Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

We are told: Some species are evolving far more quickly than Darwin ever imagined.

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For example, Discover:

Mosquitoes that colonized the London Underground in 1863 are now so different they can no longer mate with their above-ground relatives. Chinook salmon from Alaska to California needed just a human generation to become smaller and shorter-lived after an increase in commercial fishing in the 1920s. Adaptation is happening right under our noses, in our lifetimes.

But all of this can be accounted for within the genome of the species without any new information.

Put another way, if it is true that 1863 Tube mosquitos can no longer bred with above-ground mosquitoes, does that not signal a loss rather than a gain in information? Or are we not supposed to ask any more?

Comments
Once a mosquito, always a mosquito. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/oldest-blood-mosquito-fossil-discovered-2371691ppolish
March 31, 2015
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This is rather old news. The underground population was described as a distinct species (Culex molestus) back in the 1970s; results of breeding experiments and genetic analyses (comparing the common house mosquito, C. pipiens, with the London Underground population) were published 16 years ago (Byrne & Nichols 1999). Andre, Please remind me where Darwin estimates the rate of speciation in mosquitoes.Piotr
March 31, 2015
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It could just be a separation of information. It doesn't have to be a loss or gain, it could just be a difference.Joe
March 31, 2015
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News: Put another way, if it is true that 1863 Tube mosquitos can no longer bred with above-ground mosquitoes, does that not signal a loss rather than a gain in information? That should be easy to figure out, just subtract the amount of information in one mosquito from the other.velikovskys
March 31, 2015
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It might be faster than what Darwin imagined but it is exactly as he predicted. Darwinian evolution ticks all the boxes.Andre
March 31, 2015
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