If things are really uncertain at such a fundamental level (protostomes vs. deuterostomes), evolutionary biology could do with a lot less dogmatism in addressing the public.
Tag: insects
Horizontal gene transfer between plants and insects acknowledged
So what becomes of all the Darwinian casuistry around “fitness” and “costly fitness” if things can happen so simply as this? The article emphasizes the benefits of studying “evolution.” Indeed, but that can’t mean fronting Darwinism 101 any more.
At Mind Matters News: Can insects have personalities too?
What about bacteria? If personality amounts to observed individual differences in behavior, the answer is yes.
At New Scientist: Specialized wings make house flies harder to swat
So much intelligence in nature. Why couldn’t some of it be organized to make them buzz off?
Insects losing the ability to fly allegedly proves Darwin right
Losing an ability is not the question. It is gaining an ability that matters. But if people need a publication and a bunch of citations, maybe that’s the story they’ll pretend props up Darwinism.
New book: God and the World of Insects
Among the many questions addressed are: … – Do insects suffer?
– How should humans respond to the world of insects?
Insects were mimicking lichens 165 million years ago
Whoever wrote the media release was very, very light on the Darwinblather. Mind you, claiming that it all happened via endless iterations of natural selection acting on random mutations wears a bit thin when the time Darwinians thought they had has been sharply reduced.
When turtle ants rewound evolution’s tape it all turned out different
It must be difficult to derive lectern-splintering theories when life forms simply adapt to whatever works, with nothing defined.
Mike Behe looks at the actual gears in bugs
In relation to claims about Darwinian natural selection just happening to find that solution
A bee from 100 million years ago
Just another bee, generally, but possibly thrown off course by parasites, it seems to have landed in resin. You’d almost think time didn’t happen the way they say. In terms of how much it changes.
At Nature: Researcher smashes conventional evolution doctrine about insect egg shapes
The new findings almost put the egg in charge of its own shape, not what anyone expected to hear.
Insectologists swat insects-are-doomed paper
The temptation for some seems to be to resort to apocalypse voodoo to demonstrate a crisis, at the expense of the methods that make scientists worth listening to, as an alternative to supermarket tabloids. File this one with: The real reasons people don’t “trust science”
Insects in decline? Science writer says it’s myth
Ridley discusses several other scare claims that did not survive scrutiny and notes that the best estimate is that insect species are dying out at rates simliar to mammals and birds (1 to 5 per cent per century): “A problem, but not Armageddon.”
A Big Bang of insects in the mid- to late Triassic
About 237 million years ago: The sites underscore that this burst of evolution took place much earlier than researchers had thought, particularly for water-loving insects. Among the remains are fossil dragonflies, caddisflies, water boatmen, and aquatic beetles. Until now, paleontologists had thought such aquatic insects didn’t diversify until 130 million years ago. These insects—which include Read More…
Beetle trapped in amber 99 mya offers window into prehistoric ecology
Amber is, in some ways, like a very-slow motion vid. From ScienceDaily: Flowering plants are well known for their special relationship to the insects and other animals that serve as their pollinators. But, before the rise of angiosperms, another group of unusual evergreen gymnosperms, known as cycads, may have been the first insect-pollinated plants. Now, Read More…