I wonder what they were called before there were fences?
Posted on 01/24/2009 10:35:28 AM PST by Salman
Penn State Assistant Professor of Biology Tracy Langkilde has shown that native fence lizards in the southeastern United States are adapting to potentially fatal invasive fire-ant attacks by developing behaviors that enable them to escape from the ants, as well as by developing longer hind legs, which can increase the effectiveness of this behavior.
"Not only does this finding provide biologists with an example of evolution in action, but it also provides wildlife managers with knowledge that they can use to develop plans for managing invasive species," said Langkilde. The results will be described in a paper to be published later this month in the journal Ecology.
Fire ants from South America, which were introduced to the United States accidentally in the 1930s, often will attack a fence lizard that has wandered onto their mound in order to protect their home. But the ants also have been observed attacking lizards that are nowhere near their mound. "Fire ants need protein, especially for their developing brood," said Langkilde. "It takes just 12 of them less than a minute to kill a three-inch-long fence lizard. In fact, they have even been known to eat animals as large as calves, stripping them down to their bones."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
It’s not evolution, it’s adaptation.
Caught in the act is indeed the right expression. This is just one more example of the convoluted thinking of evolutionists. What she describes here is a process whereby those lizards with the long-legged gene were best adapted to their new fire-ant environment. They did not “develop” the long-legged gene. It was already part of their genetic information. Those that possessed the long-legged gene survived, multiplied and soon became the dominant population in those areas where fire ants were active. This is something that Darwin described as micro evolution or natural selection and with which no one is in disagreement. Rather than describe this process of natural selection, however, this scientist couches the events in the language of progressive evolution, as though the lizard had evolved the genetic information and sprouted the longer legs out of thin air. Wrong again.
“...It’s not evolution, it’s adaptation...”
Physical changes, longer legs, is evolution. Changes in behavior is adaptation.
That makes sense. So if they keep adapting for millions of years and grow friggin' wings and are totally different from the way they are now I guess it's still not evolution.
Evolution is achieved through natural selection exactly as you described. Bacteria ‘develop’ resistance to drugs through the same process, by exposure to the drug, some survive to continue the specie with the new ability passed to future generations. It is no different here.
Where I part with evolutionist and where they dread to thread is the Origin of Life. That, I believe is a divine process. Physical substances are organized to contain the divine force: LIFE.
Just MHO on the origin issue.
Actually, scientists who study pure evolution don’t usually study the actual origin of life. They study genetic change in populations that already exist. The study of the origin of life is called Abiogenesis (or the study of...).
Hmmmm.........Abiogenesis roughly translates to ‘without biological origin’.
:-)
Polar bears should be able to evolve their way through global warming.
I don’t think you DO part with the evolution folks on the origin of life.
From what I remember from school, evolution doesn’t try to explain where life came from at all. It just tries to explain how life changes over time.
Even when scientists do think about the origin of life (NOT evolution), I remember hearing about an experiment with electricity zapping molecules that formed protein chains(?) that scientists said could be a precursor to life.
The scientists also said that DIDN’T mean there was no God, because God may have put the beginnings of life into the universe and zapped them into being.
Adaptive responses such as this cause me to wonder whether experts in genetics, given the currently advanced state of basic knowledge and electron microscopy (or whatever the currently most advanced microscopy may be), can determine whether the gene that makes the longer legged version of this creature was present in the gene pool all along. This question would apply to any such adaptive change.
Or, a variant: Did random mutation provide the requisite new information, then through normal interbreeding become sufficiently widespread to make possible a large scale change in the population in question?
Or is my question just plain dumb?
He told me that competing fire ant hills are very aggressive toward each other. He demonstrated this by scooping up a spade-full of the top of an ant hill. Fire ant hills are pretty shallow, so the spade full contained thousands of ants.....and he dropped it on another ant hill and then took a spade full of them and dropped it back on the first.
A huge "ant war" broke out immediately in both groups and they killed each other by the thousands.
Later that day, he went back and put fire ant poison on what was left of both hills to finish them off.
If you see an ant hill and think it may be fire ants, an easy way to tell without getting stung is to look at the size of the ants. If you have several, noticeably different sizes of ants in the same hill...they're probably fire ants. Or at least that's the way it always seems to work in here in Florida.
You are describing the theory of evolution precisely. This is an instance of microevolution ... changing characteristics within a species. The article acts like nobody has ever observed this before, but it has been documented several times. What hasn't been observed is macroevolution ... the creation of a new species from an old one.
No new genetic information, NO EVOLUTION. The standards for evolution are almost as low as those for global warming.
In So.FL the fire ants would strip a lizard down to the skeleton in less than a day when one would get hit by a bicycle on the sidewalk. Maybe the evolution will cause them to move faster to avoid the bikes.
Is this evolution, or adaption? I don’t see this species turning into another species. I see this species adapting to their environment.
When humans adapted with their bridge nose width and pigmentation due to climate, they didn’t change from humans. They merely changed the subspecies in the human species. Right?
Would their DNA change their species over millions of year by them growing a set of wings?
Can you give any evidence that Darwin ever described anything as micro evolution? Otherwise, I think you're just making it up.
They've already evolved to sit on fences to avoid bikes but fire ants don't ride bikes.
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