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Darwin’s peppered myth: Turns out, peppered moths take care to protect themselves

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A Darwin cult (the peppered myth) developed during the twentieth century around the peppered moths, with the recent “resounding triumph” that it turns out that pollution effects do favour dark coloured moths over light coloured ones in the same species, with no important changes.

Whoop whoop. That is all Darwinism can come up with, in real life, after all this time.

But so? Snowbelt effects explain why the Canadian Groundhog Day groundhog is white and the American one is brown. No evolution was ever harmed in the making of the diverting nonsense.

In “Peppered Moths Without Evolution” (July 31, 2012), Creation-Evolution Headlines comments , noting a recent, more detailed study,

Kettlewell and Majerus didn’t take into account the moths’ behavior. They treated moths as passive creatures that would alight on tree trunks at random. They placed the selective power in the environment, with lower contrast producing greater camouflage, leaving the high-contrast moths vulnerable to birds.

The South Korean researchers found, instead, that moth behavior plays a vital role in the camouflage. They “found out that moths are walking on the tree bark until they settle down for resting; the insects seem to actively search for a place and a body position that makes them practically invisible.” A video clip embedded in the article shows the moths doing this.

The article avoids superstitious homage to Darwin as well, apparently. That’s a start  in the right direction.

We always thought that the moth had more interest in protecting its hide than the researchers did, and guess what? But how do the moths know if, when they feel invisible, they really are invisible?

See also: US Darwinists (US ranked 14th) wail over South Korea (ranked 1st), supposedly “not able to compete”

Comments
wd400: "No, you just don’t understand the paper." Then since you do we know you are perfectly capable of explaining it. You may begin by answering the continued question: What was counted?Maus
August 4, 2012
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PaV, You're going to have to explain to me how a trait can be Mendelian dominant in breeding experiments and "epigenetically" controlled. Well, actually, I wouldn't bother. Even if the was some weird epigenetic thing going on, the evidence for strong selection on a newly arising mutant would still stand.wd400
August 4, 2012
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Maus, No, you just don't understand the paper. Joe, Let's try again: tell us why O'Hara failed to measure selection in a natural population.wd400
August 4, 2012
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OT: New video uploads:
Multidimensional Genome - Dr. Robert Carter - video (Notes in video description) http://www.metacafe.com/w/8905048 What Is The Genome? It's Not Junk! - Dr. Robert Carter - video - (Notes in video description) http://www.metacafe.com/w/8905583
bornagain77
August 4, 2012
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Joe @ 48 -
Errrrrr, that does not make it correct. And I gave specific criticisms.
Where? Comment 33? That raises a couple or irrelevant points (choosing the gene & species, well that was done by E.B. Ford), and the comment about selection being less effective when the population size is larger is just wrong: it's the other way around (which is one of the points of the paper): the smaller the population size, the stronger the effect of drift. Try again?A Gene
August 4, 2012
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wd400: "Read the paper, it explains how you can use pattern ..." This is strictly incorrect. It can indicate recent fitness differences, but it cannot tell you when and were it came from. But this is again non responsive to the basic topic at hand. Again, count what?Maus
August 4, 2012
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OK, so tell us where O’hara went wrong in that paper.?
For starters, attempting to do something that cannot be done.
Ha! The paper didn’t measure selection because Joe knows it’s not possible to measure selection. That’s beautiful
LoL! Nice non-sequitur. You asked where the paper went wrong, not whether or not they measured, or said they did, selection. But now that you mention it, saying you are doing something is not the same as actually doing it. No one can verify it. They can only nod or mumble. I would rather stand up and state the obvious.Joe
August 4, 2012
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wd400: Nope, people tried that line in the 30s, turns out is a simple Mendelian trait, with carbonaria is dominant to the light-bodied form. Moreover, the gene has been mapped to a position homologous to silkworm chromosome 17: If you took the time to read the paper I linked to, you'd see that there's no question that the gene is 'dominant' in the Mendelian sense, i.e., in terms of inheritance. But the question is: what's triggering the expression. So we're talking about epigenetics. And that, clearly, can, and does, involve environmental factors.PaV
August 4, 2012
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Hmm randomness assumed instead of proven?,, Revisiting the Central Dogma in the 21st Century - James A. Shapiro - 2009 Excerpt (Page 12): Underlying the central dogma and conventional views of genome evolution was the idea that the genome is a stable structure that changes rarely and accidentally by chemical fluctuations (106) or replication errors. This view has had to change with the realization that maintenance of genome stability is an active cellular function and the discovery of numerous dedicated biochemical systems for restructuring DNA molecules.(107–110) Genetic change is almost always the result of cellular action on the genome. These natural processes are analogous to human genetic engineering,,, (Page 14) Genome change arises as a consequence of natural genetic engineering, not from accidents. Replication errors and DNA damage are subject to cell surveillance and correction. When DNA damage correction does produce novel genetic structures, natural genetic engineering functions, such as mutator polymerases and nonhomologous end-joining complexes, are involved. Realizing that DNA change is a biochemical process means that it is subject to regulation like other cellular activities. Thus, we expect to see genome change occurring in response to different stimuli (Table 1) and operating nonrandomly throughout the genome, guided by various types of intermolecular contacts (Table 1 of Ref. 112). http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/Shapiro2009.AnnNYAcadSciMS.RevisitingCentral%20Dogma.pdfbornagain77
August 4, 2012
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Maus, Read the paper, it explains how you can use pattern of heterozygosity around an allele to infer a "selective sweep" in which an allele enters the population an becomes common more quickly than recombination can break it up from surrounding sequences.wd400
August 4, 2012
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I like how Berlinski sums up the mathematical predicament that neo-Darwinism finds itself in:
Majestic Ascent: Berlinski on Darwin on Trial - David Berlinski - November 2011 Excerpt: The publication in 1983 of Motoo Kimura's The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution consolidated ideas that Kimura had introduced in the late 1960s. On the molecular level, evolution is entirely stochastic, and if it proceeds at all, it proceeds by drift along a leaves-and-current model. Kimura's theories left the emergence of complex biological structures an enigma, but they played an important role in the local economy of belief. They allowed biologists to affirm that they welcomed responsible criticism. "A critique of neo-Darwinism," the Dutch biologist Gert Korthof boasted, "can be incorporated into neo-Darwinism if there is evidence and a good theory, which contributes to the progress of science." By this standard, if the Archangel Gabriel were to accept personal responsibility for the Cambrian explosion, his views would be widely described as neo-Darwinian. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/11/berlinski_on_darwin_on_trial053171.html
bornagain77
August 4, 2012
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>> OK, so tell us where O’hara went wrong in that paper.? > For starters, attempting to do something that cannot be done. Ha! The paper didn't measure selection because Joe knows it's not possible to measure selection. That's beautiful.wd400
August 4, 2012
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Evolution cannot be plugged into any equation and have its history unfold.
Indeed math is not kind to Evolution in the least:
Haldane's Dilemma Haldane was the first to recognize there was a cost to selection which limited what it realistically could be expected to do. He did not fully realize that his thinking would create major problems for evolutionary theory. He calculated that in man it would take 6 million years to fix just 1,000 mutations (assuming 20 years per generation).,,, Man and chimp differ by at least 150 million nucleotides representing at least 40 million hypothetical mutations (Britten, 2002). So if man evolved from a chimp-like creature, then during that process there were at least 20 million mutations fixed within the human lineage (40 million divided by 2), yet natural selection could only have selected for 1,000 of those. All the rest would have had to been fixed by random drift - creating millions of nearly-neutral deleterious mutations. This would not just have made us inferior to our chimp-like ancestors - it surely would have killed us. Since Haldane's dilemma there have been a number of efforts to sweep the problem under the rug, but the problem is still exactly the same. ReMine (1993, 2005) has extensively reviewed the problem, and has analyzed it using an entirely different mathematical formulation - but has obtained identical results. John Sanford PhD. - "Genetic Entropy and The Mystery of the Genome" - pg. 159-160 Kimura's Quandary Kimura realized that Haldane was correct,,, He developed his neutral theory in responce to this overwhelming evolutionary problem. Paradoxically, his theory led him to believe that most mutations are unselectable, and therefore,,, most 'evolution' must be independent of selection! Because he was totally committed to the primary axiom (neo-Darwinism), Kimura apparently never considered his cost arguments could most rationally be used to argue against the Axiom's (neo-Darwinism's) very validity. John Sanford PhD. - "Genetic Entropy and The Mystery of the Genome" - pg. 161 - 162 In Barrow and Tippler's book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, they list ten steps necessary in the course of human evolution, each of which, is so improbable that if left to happen by chance alone, the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have incinerated the earth. They estimate that the odds of the evolution (by chance) of the human genome is somewhere between 4 to the negative 180th power, to the 110,000th power, and 4 to the negative 360th power, to the 110,000th power. Therefore, if evolution did occur, it literally would have been a miracle and evidence for the existence of God. William Lane Craig William Lane Craig - If Human Evolution Did Occur It Was A Miracle - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUxm8dXLRpA Darwin and the Mathematicians - David Berlinski “The formation within geological time of a human body by the laws of physics (or any other laws of similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field, is as unlikely as the separation by chance of the atmosphere into its components.” Kurt Gödel, was a preeminent mathematician/logician who is considered one of the greatest to have ever lived. Of Note: Godel was a Christian Theist! http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/11/darwin_and_the_mathematicians.html “Darwin’s theory is easily the dumbest idea ever taken seriously by science." Granville Sewell - Professor Of Mathematics - University Of Texas - El Paso
bornagain77
August 4, 2012
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OK, so tell us where O’hara went wrong in that paper.
For starters, attempting to do something that cannot be done.Joe
August 4, 2012
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Evolution cannot be plugged into any equation and have its history unfold. That is a fool’s errand.
Err, but that’s what was done on the paper.
Errrrrr, that does not make it correct. And I gave specific criticisms.Joe
August 4, 2012
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wd400: "Did you miss the tense of the statement you are quoting. “We didn’t…” now we do, because of statistics." Heh, I did miss that, my English teacher looks smug right now. But it simply emphasizes my point. Regardless, your answer is non responsive. If 'now we do' then what observations were we counting? A Gene: "Please, give specific criticisms, not general denial or dismissal." For starters its a purely correlative issue, as all such genomic studies are; but it wishes to assign a causation. This is simply a Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy. If one states that this then confirms a prior statement then its Affirming the Consequent. Note, this is a formal fallacy. But as a larger problem, as I've been discussing with wd400, we can fudge these issues a bit by stating that 'In 80% of the cases that we observed what caused x, y was the cause. Therefore, for any x there is an 80% change y was the cause'. However, we have not of course observed the carboneria mutation occur at all, let alone coincident with a demonstrable cause. So there is simply no ability to bean-count, collect up frequencies, and attempt this anyways. It is still either Post Hoc or Affirming the Consequent, but it is now mathematically illiterate as well. Which is not to state that the manner in which they isolated the locus was invalid or anything less than interesting. I assume good faith and accuracy in their work in such. The problem is that they're preaching far in excess of what the empirical results allow.Maus
August 4, 2012
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Evolution cannot be plugged into any equation and have its history unfold. That is a fool’s errand.
Err, but that's what was done on the paper. I'll second wd400's question - what's wrong with the paper? Please, give specific criticisms, not general denial or dismissal.A Gene
August 4, 2012
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Maus, Did you miss the tense of the statement you are quoting. "We didn't..." now we do, because of statistics.wd400
August 3, 2012
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The whole peppered moth example of "evolution" is pretty amusing. If we carefully examine the storyline -- indeed, if we even accept it hook-line-and-sinker as fact -- what does it really show? That populations fluctuate around a norm without any meaningful evolutionary change occurring over time. As Philip Johnson has aptly noted, the peppered moth story has been trumpeted around the world to generations of unsuspecting students as a critical proof of Darwin's theory. Yet nothing new emerged. The population essentially returned to a stable norm. Does it show natural selection making a difference? There can be some reasoned disagreement about this, but even if we grant it for sake of argument, it teaches us exactly zero about the larger evolutionary story. There is simply no rational reason to assume that the kinds of processes that led to a change in the ratio of light to dark moths had anything to do with bringing about moths in the first place. It is great fun, however, to see it still being upheld as one of the prime examples of "evolution" in action.Eric Anderson
August 3, 2012
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wd400: "You calculate how likely that maybe is given the evidence that you see, obviously." Sure, that's statistics. You take a population and you study the present day frequency of the occurrence that you are interested in. "Past events are testable, in the sense you calculate the probability of present-day items with or without those past events." Well, quite obviously we cannot count past events we do not have access to. But we can count the current ones. But in this case it would not then be a question of: "“‘We didn’t know if industrial melanism in the peppered moth is due to a single recent mutation or several, or if it came from outside Britain,’ explains Saccheri.” It would be the empirically derived statement that: "We have observed this mutation occur with x percent chance in y sized population over z time period." But this has not been done.Maus
August 3, 2012
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"How does one empirically demonstrate a ‘maybe’?" You calculate how likely that maybe is given the evidence that you see, obviously. Past events are testable, in the sense you calculate the probability of present-day items with or without those past events.wd400
August 3, 2012
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wd400: "This doesn’t seem to be related to the paper, which shows that the black moths likely descend form a single mutant." How does one empirically demonstrate a 'maybe'? " If you are squeezing your skepticism down to that mutation being somehow directed then you seem to be reaching beyond the testable?" Allow me the cheek to quote myself from the post you're responding to: "...this is not empirical evidence of where the mutation came from ..." This applies to every theory at all. Or none if you prefer to go Hypothesis non fingo. But I am curious as to your standpoint. Do you believe that the inaccessible past is 'testable' in the absence of time machines?Maus
August 3, 2012
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Joe, OK, so tell us where O'hara went wrong in that paper. Maus, This doesn't seem to be related to the paper, which shows that the black moths likely descend form a single mutant. If you are squeezing your skepticism down to that mutation being somehow directed then you seem to be reaching beyond the testable?wd400
August 3, 2012
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wd400: From the abstract: "The rapid spread of a novel black form (known as carbonaria) of the peppered moth Biston betularia in 19th-century Britain is a textbook example of how an altered environment may produce morphological adaptation through genetic change." From one of the authors: "'We didn't know if industrial melanism in the peppered moth is due to a single recent mutation or several, or if it came from outside Britain,' explains Saccheri." http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=964 Two points here: Again, to belabor the obvious, predators are lazy. And this can be verified by spending an afternoon watching any watering hole on the serengeti. And again, to belabor the obvious, this is not empirical evidence of where the mutation came from, or that the non-carbonaria morph has, will, or can be extinguished from the population. Yes, differing allele frequencies are one crucial component to things. But showing that allele frequencies can change is not the same showing from how and where they arise. Lastly, this distinguishes Evo from ID not a whit. Both make the statement that if *there already exist* given variants then the one that is most disadvantageous will be predated more.Maus
August 3, 2012
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wd400- Just because someone can say they did it doesn't mean it actually pertains to natural selection.Joe
August 3, 2012
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Joe, The paper is an example (one of many...) of how to measure selection on an allele in the wild though, right? The thing you said you didn't think would be possible?wd400
August 3, 2012
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Maybe it’s chemicals that control this putative ‘control region’, such as factory emissions, or tree bark chemicals themselves Nope, people tried that line in the 30s, turns out is a simple Mendelian trait, with carbonaria is dominant to the light-bodied form. Moreover, the gene has been mapped to a position homologous to silkworm chromosome 17: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1203043 Note that study also found genomic evidence for recent rapid selection for the carbonaria allele - of the sort you'd expect if modern dark-bodied moths descend from one (or maybe a few) new mutants rather than from standing variation.wd400
August 3, 2012
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Nick Matzke: Wow, you IDists are so incredibly desperate to take down the peppered moth example, you will say almost anything, no matter if it contradicts even your own previous criticisms. I think the real 'desperation' is on the part of the Darwinists. In fact, that is the whole undercurrent of Hooper's book: that Ford, desperate to find evidence in nature for Darwinian mechanisms, pushed Kettlewell to come up with the 'right' statistical numbers for his experiment. Then there's Ted Sargeant: his phenotypic induction hypothesis makes a lot of sense, has substantial evidence in its favor, and could even possibly, if not likely, apply to B. Betularia (that's his opinion). It is Darwinists who want to insist that allelic frequencies changed in the B. Betularia population---something that is improbable on its surface. But, if they want to prove this to be the case, it is really quite simple to do: obviously the melanic form and dark form should have different allelic characters. So why not just sequence their genomes? What's so hard about that? But, guess what, it hasn't been done. Or, at least, it hadn't been done when Majerus was writing this in 2004: So, what is needed to prove whether changes in frequencies of the peppered moth are indeed the result of differential bird predation? Two evidences for proof In my view, two pieces of evidence are critical (PP37). The first is that birds eliminate a greater proportion of one form than the other to an extent consistent with monitored changes in the frequencies of the forms. The second is that a connection should be made between the genotype and phenotype. The genotype – phenotype link Taking the second point first, it is an unfortunate omission that the multiple allelic gene that controls melanism in the peppered moth in Britain has not been identified and sequenced. The critical step of connecting genotype with phenotype has thus not been accomplished in this classical case of Darwinian evolution in action. However, this step has recently been accomplished in another case of adaptive melanism involving crypsis (Nachman et al., 2003) (PP38). The rock pocket mouse, Chaetodipus intermedius, varies in coat colour. I guess it's still "unfortunate" that Darwinist haven't bothered to check gene sequences and confirm changing alleles. Too bad. Maybe they'd find that the alleles are all there in each of the forms per Sargeant's view. But, of course, that would 'overturn' an "icon of evolution", and why take the risk. So, we'll just push that down the road. (Who's desperate here?) And then, to want to compare moths to mammals, and wing coloration to coat coloration? Isn't this a bit of a stretch? So, here's this real good scientist (we know this because he's a Darwinist) who compares mammals to moths---and that's OK. But we terrible "creationists" want to compare a moth in N. Korea to a moth in England. What's the matter with us? What kind of scientific illiterates are we? Sorry for all the sarcasm, but I just can't see what your ranting is all about. Industrial melanism, if conceded, is terribly inadequate to explain anything of importance in the progressive development of forms. The problem here is that it's possible, almost likely, that it represents bad science. Why shouldn't it be questioned? Or, IOW, why haven't they sequenced B. Betularia yet? P.S. Just to cover myself, I did a Google search for sequencing. Here's what I found: Industrial melanism in the peppered moth (Biston betularia) is an iconic case study of ecological genetics but the molecular identity of the gene determining the difference between the typical and melanic (carbonaria) morphs is entirely unknown. We applied the candidate gene approach to look for associations between genetic polymorphisms within sixteen a priori melanisation gene candidates and the carbonaria morph. The genes were isolated and sequence characterised in B. betularia using degenerate PCR and from whole-transcriptome sequence. The list of candidates contains all the genes previously implicated in melanisation pattern differences in other insects, including aaNAT, DOPA-decarboxylase, ebony, tan, tyrosine hydroxylase, yellow and yellow2 (yellow-fa). Co-segregation of candidate gene alleles and carbonaria morph was tested in 73 offspring of a carbonaria male-typical female backcross. Surprisingly, none of the sixteen candidate genes was in close linkage with the locus controlling the carbonaria-typical polymorphism. Our study demonstrates that the ‘carbonaria gene’ is not a structural variant of a canonical melanisation pathway gene, neither is it a cis-regulatory element of these enzyme-coding genes. The implication is either that we have failed to characterize an unknown enzyme-coding gene in the melanisation pathway, or more likely, that the ‘carbonaria gene’ is a higher level trans-acting factor which regulates the spatial expression of one or more of the melanisation candidates in this study to alter the pattern of melanin production. As to my comment about Majerus---this really good scientist---comparing mammals to insects, here's a quote from the paper: In contrast to the success of the candidate gene approach applied to melanism in vertebrates, particularly through Mc1r [4], [5] but also tyrosinase-related protein 1 [41], Agouti [42], and K locus [43], the same strategy has been far less useful as a means to identifying polymorphisms controlling melanism in insects. Other than ruling out specific candidate genes, the present study does not bring us any closer to finding the ‘carbonaria gene’. Having effectively exhausted the a priori list of promising melanisation candidates, we are currently in the process of constructing a linkage map of B. betularia to identify the region that controls this famous polymorphism. Maybe it's chemicals that control this putative 'control region', such as factory emissions, or tree bark chemicals themselves. This is the more likely explanation of "industrial melanization." So, what, then, becomes of this "icon of evolution." Read it and weep, Nick.PaV
August 3, 2012
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Starbuck- what about by design?Joe
August 3, 2012
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From A Gene's link:
The main result is that both drift and selection are significant factors affecting changes in the allele frequency of the medionigra gene.
If one reads the paper they explain the difficulties in picking one gene. The other difficulty is the species you are going to study and the data you need. Then there is population size- the bigger the population the less effect natural selection will have- never mind changing environments shifting the selection pressures. Evolution cannot be plugged into any equation and have its history unfold. That is a fool's errand.Joe
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