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To: DouglasKC
Theoretically, after thousands of generations of fruit files, and if evolution of species is true, then eventually the fittest fruit flies will have evolved to be able to swim to the bottom of the tank and get the food.

It would be a graudual process for sure, but it should be easily demonstrated. I wonder if evolutionists have tried it yet. If not, why?

This is somewhat different from the experiment you tried, but here's an interesting published abstract from here:

Experimental evolution of learning ability in fruit flies
Frederic Mery * and Tadeusz J. Kawecki (2002)

The presence of genetic variation for learning ability in animals opens the way for experiments asking how and under what ecological circumstances improved learning ability should evolve. Here we report experimental evolution of learning ability in Drosophila melanogaster. We exposed experimental populations for 51 generations to conditions that we expected to favor associative learning with regard to oviposition substrate choice. Flies that learned to associate a chemical cue (quinine) with a particular substrate, and still avoided this substrate several hours after the cue had been removed, were expected to contribute more alleles to the next generation. From about generation 15 on, the experimental populations showed marked ability to avoid oviposition substrates that several hours earlier had contained the chemical cue. The improved response to conditioning was also expressed when the flies were faced with a choice of novel media. We demonstrate that these behavioral changes are caused by the evolution of both a higher learning rate and a better memory.

860 posted on 12/01/2004 3:30:09 AM PST by NeuronExMachina
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To: NeuronExMachina
But in these cases they are still of the same species. The fruit fly never becomes another species. It may have 4 wings or 2 heads or 12 feet, just like a human can be born with 11 toes. The problem isnt adaptation, growing a resistence to a certain toxin, as strains of viruses have, or selective breeding, the key issue is the idea of these mutations creating a whole new species.

An 11 toed man is still a human. A 4 winged fruit fly is still a fruit fly. A 100lb pumpkin is still a pumpkin.

JM
866 posted on 12/01/2004 6:36:59 AM PST by JohnnyM
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