acceptance of Evolution at America’s Colleges and Universities (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017): The great contribution of ‘Measuring the Evolution Controversy’ is the rich content of data and analysis that asks detailed questions about the social, economic and political backgrounds of those who tend to reject evolution vs. those who accept evolution as science. Paz-y-Miño-C and Espinosa deftly analyze their data drawn Read More ›