Posted on 02/22/2006 10:38:24 PM PST by quantim
Don't look now, but your backyard is evolving. It's no joke. There's a growing body of evidence that evolution is no longer something only seen either in this year's flu virus or Cretaceous tyrannosaur bones. It's happening everywhere, right now, and charging full-steam ahead.
Research on toads, frogs, salamanders, fish, lizards, squirrels and plants are all showing evidence that some species are attempting to adapt to new conditions in a time frame of decades, not eons, say biologists.
What's more, one of the biggest reasons for all this evolution right now may be that human-induced changes to climate and landscapes give species few other options.
Move, Adapt or Die
"Basically, a species can do three things," said the University of Sydney's Richard Shine: "go extinct, move or adapt."
The first two have kept conservation biologists working day and night, to the exclusion of the third, he said. But that's changing as real-time evolution is hitting the news wires and getting more attention.
The highest-profile case yet was made public by Shine and his colleagues in the Feb. 16 issue of Nature: the case of toxic cane toads at the forefront of a seven-decade Australian invasion. Measurements over the years prove that the leading toads have evolved significantly longer legs.
It appears that hopping further and faster rewards long-legged toads with the first crack at lush virgin territory, and therefore more offspring to perpetuate their athleticism.
Behind that story are even more cases of rapid evolution, says Shine, an evolutionary ecologist. Already he's seeing changes in native Australian snakes. First they tried to eat the toads, and died. Now, Shine says, the surviving snakes have modified jaws which make them unable to eat the toads and therefore safe from their toxin.
"Invasive species are a nice model," Shine said.
They hint at the rates of evolution that might be expected as species feel the increasing pressure of global warming. They also draw the attention of conservation biologists, who are often on the front lines of battles to save habitats and individual species.
"In the past 20 years, essentially all evolutionary biologists have come to widely recognize the importance and prevalence of (what's) often called 'rapid evolution,'" wrote evolutionary biologist Andrew Hendry of McGill University, who responded to questions via email from the Galapagos Islands. "Many conservation biologists have recently come to the same realization and I expect that the rest will soon follow."
Rapid evolution is good news for conservation biologists. It implies that the number of species that might go extinct will be less than some current estimates, which predict as many as one-third of all species alive today will be wiped out by 2050.
The first known case of a mammal responding genetically to warmer climate warming is the red squirrel of the Yukon Territory.
Canadian scientists have discovered that red squirrels are giving birth about 18 days earlier than their great-grandmothers. It's the early squirrel that gets the nut, after all: natural selection in action.
I can't wait to see the posts on this one. Two things most of us don't think exist... Like a "what if" scenario in a Dr. Zeuss book...
Have any of these "conservation biologist" checked to see if humans are evolving at a commiserate rate?? Probably not.
Actually they have to keep a stream of these scare stories going to keep getting their grants.
The news media snaps them up because fear/scare stories sell and besides, the news media is in bed with liberals, most of whom believe that the remedy for global warming is destroying capitalism.
I feel stronger....I feel alive...yeah...alive...
Grab your thermometer.
Humans simply cannot evolve at the pace of snakes and toads. Fewer offspring, more years between generations. But there is ongoing work on human evolution. See Harpending et. al. for one example.
Most of "us" are right about a lot of things, but on the topics of evolution and global warming, "we" are setting ourselves up to be made fools of. Nature is what it is, and no ideology can undo that.
Note that Kyoto or Bush was not mentioned. If it is happening SO fast, it must be Bush's fault.
They have to fill the pages of these magazines SOMEhow.
I agree. Why is always about animals evolving? I thought humans were the top of the evolutionary chain and therefore that is where evolution should be taking place.
I really can't get on board with thinking that humans cause global warming. If the earth is heating or cooling - that's a fact. Whether or not people can cause it is not, in my opinion.
Humans are actually able to alter their own environments (e.g., create buildings with air conditioning and running , manufacture antibiotics, transport foodstuffs thousands of miles year-round, put on parkas in cold weather, etc.) and so are not subject to the same environmental pressures as most other animals.
Any species which can change its environment to suit its needs does not have to change itself.
You must mean "snowbirds" which make the trip to Arizona and Florida for the winter.
Oh, puh-leaze... That's such a mildly-worded statement that even though I'm one of the staunchest defenders of evolutionary biology on this forum, even *I'd* consider signing that statement. It's hardly a statement of "rejection" of evolution that the folks who hand it around try to pass it off as.
The anti-evolutionists try to misrepresent that list so often that it has its own entry in this long list of incorrect/fallacious creationist claims.
Meanwhile:
How many more would you like?I refer you to project Steve, "literally hundreds" (696 at current count) of actual scientists (two thirds of them biologists) JUST WITH THE NAME STEVE who have endorsed evolutionary biology and rejected "ID" and other forms of creationism via signing the following statement:
"Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools."There are more scientists JUST NAMED STEVE who endorse evolutionary biology than GRAND TOTAL scientists who the creationists can find to express some form of skepticism (the "400+" list the Discovery Institute likes to wave around have only endorsed a *very* mild statement of skepticism, nothing like the "rejection" of evolution that many try to claim about it -- hell, it's so mild *I* might have signed it.)Since about 1% of the population is named "Steve", 696 Steves supporting evolution represent roughly 70,000 scientists total (i.e., the number of signatures the statement would have garnered if the name restriction had been removed).
That alone makes the anti-evolution creationists' list of "skeptical scientists" look pretty foolish, but *this* one *really* blows their agenda out of the water:
The "Clergy Letter Project": An Open Letter Concerning Religion and ScienceAnd then there are these pro-evolution statements by various scientific and scholarly groups:"We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children.
We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.[As of 29 January 2006, there are 10,230 signatures collected to date]
Click the links that follow to see the alphabetical lists of clergy members who have endorsed this letter
A to E - F to J - K to O - P to S - T to Z
Listing by States
Academy of Science of the Royal Society of Canada
Alabama Academy of Science
American Anthropological Association
American Anthropological Association (2000)*
American Association for the Advancement of Science (1923)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (1972)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (1982)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (Commission on Science Education)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (2002) *
American Association of Physical Anthropologists
American Astronomical Society (2000) *
American Geophysical Union
American Geophysical Union (1999)*
American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Astronomical Society
American Society of Biological Chemists
American Chemical Society
American Geological Institute
American Psychological Association
American Physical Society
American Society of Parasitologists
Association of Southeastern Biologists (2004) *
Association for Women Geoscientists (1998) *
Australian Academy of Science *
Botanical Society of America *
California Academy of Sciences
Ecological Society of America (1999) *
Genetics Society of America *
Geological Society of America
Geological Society of America (2001) *
Geological Society of Australia (1995) *
Georgia Academy of Science (1980)
Georgia Academy of Science (1982)
Georgia Academy of Science (2003) *
History of Science Society *
Iowa Academy of Science (1982)
Statement of the Position of the Iowa Academy of Science on Pseudoscience (1986)
Iowa Academy of Science (2000) *
Kentucky Academy of Science
Kentucky Academy of Science (1999) *
Kentucky Paleontological Society Statement on the Teaching of Evolution (1999) *
Louisiana Academy of Sciences
National Academy of Sciences (1972)
National Academy of Sciences (1984)
National Academy of Sciences (1998) *
North American Benthological Society (2001) *
North Carolina Academy of Science
North Carolina Academy of Science (1997) *
New Orleans Geological Society
New York Academy of Sciences
Ohio Academy of Science
Ohio Academy of Science (2000) *
Ohio Math and Science Coalition (2002) *
Oklahoma Academy of Sciences
The Paleontological Society *
Sigma Xi, Louisiana State University Chapter, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Society for Amateur Scientists
Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (2001) *
Society for Neuroscience *
Society for Organic Petrology *
Society for the Study of Evolution
Society of Physics Students (1999) *
Society of Physics Students (2003) *
Society of Systematic Biologists (2001) *
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (1986)
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (1994)
Southern Anthropological Society
Virginia Academy of Science (1981) *
West Virginia Academy of Science
* statement added since second edition (1995)
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