First-ever natural narwhal-beluga hybrid found, has bizarre teeth

_{Denyse O'Leary

June 22, 2019

Intelligent Design, speciation}

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A team of researchers has compiled the first and only evidence that narwhals and beluga whales can breed successfully. DNA and stable isotope analysis of an anomalous skull from the Natural History Museum of Denmark has allowed researchers to confirm the existence of a narwhal-beluga hybrid.

The hybrid’s skull was found on the roof of a hunter’s toolshed in Greenland.

“As far as we know, this is the first and only evidence in the world that these two Arctic whale species can interbreed. Based on the intermediate shape of the skull and teeth, it was suggested that the specimen might be a narwhal-beluga hybrid, but this could not be confirmed. Now we provide the data that confirm that yes — it is indeed a hybrid,” says Eline Lorenzen, evolutionary biologist and curator at the University of Copenhagen’s Natural History Museum of Denmark. Lorenzen led the study, which was published today in Scientific Reports.
Using DNA and stable isotope analysis, the scientists determined that the skull belonged to a male, first-generation hybrid between a female narwhal and male beluga.
The hybrid’s skull was considerably larger than that of a typical narwhal or beluga. But the teeth were markedly different. Whereas narwhals have only one or rarely two long spiraling tusks, belugas have a set of uniform conical teeth that are aligned in straight rows. The hybrid skull has a set of long, spiraling and pointed teeth, that are angled horizontally.
“This whale has a bizarre set of teeth. The isotope analysis allowed us to determine that the animal’s diet was entirely different than that of a narwhal or beluga — and it is possible that its teeth influenced its foraging strategy. Whereas the other two species fed in the water column, the hybrid was a bottom dweller,” according to Mikkel Skovrind, a PhD student at the Natural History Museum and first author of the paper.
Paper. (open access) – Mikkel Skovrind, Jose Alfredo Samaniego Castruita, James Haile, Eve C. Treadaway, Shyam Gopalakrishnan, Michael V. Westbury, Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen, Paul Szpak, Eline D. Lorenzen. Hybridization between two high Arctic cetaceans confirmed by genomic analysis. Scientific Reports, 2019; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-44038-0 More.

For all we know, this could be common. If it’s a bottom dweller, who was looking? Maybe hybridization plays a bigger role in evolution than we supposed. And then schoolbook Darwinism plays a smaller one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcQ9KfoizXw

See also: Bird, Tested And Released, Turned Out To Be A Hybrid Of Three Species

Is The Recently Cited Hybrid Dolphin-Whale A “New Species”? No.

and

A physicist looks at biology’s problem of “speciation” in humans

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Comments

Mimus: Complete rubbish. Try again.PaV_{July 6, 2019
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I have never run into someone so pathologically unable to admit a simple mistake. You said HWE was something that Darwinism had to be saved form it. It's prefectly clear that's simply not the case. Do you even you belive your post hoc justifications? Would it be so hard to say, "OK, I misunderstood this" As to the rest... I din't say mendalism and Darwinism fited hand-in-glove. In fact, I said, the challenge Fisher met was getting continuous change our of discrete genetics. That happened, without a single reference to Hadry's law, so its clean HWE wasn't part of the problem. The rise and fall of black peppered moths absolutely 100% "come about by a change in allele frequencies via NS".No one has ever cliamed natural selection creates alleles.Mimus_{July 5, 2019
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Mimus:
Your initial mistake was to think Darwinism had to be saved from the HWE.
There is no mistake on my part; the mistake is on your part. Here's what I said @51:
Mendelism flew in the face of Darwinian thought, and the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibria encapsulated the problems Darwinian theory faced given the newly discovered (1895) genetic laws of Mendel.
If I use the HWE as a shorthand for the argument--mostly won by the Mendelians in the early 1900's, that Mendelian discreteness, while solving the problem of dilution of characters, nevertheless raised the problem of where mutations come from that would be large enough to overcome the kind of equilibrium segregation of alleles points to. I have posted quote after quote demonstrating that Mendelism, encapsulated in the HWE, was a blow to NS/Darwinism. Stop with the nitpicking. I knew exactly what I was talking about. And is historical fact. Fisher was making a completely different argument than Yule. Hardy was addressing Yule. It should then be no surprise that Fisher didn't address Hardy. That Mendelism would later be fully incorporated into Darwinian theory, as neo-Darwinism, does not mean that Mendelism and Darwinism were always friendly. My point; and something you seem not willing to acknowledge. I wrote about this above @58. I quoted from a course:
The fact that Mendel’s work powerfully supported Darwin’s theory wasn’t realised immediately. In fact in the early years of the 20th century, the re-discovery of Mendel’s work boosted the reputations of biologists who opposed Darwin’s theory of natural selection.These Mendelians (De Vries, Bateson), worked on the inheritance of large-scale differences between individuals. These traits segregated in breeding tests in Mendelian fashion and showed a clear particulate pattern of inheritance. De Vries, Bateson and others concluded that evolution proceeded in big jumps, via macromutations, and that species arose in one or a few steps as discrete mutations. If species can arise purely by mutation, their origin does not require natural selection and so they dismissed Darwin’s key principles of natural selection and gradual change.
Did you get that? The re-discovery of Mendel's work boosted the reputations of thos who opposed Darwin's theory of natural selection. Now whose view does this support? As a follow up to @58, here's a continuation of the lecture notes of a course given at University College of London:
This was disputed by the Biometricians(Galton, Pearson, Weldon). Their focus was on small rather than large differences between individuals. They developed statistical techniques to describe how distributions of traits within populations changed from parental to offspring generations. Galton et al concluded that evolution proceeded via steady shifts of populations and saw no need to invoke macromutational events to explain phenotypic novelty. These two groups couldn’t resolve their differences for a considerable period. Modernevolutionary theory came into being between the 1920s and 1950s with contributions from many fields, genetics, paleontology, systematics and classification. These melded to produce the Neo-Darwinian Theory– reconciling Darwin’s theory with the facts of genetics. This is often referred to asThe Modern Synthesis. This synthesis resolved the debate between the Mendelians and the Biometricians. Many contributed but the 3 most significant intellectswere Ronald Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane and Sewall Wright. They worked on the mathematicaltheory that lay behind the Modern Synthesis.
If Mendelism and Darwinism fit hand-in-glove, then why is there a need to "[resolve] the debate between Mendelians and the Biometricians"? Is it your position, then, that neither Mendelian genetics nor HWE, which was a defense of Mendelism against claims about NS, had no effect on the perceived views of mainstream evolutionary biologists at the turn of the twentieth century, and that Mendelism naturally "evolved" into the Modern Synthesis with little resistance? If so, I would say that such a view is severely skewed and flies in the face of historical facts. What about Provine? In his last book, just before his death, completely denied that random genetic drift takes place--the very underpinnings of population genetics. Shall we just sweep all of this under the rug? The supposed accomodation of Mendelism and Darwinism, which we know as the Modern Synthesis, is apparently based on fundamental misunderstandings of alleles and allele frequencies and such, and how they actually work in practice. Whole genome analysis demolishes this "Synthesis" day-by-day. Take, for example, Biston bistulleria: its color change has been attributed to a transposon showing up in one of the introns coding for the cortex gene. Introns are considered "junk-DNA" by population geneticists. The change in its melanic form didn't come about by a change in allele frequencies via NS. The mutation just showed up--a la de Vries and Bateson. Classical population genetics can't explain this. It's not the "survival of the fittest" but the "arrival of the fittest."PaV_{July 5, 2019
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DS, I have always noted, cat out of the bag, i.e. unintentional disclosure that is revealing. That is clear and there is no responsible parsing that can change the fact that Lewontin was a senior member of the scientific elites, as was Sagan. Further, that he consciously spoke from knowledge of the views of said elites, and that is backed up by other sources and actions, including official actions by representative bodies. Third, the characterisation of theists as irrationally believing in imaginary demons (echoing Sagan in his book) is simply inexcusable . . . such should never have passed any half competent editorial board, yet it was published in Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World (including in the title!) and again in Lewontin's NYRB review -- and we did not see any strong repudiation of the characterisations. Fourth, it is very clear that he saw the elites as setting out to indoctrinate to impose a "correct" view, though the very notion that science is "the only begetter of truth" is self referentially incoherent, is itself revealing. Further, the issue of a priori imposition of evolutionary materialism on the science and linked public education [the context of the discussion] are explicitly there in the text, as Johnson highlighted in his reply in First Things that November. Where, every one of these can be supported by a long train of statements and actions including some under colour of law. Dawkins' ignorant, stupid, insane . . . or wicked is little better and speaks to the problem, his notorious passage on God speaks again. So, we have every fair comment right to cite the remarks, to highlight and point out the objectionable content, and more. Had the content been racist instead it would never have passed scrutiny, but instead it is against "fundamentalism," which it seems to be acceptable to say just about anything to disparage. Again, we also have every right to point out that this is not just an idiosyncratic view but one backed up by a long list of telling cases --watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_ygt_mqzO8 . KFkairosfocus_{July 3, 2019
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ET, I don't know that I could find it. Searching for "Lewontin" on this blog yields an enormous number of hits.daveS_{July 3, 2019
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Can you link to it?ET_{July 3, 2019
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ET, I did, in the first iteration of this discussion. It had no effect. Like in each new episode of the Simpsons, it's as if the previous 600 episodes had not happened.daveS_{July 3, 2019
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Silver Asiatic @ 98 - not really (writing as someone who grew up in the UK. It's just part of the furniture, like any accepted science. Most people don't really think about it. FWIW, this goes for other parts of the UK, not just England.Bob O'H_{July 3, 2019
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daves:
The problem is simply that you’ve misinterpreted Lewontin.
Then you should be able to make a case showing that he did so. You definitely don't get to just say so and think it's over.ET_{July 3, 2019
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hazel:
Write up a summary of all your arguments about design and do something with them to impact a wider audience of qualified persons rather than posting repetitively on some relatively obscure internet forum with three or four diehards who are willing to keep discussing things with you.
What qualified people? Are you talking about the people who cannot, will not and have not ever supported the claims of evolution by means of blind, mindless and purposeless processes? If so what makes them qualified to assess anything? Those people are clearly losers on an agenda of lies and obfuscation.ET_{July 3, 2019
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hazel:
I know “blind watchmaker” is Dawkin’s phrase. It’s still a terrible metaphor.
Cuz you say so, really? Let's take a look- Evolution and natural selection are posited to be ruled by blind, mindless and purposeless processes. A blind watchmaker would have a purpose and a mind to make it happen. So hey, hazel has a point, albeit misguided. No one knows how to test the claims of evolution by means of blind, mindless and purposeless processes. It is as unscientific as concepts come.ET_{July 3, 2019
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PaV
You’re from England, or one of the British Colonies, wherein Darwinism arose and was embraced.
It's sort of like a national religion, or at least something very sacred to most of the people there.Silver Asiatic_{July 3, 2019
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Your initial mistake was to think Darwinism had to be saved from the HWE. This is not true. As I said, Fisher doesn't even refer to Hardy's law, let alone treat it as a problem. You now claim you were only saying HWE shows trait and allele frequencies don't change if a bunch of assumption hold? You do know one of the assumptions is the population is infinitely large? How will nature every get over this obstacle?Mimus_{July 2, 2019
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Mimus: What is my initial misunderstanding? That I thought HWE doomed Darwinian theory to the dustbin of history? That was not my position; nor is it now. You've misunderstood, and continue to misunderstand the simple point I was making: the HWE, in your own words, " . . . shows that, absent selection and a bunch of other assumptions, the frequency of traits would remain constant ." Nature tends to an equilibrium point. Any significant change must overcome this tendency. Species appear in the fossil record, continue on with little change, and then disappear. (Gould) Stasis. The HWE fits right in. There's frequency change among alleles. But then hybridization takes place and mixes things up again (like a narwhal and a beluga). Mutations move a population in one direction; and, then, after a while, it pushes them in another direction. Over eons of time, all these changes "average out": i.e., stasis. I've read all the books out there that are supposed to teach us how macroevolution takes place. They're mostly "just-so" stories. I throw them down on the table, frustrated with the stilted logic they employ. Recently, I was reading Nei's "Mutation Driven Evolution," or whatever it's titled, and, again--and, I'll add, surprisingly, I stopped reading it because it was obvious that the hypotheses he presented and explained were not nearly powerful enough to explain anything other than what can be termed 'adaptation.' I suspect some of these books you take as truth-tellers and accept them as "Gospel." I do not. You're from England, or one of the British Colonies, wherein Darwinism arose and was embraced. I'm much more open-minded towards such things. By the way, have you read Fisher's 1918 paper? I have. From the Stanford Enyclopedia of Philosophy:
Fortunately for Darwin's theory, inheritance does not actually work the way Jenkins thought. The type of inheritance that we call ‘Mendelian’, after Gregor Mendel, is ‘particulate’ rather than ‘blending’—offspring inherit discrete hereditary particles (genes) from their parents, which means that sexual reproduction does not diminish the heritable variation present in the population. (See section 2, ‘The Hardy-Weinberg Principle’, below.) However, this realisation took a long time to come, for two reasons. Firstly, Mendel's work was overlooked by the scientific community for forty years. Secondly, even after the rediscovery of Mendel's work at the turn of the twentieth century, it was widely believed that Darwinian evolution and Mendelian inheritance were incompatible. The early Mendelians did not accept that natural selection played an important role in evolution, so were not well placed to see that Mendel had given Darwin's theory the lifeline it needed. The synthesis of Darwinism and Mendelism, which marked the birth of modern population genetics, was achieved by a long and tortuous route (Provine 1971).
By the way, have you read Provine's book? I have. Please stop understanding the HWE from the 21st Century view, and try and see it in its historical setting.PaV_{July 2, 2019
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PaV, you are searching wikipedia to find articles you think justify the mistake you made at the start of this thread. Why don't you just step back and learn about this topic without trying to cover for your initial misunderstanding? Yule didn't think selection would make a dominant spread, he was just confused enough to think dominance itself would make a trait push out the recessive traits (I think Yule actually thought it would naturually arise to 3:1 dominant:recessive, though the question that spurred the letter to Hardy was about simply rising in frequency). It really just shows how people (even important early statisticians like Yule) just didn't comprehend mendelian genetics. Hardy just shows that, absent selection and a bunch of other assumptions, the frequency of traits would remain constant . Nothing in this is a problem for Darwinian evolution and it the HWE was never considered as such. Fisher didn't even cite Hardy's paper and never referred to Hardy's law (as it was known in his time).Mimus_{July 1, 2019
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Mimus:
. . . but your claim was the Darwinian had to be “saved” from HWE. I presume you have now realised that was not the case?
Maybe it's you who have to realize that, indeed, there was an antipathy between geneticists and Darwinists. This is from Wikipedia on "Mutations":
In 1901 the geneticist Hugo de Vries gave the name "mutation" to seemingly new forms that suddenly arose in his experiments on the evening primrose Oenothera lamarckiana, and in the first decade of the 20th century, mutationism, or as de Vries named it mutationstheorie,[33][29] became a rival to Darwinism supported for a while by geneticists including William Bateson,[34] Thomas Hunt Morgan, and Reginald Punnett.[35][29] Understanding of mutationism is clouded by the mid-20th century portrayal of the early mutationists by supporters of the modern synthesis as opponents of Darwinian evolution and rivals of the biometrics school who argued that selection operated on continuous variation. In this portrayal, mutationism was defeated by a synthesis of genetics and natural selection that supposedly started later, around 1918, with work by the mathematician Ronald Fisher.[36][37][38][39] However, the alignment of Mendelian genetics and natural selection began as early as 1902 with a paper by Udny Yule,[40] and built up with theoretical and experimental work in Europe and America. Despite the controversy, the early mutationists had by 1918 already accepted natural selection and explained continuous variation as the result of multiple genes acting on the same characteristic, such as height.[37][38]
The name Yule should ring a bell. Hardy's paper was a rebuttal of Yule's contention that dominant alleles would quickly spread (via NS, one supposes). Hardy says that , no, the allelic elements would remain unchanged from one generation to the next. It wasn't until Fisher's first paper---and much experimentation in the lab, which indicated that certain traits could become 'fixed' over time, that a way forward was found wherein Darwinism and Mendelism could be "synthesized." So, no, my claim is fully consistent with the historical record. One hundred years later, after so much massaging to genetics with Darwinian theory, it's not surprising that the original tension between Mendelism and Darwinism becomes blurred. Finally, HWE is an equilibrium. It argues for stasis, not change. This thread has concerned itself with a hybrid between a narwhal and baluga whale. This is a case of "mutationism" a la de Vries; it's not a case of "gradual" evolution.PaV_{July 1, 2019
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PaV,
But certainly it is not an equation giving us dynamics nor was it a defense of Darwinism.
No, but your claim was the Darwinian had to be "saved" from HWE. I presume you have now realised that was not the case?
As to the death of Darwinism, I didn’t say Darwinism was dead. I said that there are evolutionary biologists, mostly taken with evo-devo, who aver that “neo-Darwnisms” is dead.
And as I said, folks have been saying that since Darwins time. It's not clear the "extended synthesis" crew having anything more to offer than their predecessors though...Mimus_{June 30, 2019
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kf, I know "blind watchmaker" is Dawkin's phrase. It's still a terrible metaphor.hazel_{June 30, 2019
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KF
BB, translation, you have no cogent answer to the facts on the table but have no intention to heed their import.
Translation, I (KF) am deficient in humor.
You also need to answer to what the NSTA put on the table and much more.
Why would you think that? I have no relationship with the NSTA.Brother Brian_{June 30, 2019
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DS, nope. Yes, he is somewhat critical but does describe an instantly recognisable pattern. I am highlighting that pattern, which is a legitimate use of what he says, e.g. who are the we, who else are held to believe in imaginary and irrational demons and are to be indoctrinated otherwise by the we, what is the a priori absolute ideological/worldview commitment of the we and how does it shape how evidence is read, etc. And it is telling that as I have pointed to other indicative cases, there is apparently no responsiveness to that. There is no parallel whatsoever between a straightforward description of a dominant ideology by a member of the relevant elites and 9/11 conspiracism. That is a telling case of attempted tainting by invidious association on your part and frankly you owe an apology for that. KFkairosfocus_{June 30, 2019
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KF, The problem is simply that you've misinterpreted Lewontin. This example is similar to the 9/11 truthers who claim that Larry Silverstein "admitted" in a television interview that WTC7 was deliberately rigged to fall.daveS_{June 30, 2019
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BB, translation, you have no cogent answer to the facts on the table but have no intention to heed their import. You also need to answer to what the NSTA put on the table and much more. KFkairosfocus_{June 30, 2019
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DS, that an admission against interest is inadvertent does not transform it into something else than an admission; try for instance just this part: "It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us [= the evo-mat establishment] to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute , for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door . . .". The relevant facts are explicitly there to be seen, and the terms used are also highly revealing on attitude. The NSTA assertions are subtler but are in the same vein. KFkairosfocus_{June 30, 2019
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There is a new drinking game that is going viral. Every time KF mentions Lewontin, Plato or Crick, you take a drink. The hospital emergency wards are being swamped with cases of alcohol poisoning. I hear that Trump will be making a speech from the White House pleading with people to stop this insanity.Brother Brian_{June 30, 2019
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KF
what Lewontin and many others have admitted
Once again, the tactic of falsely framing the passage as an "admission" (cf., "he let the cat out of the bag"). As in, "Oh $#!+, I can't believe I accidentally exposed our evolutionary-materialistic-scientism agenda in a book review in one of the most influential English-language publications in the world!"daveS_{June 30, 2019
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DS, evolutionary materialistic scientism unpacks the substance of "naturalism," and is an appropriate descriptive phrase given the sorts of claims that have been advanced over the years. Ponder the NSTA statement as a further case in point -- one that has effectively been backed by the US NAS through their joint threatening letter over definition of science to the state of Kansas. And yes, that -- unsurprisingly -- lines up pretty closely with what Lewontin and many others have admitted. Sir Francis Crick's remarks in his The Astonishing Hypothesis and Alex Rosenberg's the physical facts fix all the facts come readily to mind. KFkairosfocus_{June 30, 2019
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H, there is no adequate warrant for the blind watchmaker chance + necessity leads to OOL and to OO body plans claims, starting with the first decisive point of failure: there is no adequate, empirically warranted blind watchmaker account of the origin of FSCO/I. By utter contrast, there are trillions of observed cases by intelligently directed configuration [i.e. design], and an analysis of search challenge for large config spaces that readily shows why. The vast literature does not actually establish what is claimed, though that it does is commonly asserted or assumed or even taught as practically certain fact. The challenge stands. KF PS: Blind watchmaker is Dawkins' phrase.kairosfocus_{June 30, 2019
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P.S. kf writes, "I have also put the challenge to you and others to warrant the core blind watchmaker thesis scientific claims objectively." Well, I am not a materialist, so I have no interest in defending materialism. Also, I think "blind watchmaker" is a terrible metaphor.hazel_{June 29, 2019
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kf writes, "DS, Hazel and BB, I now extend the formal challenge to you." Baloney! :-) There is a huge body of literature about evolution, and some clear distinctions, I am sure, about the difference between metaphysical and physical statements about what has happened. To expect a few laypersons to summarize all that in 6000 words is silly. Here's my challenge to you. Write up a summary of all your arguments about design and do something with them to impact a wider audience of qualified persons rather than posting repetitively on some relatively obscure internet forum with three or four diehards who are willing to keep discussing things with you. Will you accept that challenge?hazel_{June 29, 2019
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Correction: You bring up "Evolutionary materialistic scientism" in connection with your interpretation of Lewontin's position here, so not out of the blue.daveS_{June 29, 2019
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