Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Natural Selection? Or Natural Adaptation?

September 1, 2006
Intelligent Design
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This isn’t a point I would push too far, but the more I read and keep up with experimental evidence, the more I question the existence of NS. In the ID camp, most would readily accept NS, which is exactly the position I took for a long time. After all, we would admit to ‘microevolution’. But there just seems to be a lot of evidence suggesting that the interplay of genetics and the environment is much more fluid and vital than previously thought.

The following experimental findings suggest to me, at least, that in the case of Drosphila obscura DNA inversions are completely non-random, and connected directly to environmental changes.

Populations of fruit flies on three separate continents have independently evolved identical gene changes within just two decades, apparently to cope with global warming.

“What we’re showing is that global warming is leaving its imprint on genes,” says Raymond Huey at the University of Washington in Seattle, US, who made the discovery with colleagues. “For this to happen in such a short time-frame in so many parts of the world is rather disturbing,” he says.

Here’s the link to NewScientist.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9896-genealtered-flies-testify-to-global-warming.html

(I’m having problem inserting the link. Sorry)

You can also find it on PhysOrg.com.

The article points out that the degree of ‘inversion’ found in these strains is proportional to the average temperature. Well, then, how can this possible be “random mutation”. In fact, the correlation is so strong, that they use the change in the amount of inversion to make a statement about global warming. So, we now have to strike from the Darwinist formula, RM+NS, the RM part. That leaves NS. Yet there is, according to the authors, a direct connection between an environmental stimulus, average temperature, and the amount of inversion. So the question has to be asked: Is NS ‘selecting’ for these inversions, or are the inversions directly linked to the environment and completely independent of NS? It strikes me that the latter half of the question fits better with the data they’ve accumulated. That means we’re dealing with neither RM nor NS, but are simply seeing nature adapt in an almost pre-programmed way; hence, Natural Adaptation. What think ye?

Comments
The response is:
Fruit flies have reached their peak (with respect to fitness) and have also reached the end of their one-way, dead-end branch (with respect to evoluton), and this study just applies to fruit flies.
Joseph
August 26, 2011
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It's now years later. But I just came across this paper. which, if you look at the last two sentences of the abstract says this: The results clearly show that there is no sustained increase in fitness despite an increased genetic variance as indicated by an observed increase in genetic load. There is thus no evidence for single-gene heterosis or for the induction of new genes having a favorable effect on any of the fitness characters. Drosophila can mutate all it wants, but it can't increase its fitness. Quite a rebuke to Darwinism, eh?PaV
August 26, 2011
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Houdin: "I hesitate to discuss the rest of your posting because you’ve scrambled your math and your logic pretty badly. For instance, you say it would take 4.5 million years to replace a genome. Actually, at 180,000,000 base pairs and one mutated base pair per generation, it would take 180 million years. IF you only had one pair of fruit flies!" And also: "Oops, that’s 180 million GENERATIONS, not YEARS to replace the fruit fly genome. Sorry about that. Let's start with the easy part. You corrected yourself, and said it would take 180 million GENERATIONS. Now, a fruit fly takes about 8 days to go from larva to an adult producing a larva itself. So, we'll divide 365 by 8, giving us 45.6 generations/year. Now, we'll divide 180 million generations by this figure. The result: 3.94 million years. That's pretty close to 4.5 million years. So, is my math scrambled? Now what about the logic. You suggest that my logic is scrambled. You mention that the 180 million generations would be true if we were dealing with two flies. But I'm afraid that it is your logic that is off here. The numbers you use, the approach you take is basically this: if I have 180 million flies, and they each have ONE mutation--and we'll presume they're all in different places on the fly genome, then we've replaced the entire fly genome. Excuse me, but that is only in the abstract. What we find in nature aren't "pairs of flies". We find flies. And inside of flies we find fly genomes. And to say that the entire genome is replaced means that all 180 million nucleotides present in their genomes have all changed. Thus my calculations. I'm going to translate this into different language for clarification purposes. Suppose you had a string of beads composed of 180 million beads; each bead being one of four different colors. (At 1/4" per bead, this would be a string about 700 miles long) And let's further suppose that of all 180 million beads you replaced a yellow one with a red one somewhere along this 700 mile stretch. And let's say you had 180 million of these 700 mile bead chains, with each position changed from one color to the next, each at a different position, then, could you tell one bead chain apart from the other? Would you then say, I've entirely changed this chain of beads when it is virtually impossible to see any difference at all between the "beginning" chain of beads and any of the "newly changed" chain of beads? Now, if you replaced, in one chain of beads, each of the original colors with a new color that would be distinguishable, and one could legitimately say: "I've changed the entire chain of beads." I hope my point is apparent.PaV
September 7, 2006
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Oops, that's 180 million GENERATIONS, not YEARS to replace the fruit fly genome. Sorry about that.Houdin
September 6, 2006
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Boy, I'll say that some major rethinking is in order here! First of all, I chose that 1% rate out of the air as a very conservative figure. Note also that I meant that 1% to mean that only 1 percent of the eggs have any mutations at all. That's why I wrote, "Let’s say that 99% of those eggs have absolutely perfect DNA with no mutations whatsoever. That means that 1% of those eggs contain mutations." As I say, I chose that number to be very conservative, but I will cheerfully accept your revised figure, which is essentially that EVERY egg will have at least one mutation in it. Since I originally posted to point out that the mutation rate was high enough so that you could expect the mutations found in your article, your revised much higher rate of mutations proves my original point in spades. Now, let's do some re-thinking here. You say, "Now, if we use your figure of 1%, then that would mean in 40 generations, 40/100ths of the genome would have ‘mutated’." No, I said that on the average, one egg in a hundred would contain a mutation. Using my purposely low estimate of mutation, 40 eggs in a row might easily be produced with NO mutations in any of them. You also said, "But a 1% mutation rate means that 1,800,000 mutations per egg produced. It is hard to believe that a fly could undergo that degree of mutation and survive." It sure is! Now try one mutation in every hundred eggs (my figure of 1% mutation rate per egg) or your figure of one mutation per egg. Either figure is quite reasonable and the eggs in question will probably hatch out into fine, upstanding young fruit flies. If not, natural selection will remove their DNA from the gene bank. That's why Darwinists aren't worried about the FACT that most mutations are harmful. I hesitate to discuss the rest of your posting because you've scrambled your math and your logic pretty badly. For instance, you say it would take 4.5 million years to replace a genome. Actually, at 180,000,000 base pairs and one mutated base pair per generation, it would take 180 million years. IF you only had one pair of fruit flies! But there are millions and millions of fruit flies and they breed and mix their genomes. That speeds things up quite a bit! Why not read my original post again, redo your calculations and post them and we can continue this discussion?Houdin
September 6, 2006
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Houdin: these are the number you posted: Population: 1 million Females: 500,000 Eggs/Day/Female: 100 per female Eggs/Day/Total: 50,000,000 Mutation Rate: 1% Mutations/Day: 500,000 Mutations/Year: 182,500,000 Mutations/20 yrs: 3,650,000,000 Fruit fly genome: 180,000,000 base pairs Fruit fly genome: 13,601 genes Total Churn: About once a year. (180,000,000 base pairs in the genome divided by 182,500,000 mutations/year) The female fly lays about 50 eggs/day. This reduces the Eggs/Day to 25,000,000. But in the analysis that follows, this is immaterial. Now, I have no idea where you got the mutation rate of 1%. For eukaryotes, with the repair mechanisms they have in place, the mutation rate is generally believed to be 1 in 10^8 nucleotides. For the average size genome, this is equivalent to one mutation/replication. So, let’s just take that as a figure. In this case, that means 1 mutation for every 180,000,000 base pairs that are duplicated; which then translates to 1 mutation/egg produced. Now, the time between an egg being laid, and the adult in turn laying an egg, is about 9 days. So, if we have one mutation/egg produced, and an egg-to-egg production time for individual flies of 9 days, that means that any particular egg that is laid will have passed through around 40 generations in a year’s time; which means this particular, inherited genome will have experienced 40 mutations in that year’s time. Now, if we use your figure of 1%, then that would mean in 40 generations, 40/100ths of the genome would have ‘mutated’. But a 1% mutation rate means that 1,800,000 mutations per egg produced. It is hard to believe that a fly could undergo that degree of mutation and survive. Darwinists hate to hear this, but the FACT is that most mutations are harmful. Even if we said that 80% of these mutations were ‘neutral’, this still leaves 36,000 harmful mutations from one generation to the next. How in the world could the fly survive this many mutations considering its small genome size? But, again, I have no way of knowing where your 1% figure comes from; and you can see the problems that such a high mutation rate would cause. In sum, using some rather straightforward numbers, we come up with a figure of 40 mutations occurring to a particular inherited genome/year. You can see that to replace, in its entirety, any particular genome that is passed on from one generation to the next, would, at this rate, take 4.5 million years. And, let me add, this is completely unaffected by how many of the eggs survive or not. Is some re-thinking in order here?PaV
September 5, 2006
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PaV, I posted because you prematurely wrote off random mutation because you didn't think there had been enough time. In actuality, considering fly populations and the rate those populations lay eggs, there's enough time in a single year for mutations to change every single base in the fly genome. You're giving up prematurely. johnnyb, evolutionists tend to be comfortable with large numbers. We're not the ones talking about tornados in junkyards. The mutations in question here are inversions - where a length of DNA is removed and put back into the chromosome backwards. It's a very common form of mutation. Since genes are usually surrounded by large areas of non-coding DNA, you can just cut the DNA close to the gene, you don't have to get it exactly. I also question your figure of 1E24 to get a specific three base pair mutation. Without trying out the math, I'd guess that figure assumes that all three mutatations are independent of each other, so your figure is obtained by multiplying the probabilities of all three mutations together. This neglects natural selection, which will save the first and second mutations if they're useful, and wait for the third. This means you add the three probabilities together instead of multiplying them. See Dawkin's Weasel example to see how it's done. (And yes, I know he used a fixed target - he was just showing how much faster cumulatative selection is. Remember, that the non-cumulative example used the same target and never did find it.)Houdin
September 5, 2006
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Sladjo, I couldn't agree with you more. And there's already plenty of evidence for just such control systems as to how the DNA itself operates. The 'handwriting is on the walls', but the Darwinists just keep refusing to see things any differently than before. But, at the pace at which science is moving along, they don't have much more time before they're just going to have to 'give up the ghost', as we say.PaV
September 4, 2006
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I’m not a biologist nor a chemist, but an Engineer. I used to study automation in university… And I know quite well what ADAPTATION means when it comes to various man-build systems. Basically you will have a system that can change it’s functions based on the changing in the working environment. There are few items that can – simplistically – define an adaptive system: - Kind of control unit (CU) - Some sensors - Kind of execution unit The control unit will contain: - pre-programmed logic that will direct the over-all functions of the system; - pre-programmed pattern that will be applied if sensors detect a particular change in environment conditions A very simple example is the air-conditioning appliance. If the temperature in one room is exceeding a particular (pre-programmed) value, the CU turns the cooler on. When the prescribed temp is reached, CU is turning the cooler off. Now, regarding DNA, genes, information theory and similar… As I said, I didn’t read much of this, I’m not an expert, but - imho - if you can detect in some kind of “informational system” (as DNA is) a logical structure that can be described as IF-THEN-ELSE (so widely used in different programming languages), I believe in that moment TOE should automatically be dropped in the science’s trash-bin. I don’t think there is any possibility to accept that this logical structure can arise during blind chemical or whatever processes. And it appears that this is exactly the case with these flies & finches… It would be simply amazing (but not surprising, at least not for ID’ers) to find out that the DNA (or similar) can detect changes in the environment and can “change the program” immediately.Sladjo
September 4, 2006
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I guess you mess up inversion frequency with inversion rate. Like mutation rate the later refers to the number of new inversion per generation. In contrast, like alle frequencies, inversion frequency refers to the presence of existing inversions in a population relative to the non-inverted sequence. Allele frequency may change due to import of inverted alleles from other populations or if either orientation is advantageous or disadvantegous under certain conditions.sparc
September 3, 2006
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Houdin -- Darwinists often get lost in large numbers and think, "that's enough." Thankfully, other scientists routinely deal with large numbers and can point out when no, it isn't. Now, the fact that every base pair could be mutated in the fruit fly in a year is interesting, but not very useful. The point is that the right combination of base pairs needs to be mutated. So, for a given mutation of only 3 base pairs, the number of mutations needed to search this space is roughly 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 mutations. So, to find just a tiny 3-base-pair mutation combination, it would take your fruit fly scenario several million years to find a given one. And that's just to change one or two amino acids! So, while you may be impressed with the large numbers of possible mutations, I am much more impressed with the search space involved. If fruit flies are hitting the right mutations to perform _anything_ with this kind of search space involved, it must be because their genomes are predisposed to make these kinds of good changes.johnnyb
September 2, 2006
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Houdin: why don't you read post #3. We see cyclical morphological changes in the Galapagos finches which don't reproduce as quickly, nor produce as many offspring as flies do. Very different math, but in both cases a lot of change over a short (20 year) period of time.PaV
September 2, 2006
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PaV: "The following experimental findings suggest to me, at least, that in the case of Drosphila obscura DNA inversions are completely non-random, and connected directly to environmental changes." Why is that? Do you have any idea how many mutations in fruit fly DNA you can expect in 20 years? Here are some figures: Let's assume that you have a population of one million fruit flies of this particular species, which is surely very conservative for a species of fly that is found on three continents. Suppose further that one half of them are female. That's 500,000 females. A female fruit fly lays 100 eggs per day. That's 50,000,000 eggs per day. Let's say that 99% of those eggs have absolutely perfect DNA with no mutations whatsoever. That means that 1% of those eggs contain mutations. That's 500,000 mutations per day. Multiply that figure by 365 days in a year and you have a staggering 182,500,000 mutations per year in the total fruit fly population! A fruit fly only has about 180,000,000 base pairs in its genome. This means that, on average, every single base pair gets mutated once a year! The mutation you mention is an inversion - a stretch of DNA that is extracted, turned around and re-inserted into the genome so it's base pairs are backwards. These are fairly common mutations. We can be confident that lots of them happen every year. All natural selection has to do is select the ones that help a fruit fly survive and reproduce better in the current climate. What is so unlikely about that? Here are the numbers again: Population: 1 million Females: 500,000 Eggs/Day/Female: 100 per female Eggs/Day/Total: 50,000,000 Mutation Rate: 1% Mutations/Day: 500,000 Mutations/Year: 182,500,000 Mutations/20 yrs: 3,650,000,000 Fruit fly genome: 180,000,000 base pairs Fruit fly genome: 13,601 genes Total Churn: About once a year. (180,000,000 base pairs in the genome divided by 182,500,000 mutations/year) One more point: The life span of a fruit fly is 60-90 days. If a population of 1 million lays 50 million eggs every day and the population remains steady, then 99.9+ percent of those eggs die before becoming adult fruit flies that reproduce. With odds like that, any mutation that gives a fly even a little leg up will tend to get preserved.Houdin
September 2, 2006
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I believe another question is if environmental issues are related or seperate from NS. I believe Darwin delineated between the two (could be wrong). Remember both Michael Ruse and Paul Nelson have pointed out that NS is a very plastic word and nothing more than a "place holder" for a variety of events which cannot currently be observed. This is a why NS is really a faith based arguement vs. environmental correlations which is often repeatable and empirical.late_model
September 2, 2006
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PaV (4): "It turned out that the morphological difference seen in this 'new species' [of Lepidoptera], that is, the fact that the butterfly’s wing patterns looked different than from the rest of the cline, was due ENTIRELY to the different soil... That means that you take this 'new species' with a different morphology, transplant them to a different geographical area containing the soil found throughout the greater part of the cline, and you would see an ‘instant’ morphological change." Another nice example of environment-based developmental adaptation is the arrowhead, Sagittaria sagittifolia. On land, they develop short, broad, arrow-shaped leaves, in water they develop long, narrow leaves.j
September 2, 2006
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Someone mentioned Walter Brown in the topic before this one, so I looked up his web site and found a quote that's appropriate to this topic...
New genetic traits are not created; instead, the environment can switch on genetic machinery already present. The marvel is that optimal genetic machinery already exists to handle some contingencies, not that time, the environment, or “a need” can produce the machinery.
From http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/LifeSciences5.htmlsagebrush gardener
September 1, 2006
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Pav -
The article points out that the degree of ‘inversion’ found in these strains is proportional to the average temperature.
This is simply wrong: the article doesn't state this. The work is reported here: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1131002v1 What the authors show is that inversions associated with lower latitudes (=warmer temperatures) have been increasing in frequency in 22 of the 26 populations they sampled. They don't look at mutation (random or otherwise), they only infer selection from changes in frequencies of the inversions. BobBob OH
September 1, 2006
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Another good set of information about stuff like this is Shapiro's talks on Natural Genetic Engineering. Part 1 and Part 2. It's really amusing to listen to because he keeps getting interrupted by people who just don't grasp the idea that genomic change can be cell-directed.johnnyb
September 1, 2006
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bFast: "‘Truth is, though we see chemistry with much greater richness now than it was seen, there are three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. And there is a fourth phenomenon that dominates chemistry — chemical reaction (fire). Therefore, there is some validity to the 'earth, air, fire, water' view of chemistry, as I suspect that there will always be some semblance of truth in RM+NS." Exactly correct -- the earth-air-fire-water dudes had some stuff right. And the RM+NS dudes have some stuff right. The problem is that all these dudes want to explain everything with their simple stuff, which is stupid. And they want the rest of us to accept the fact that they have explained everything.GilDodgen
September 1, 2006
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This afternoon I was thinking about this post, and the thought struck me that the case of bacteria developing resistance to anti-biotics (which, according to Darwinists, would probably be the 'classic' argument for NS) has a certain force to it. But as I thought about it some more, I began to re-analyze it applying to this case the little I know about bacteria's reaction to anti-biotics. Bacteria respond to anti-biotics with what's called the "SOS" response; the individual bacteria--in what appears to be a completely 'pre-programmed' reaction--repair their DNA strands by randomly adding nucleotides to the locations where the anti-biotics have caused their DNA to be spliced. It's a last ditch effort for survival, and hence the "SOS" label. But, again, let's first note that while randomness is a component of this repair mechanism, the mechanism itself appears to be completely pre-determined. Having noted the pre-determined nature of the repair mechanism, the question we're left asking is, what role does NS play in this, if any at all? When you think about what's happening here, you see that you it's a case of bacteria being lethally damaged by an environmental agent and the bacteria having to, in some way, respond to this lethal intervention. So it begins its SOS patch job. The bottome-line is that the bacteria's patch job either works or it doesn't work. It's as simple as that. If the combination of nucleotides 'randomly' selected now allow the bacteria to avoid the kind of strand breakdown that the anti-biotic normally causes, then the bacteria survives. And, if it doesn't work, it dies. Let's notice--and I think this is significant--that nowhere is there "competition" between the bacteria themselves. The surviving bacteria don't survive because they can take up more nutrient than the other bacteria, nor because it has found a way to move around faster, nor because it's found a way to reproduce faster. The bacteria 'survive' simply because, in a pre-packaged, pre-prgrammed 'random search' fashion, it has found a two or three nucleotide combination that protects it, to some extent, from the lethal mechanisms of the anti-biotic. Thus, the bacteria are "competing" directly against the anti-biotic, and NOT against each other. Therefore, we can't talk about "selection" taking place since there is either "survival", or "no-survival". So, in what way can we say that we're dealing with "natural selection"? What appears is not "natural selection", but "natural survival". For me, this all brings back to mind the fact that NS is nothing more than a tautology: Natural Selection='survival of the fittest'. So, who are the 'fit'? The ones that 'survive'. And, who 'survives'? The 'fittest'. This is the 'classic' case of NS, and it seems as though no "selection" is taking place at all; just survival.PaV
September 1, 2006
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Thanks for the excellent posts. I'm learning things! Joseph, I've got Spetner's book, and I think that's always in the back of my mind. johnnyb, thanks for the links to Gilbert's papers. Gil, I agree with you: simplistic answers aren't going to work anymore. Thanks to all.PaV
September 1, 2006
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There is an old story where a type of eco-adaptation similar to what’s being discussed here was apparently used to influence the breeding of speckled and spotted livestock. The background to the story is this: A shepherd told his somewhat crooked flock-owning employer to make his wages any animals born with spots or speckles. Believing he had found himself the biggest fool in the county, the employer took out of the entire flock all spotted and specked animals, leaving only the unblemished mono-colored ones. He then put the speckled animals in the care of his own sons in a distant part of the district. This is where the story gets interesting. According to the text record of this event, in due course the shepherd, one Jacob, “took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. “When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted . . . Whenever the stronger females were in heat Jacob would place the branches in the troughs in front of the animals so they would mate near the branches, but if the animals were weak, he would not place them there. “. . . In this way the man grew exceedingly prosperous and came to own large flocks, and maidservants and menservants, and camels and donkeys.” Until now, this has been an intriguing story, but with the Seattle findings and the notion of Natural Adaptation, it seems to make better sense. (And, okay, the story is in the book of Genesis, chapter 30, 25-43.) Sounds like ground for experimentation to see whether this could actually work.Emkay
September 1, 2006
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GilDodgen said, "Random variation and natural selection was an okay conjecture when it was thought that the cell was no more sophisticated than a blob of Jell-0, but it will eventually be shown to be about as acceptable an explanation for the origin of living systems as earth, air, water and fire are as an explanation for the natural world." Someone needs to write a book on how Darwinian assumptions still treat post-Mendelian genes as if they were pre-Mendelian gemmules.Ryan
September 1, 2006
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I seem to remember Scott Minnich talking about his experiments with Y. Pestis, which uses a flageller motor to get around until it finds itself in the mammalian bloodstream, at which time it stops making flagella and starts using some of the same genes to create type three secretory systems which pump out poison. It seems that this sort of environmental effect on gene expression is fairly pervasive in both simple and complex organisms, and has much more to do with adaptation than so-called NS. it also fits with my growing suspicion that supposedly all-powerful genes are in fact highly overrated, and that the real "designs" of organisms are not "programed in genes", but rather are carried elsewhere, perhaps in something like Rupert Sheldrake's "morphic fields".jimbo
September 1, 2006
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I think states of matter have very little relevance to how chemistry works. Maths is applied mind, physics is applied maths, chemistry is applied physics, biology is applied chemistry. We are biological beings who now posess mind. It seems to have gone the full circle.idnet.com.au
September 1, 2006
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PaV, I do not understand why a number of posters here do not get your point. You made yourself perfectly clear. Your pont is VERY valid. GilDodgen, I agree with you that RM+NS "will eventually be shown to be about as acceptable an explanation for the origin of living systems as earth, air, water and fire are as an explanation for the natural world." It's about as simplistic of a solution to a complex problem as earth, air, fire and water also. 'Truth is, though we see chemistry with much greater richness now than it was seen, there are three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. And there is a fourth phenomenon that dominates chemistry -- chemical reaction (fire). Therefore, there is some validity to the "earth, air, fire, water" view of chemistry, as I suspect that there will always be some semblance of truth in RM+NS.bFast
September 1, 2006
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I think one thing to keep in mind is that it is becoming increasingly obvious that we have only barely scratched the surface of biological complexity and sophistication, and it will become increasingly futile to try to explain it all with an absurdly simplistic mechanism like random variation and natural selection. Simple explanations for complex phenomena are very appealing but almost always wrong. Random variation and natural selection was an okay conjecture when it was thought that the cell was no more sophisticated than a blob of Jell-0, but it will eventually be shown to be about as acceptable an explanation for the origin of living systems as earth, air, water and fire are as an explanation for the natural world.GilDodgen
September 1, 2006
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PaV -- You should read Scott F Gilbert's papers. He has a lot of info on this, and calls it eco-devo -- ecological developmental biology. I currently have a review of one of his papers here and am getting ready to review another of his papers either here or at my own site.johnnyb
September 1, 2006
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NS is only a small part of the governing factors pertaining to biological organisms and their survival. Dr. Spetner briefly discusses this in "Not By Chance" and David Berlinski offers the following: The Strength of Natural Selection in the WildJoseph
September 1, 2006
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John: I can't help remembering what Richard Goldschmidt wrote years ago in his "The Material Basis of Evolution". He worked with Lepidoptera. I think technically it is a moth, but we would probably liken them, if we saw them, to butterflies. Goldschmidt discovered that in a particular cline (a sort of gradated series of similar species found over a large geographical range) of these moths, the cline seemed to be broken, and there seemed to be an entirely "new species" of moth towards the end of the cline. This would have bolstered the idea of "macroevolution". But when he studied it further, he found that in this particular area of the geographical range, the soil was entirely different than that which spanned the entire cline of moths. It turned out that the morphological difference seen in this "new species", that is, the fact that the butterfly's wing patterns looked different than from the rest of the cline, was due ENTIRELY to the different soil. That means that you take this "new species" with a different morphology, transplant them to a different geographical area containing the soil found throughout the greater part of the cline, and you would see an 'instant' morphological change. Would that be attributable to RM+NS? If you didn't know any better, that's what your average field biologist would (wrongly) conclude. The question here is: what is driving what? Does the environment interact so strongly with an organism's genome (especially during formation of germ lines and embryonic development) that changes are directly effected, or, is it simply random changes and genetic drift simply happening, and then natural selection coming along and acting as the driving force? As I say, two years ago I wouldn't have been questioning this. But what I read about these things is causing me to change my mind more and more.PaV
September 1, 2006
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