Questions in evolution: How do jellyfish, crustaceans and beetles just suddenly appear?

_{Denyse O'Leary

January 3, 2008

The Design of Life}

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Animals suddenly appear … and after that nothing much happens. Why? How?

Read the latest post, linked above, at The Design of Life blog and help me think about this. (Currently, I am learning to cope with the fact that Alley Oop has been lying to me for, like, tens of thousands of years, so I can use the help wth thinking.)

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Is this the making of a Carpenter song? Why do sea jellies appear, Every time, you are near? Just like me, they long to be Close to you Why do beetles fall down from the sky, Every time, you walk by? Just like me, they long to be Close to you I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog comments...Joseph_{January 3, 2008
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I think there are basically two ways this happens. First there can be a dramatic shift in climate, such as in the global temperature. Existing species would have to adapt or become extinct in this new climate. A species that was very successful before might die off whereas a modestly successful species might thrive. A period of rapid optimization would occur in which the rate of evolutionary change might appear in the fossil record to be much faster, not because of a faster mutation rate but because mutations are more likely to be beneficial in an optimization period where there is more room for change. Once the species is optimized new changes are not as welcome and so mutations are less likely to be beneficial, leaving the species in a period of stasis. As long as the environment for a species such as a jellyfish stays more or less the same, and the genome for the species is optimized, it has no reason to change. Second, not all mutations are equal. Many are harmful, some are neither harmful nor beneficial, some are beneficial, and a rare few, I would argue, bring some spectacular new talent that would allow the species to become wildly successful. This new talent would probably require the species to go through a period of rapid optimization. During this optimization the species might not only change rapidly but also branch off in many different directions because its new talent gives it such a tremendous advantage over other species. All these new species would go through a period of rapid optimization and the fossil record would echo this dramatic shift in the genetic landscape as the new and improved species multiply and push aside the less fit.Benjamin L. Harville_{January 3, 2008
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"The next question is, what do ID proponents make of this whole sudden appearance and stasis matter? How does it fit into a design framework? I believe there is a diversity of opinion on this matter, but one view is that in a front loaded design framework the designer put a sort of “timer” into living things that causes the pre-existing design to manifest itself in bursts." Another view is that evolutionary thinking has so permeated modern thought that we're all missing the obvious. A big part of the Image of God in us is the creative impulse. We know how things are imagined, designed, and produced because we imagine, design, and produce things all the time. In my latest effort as an author, for example, I created a ten year-old boy with all the apparent attributes of his age, but with no actual history. As a painter, I often render the flowers - including their shadows - before I go to work on the sun. As a programmer, I can write a self-replicating “chicken” program that lays “eggs” which in turn become chickens, some days later, on other computers; and though I can make the chicken OR the egg come first, I really see both as an integrated whole, outside of time. And as an engineer, I’m well aware that most things are not constructed in a strict, bottom-up sequence. The wheels on my car, for example, were added rather late in the assembly process. What has led us to ignore these most obvious and salient clues? We have no idea what happened millions or billions of years ago. And what is proposed is nothing more than wild speculation, resting on minimal tangible evidence, a plethora of assumptions, questionable dating methods, the most extravagant of extrapolations, and a strong tendency to circular reasoning. But we know how designed things (like books, paintings, programs, and mechanical devices) are brought into reality. So let's start from what we know and go from there, instead of starting with the conjectures of those who deny the creative process while using it to think up implausible scenarios.Gerry Rzeppa_{January 3, 2008
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xc, I’ll take a crack at your question. Caveat. I am merely a humble lawyer and no expert in the science by any means. So please do not suppose that I am attempting to speak for the design community. These are my views only. Major Premise: Gradualism is absolutely necessary if Darwinian evolution is true. Dawkins writes: “Darwin’s own bulldog, Huxley, as Eldredge reminds us yet again, warned him against his insistent gradualism, but Darwin had good reason. His theory was largely aimed at replacing creationism as an explanation of how living complexity could arise out of simplicity. Complexity cannot spring up in a single stroke of chance: that would be like hitting upon the combination number that opens a bank vault. But a whole series of tiny chance steps, if non-randomly selected, can build up almost limitless complexity of adaptation. It is as though the vault’s door were to open another chink every time the number on the dials moved a little closer to the winning number. Gradualness is of the essence. In the context of the fight against creationism, gradualism is more or less synonymous with evolution itself. If you throw out gradualness you throw out the very thing that makes evolution more plausible than creation. Creation is a special case of saltation – the saltus is the large jump from nothing to fully formed modern life. When you think of what Darwin was fighting against, is it any wonder that he continually returned to the theme of slow, gradual, step-by-step change?” Richard Dawkins, “What Was All the Fuss About?” review of Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria by Niles Eldredge, Nature 316 (August 1985): 683-684. Minor Premises: Gradualism did not occur. Eldredge and Tattersall write: “Darwin’s prediction of rampant, albeit gradual, change affecting all lineages through time is refuted. The record is there, and the record speaks for tremendous anatomical conservatism. Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record.” Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall, The Myth of Human Evolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 45-46. Conclusion: Darwinian evolution did not occur. To be sure, Eldredge and Tattersall did not accept the conclusion seemingly compelled by the data. Eldredge along with Gould was one of the fathers of punctuated equilibrium – the idea that evolution occurred in relatively rapid bursts in isolated geographic areas and therefore the record of it is not preserved in the rocks. In other words, the punc eeks point to the LACK of evidence in the record as evidence for their theory. The punc eek project seems to me to be entirely ad hoc, and the far more plausible conclusion is that Darwinian evolution did not occur. To all of this you will almost certainly respond, “you are using sudden appearance and stasis as a refutation of Darwinism, not as positive evidence for ID.” And to some extent you are correct. Living things were either designed or they were not designed. That is a discrete function. There is no middle ground or third way. If living things were not designed, if the diversity and complexity of life can be explained 100% by chance and necessity, then as a logical matter, something like Darwinian evolution MUST have happened. On the other hand, if the evidence suggests that Darwinian evolution did not happen, then the alternative, i.e., design, becomes much more plausible. Therefore, data that refute Darwinian evolution – such as sudden appearance followed by stasis – necessarily tend to support ID. The next question is, what do ID proponents make of this whole sudden appearance and stasis matter? How does it fit into a design framework? I believe there is a diversity of opinion on this matter, but one view is that in a front loaded design framework the designer put a sort of “timer” into living things that causes the pre-existing design to manifest itself in bursts. That’s my 2 cents; probably worth about that much.BarryA_{January 3, 2008
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"Could somebody please summarize the Intelligent Design response to these questions? I.e. why lifeforms seem to suddenly appear in the fossil record and seem to show only gradual morphological change?" Here is my take on this question. In the Design of Life, Dembski and Wells argue there are two types of evolution, creative evolution and evolution that is consistent with the modern synthesis. I believe the first accounts for novelty, variation in the gene pool and what we observe in the fossil record when a new species shows up. The second accounts for fixed morphologies that is called stasis in the fossil record. The mechanism of creative evolution is unknown but the best explanation is some form of intelligence was involved. The second form of evolution is the tinkering of the gene pool of a species by natural processes that allows adaptation to environmental changes and keeps a species from becoming extinct and adds to the variety of life we see on earth with minor differences between varieties of species. When observed in the fossil record there is no substantial morphological change but more than likely there were small differences that allowed the species to persist for longer periods of time as environmental conditions changed. We see the same thing today in the number of varieties of birds and fishes that thrive in different environments. More than likely the modern synthesis represents a devolution of the gene pool over time as species adapt to new environments while the mechanism of creative evolution was able to substantially add to the gene pool with major novelty. So more than one mechanism is at work in evolutionary biology.jerry_{January 3, 2008
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Denyse - You say, "The comments facility has been enabled" at The Design of Life blog, but I still get this message when I try to post a comment: Sorry! You do not have the privileges to start a new thread. Please contact the Administrator.Gerry Rzeppa_{January 3, 2008
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Could somebody please summarize the Intelligent Design response to these questions? I.e. why lifeforms seem to suddenly appear in the fossil record and seem to show only gradual morphological change?xcdesignproponentsists_{January 3, 2008
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Well, like you, I don't necessarily have an answer, but I think this quote: Once a life form makes its first appearance in the fossil record, it tends to persist largely unchanged through many strata of rocks seems to further back up Behe's Edge of Evolution. That is, once this jellyfish thing hit the street, it only had minor changes. So, evolution seemed to allow some changes to occur, but nothing all to dramatic.ajl_{January 3, 2008
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Hmm... punctuated equilibrium perhaps?WinglesS_{January 3, 2008
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