Scientists 'see new species born'

Scientists at the University of Arizona may have witnessed the birth of a new species. Biologists Laura Reed and Prof Therese Markow made the discovery by observing breeding patterns of fruit flies that live on rotting cacti in deserts.

The work could help scientists identify the genetic changes that lead one species to evolve into two species.

The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Whether the two closely related fruit fly populations the scientists studied - Drosophila mojavensis and Drosophila arizonae - represent one species or two is still debated by biologists.

However, the University of Arizona researchers believe the insects are in the early stages of diverging into separate species.

The emergence of a new species - speciation - occurs when distinct populations of a species stop reproducing with one another.

When the two groups can no longer interbreed, they cease exchanging genes and eventually go their own evolutionary ways becoming separate species. Though speciation is a crucial element of understanding how evolution works, biologists have not been able to discover the factors that initiate the process.

In fruit flies there are several examples of mutant genes that prevent different species from breeding but scientists do not know if they are the cause or just a consequence of speciation.

In the wild, Drosophila mojavensis and Drosophila arizonae rarely, if ever, interbreed - even though their geographical ranges overlap.

In the lab, researchers can coax successful breeding but there are complications.

Drosophila mojavensi s mothers typically produce healthy offspring after mating with Drosophila arizonae males, but when Drosophila arizonae females mate with Drosphila mojavensis males, the resulting males are sterile.

Laura Reed maintains that such limited capacity for interbreeding indicates that the two groups are on the verge of becoming completely separate species.

Another finding that adds support to that idea is that in a strain of Drosophila mojavensis from southern California's Catalina Island, mothers always produce sterile males when mated with Drosophila arizonae males.

Because the hybrid male's sterility depends on the mother's genes, the researchers say the genetic change must be recent.

Reed has also discovered that only about half the females in the Catalina Island population had the gene (or genes) that confer sterility in the hybrid male offspring.

However, when she looked at the Drosophila mojavensi s females from other geographic regions, she found that a small fraction of those populations also exhibited the hybrid male sterility.

The newly begun Drosophila mojavensis genome sequencing project, which will provide a complete roadmap of every gene in the species, will help scientists pin down which genes are involved in speciation.

Here is what another evolutionistoids had to say about conservatives on FR: "Anti-evolution creationists are the Michael Moores of conservatism." - by Ichneumon http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1524526/posts?page=144#144

Thank you for alerting others to the dishonesty of anti-evolution creationists, by referring them to my posts wherein I document their mendacity. Feel free to keep spreading the word.

Here are further examples of AECreationist gross dishonesty and truth-twisting propaganda, which you have my permission to repost at any time as well (from a past post of mine):

Take for example the way that creationst Kent "Dr. Dino" Hovind declares that radiocarbon dating produced wildly different dates for the skin and bones of the same mammoth specimen, in order to attempt to raise questions about the accuracy of radiocarbon dating.
THIS. IS. A. LIE.
Hovind's *own* citation which he gives in "support" of this his false claim -- which is the scientific paper which is the original report on the specimens in question -- states quite clearly that they were DIFFERENT specimens taken from DIFFERENT locations.
When challenged on this point, Hovind gave specimen ID numbers which he claimed were for the samples in question (which, again, Hovind claimed were from the same individual mammoth), and looking up those IDs in the primary literature shows that not only were they indeed NOT from the same mammoth, one of them WASN'T EVEN FROM A MAMMOTH AT ALL (it was from a rhino). Nonetheless, creationist Hovind has never retracted his false claims about the evidence itself.
Freeper Havoc (a creationist) repeated Hovind's lie here on FreeRepublic.
When I pointed out that even Hovind's own citation contradicts Hovind's version, and showed him documentation of that, Havoc mumbled a reply ("you haven't displayed a falsehood, you just make these assertions") and failed to retract the false claim he had repeated from Hovind.
HAVOC THEN REPOSTED THE SAME FALSE CLAIM SHORTLY THEREAFTER ON ANOTHER THREAD.
Summary of the ability of the two creationists (Hovind and Havoc) to present information they *know* is false, and to *fail* to retract when reminded of their falsehoods, is presented here, along with links to all appropriate documentation.
(Quick aside -- Fester, do you condone this behavior of your fellow creationists? Yes or no? Is lying for the "cause" of creationism acceptable to you?)
This sort of behavior, unfortunately, is *typical* of creationists. Here, want dozens of more examples of their distortions? A few more for the road? Another? Still more, perhaps? How about even more? Ooh, here are some good examples. And there's lots more where that came from, like this and this and this and lots more here and *tons* here and countless more here and yet more here, a goodie... Wait, there's more over here, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., *ETC.*, etc., etc., etc., . How about 300 more creationist misrepresentations? Not enough, you say? Well then visit Creationist Lies and Blunders. And at least half of these are outright lies, repeatedly used long after their dishonesty has been exposed (the rest are merely creationist stupidity, *still* knowingly used after the errors have been explained, which is yet *another* form of creationist dishonesty).

For a very recent example, here's something from this week on http://www.pandasthumb.org/ (my highlighting in red):

William Dembski [a darling of the "ID"/creationist movement -- Ich.] finally managed to find the transcript of Shallit’s testimony. Since I’ve been correct on predicting his behavior all the way along so far, I’ve taken another stab at it at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.
Update: Holy cow, I missed this the first time. Yesterday I asked the rhetorical question, would Dembski continue to embarrass himself in this situation regarding Shallit’s testimony? Well, we have our answer. Not only is he continuing to embarrass himself, he’s digging the hole even deeper. He’s now compounding his dishonesty with an attempt to erase the past. He has now deleted all three of his previous posts where he made the false claim that Shallit had been pulled from testifying by the ACLU because his deposition was an “embarrassment” and a “liability” to their case, even after one of those posts got almost 100 comments in reply to it. There’s no word so far on whether he will change his name to Winston Smith.
This really is dishonest behavior, there’s no two ways about it. Clearly, Dembski’s world is one in which he thinks he can rewrite history and no one will notice. I’m dying to hear how his toadies will defend this behavior. It’s not defensible on its own, so they can only attempt to distract attention away from it with a tu quoque argument or pointing fingers at others. So let’s hear what they have to say. Salvador? O’Brien? DonaldM? Let’s hear you defend this dishonest and Orwellian behavior. And tell us again how it’s evolution that undermines ethics and morality while you’re at it.
Update #2: Oh, here’s Dembski’s latest on the subject, in a comment responding to being asked what happened to the previous posts on the subject:

The previous postings were a bit of street theater. I now have what I needed. As for responding to Shallit and his criticisms, I have been and continue to do so through a series of technical articles under the rubric “The Mathematical Foundations of Intelligent Design” — you can find these articles at www.designinference.com. The most important of these is titled “Searching Large Spaces.” Shallit has indicated to me that he does not intend to engage that body of work: http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archive….

A bit of street theater? Okay, let me see if I understand this. Dembski engaged in a bit of “street theater” - meaning “told a lie” - to get a copy of the transcript that he could have gotten two months ago because it’s been publicly available all along? And now instead of admitting to the lie, he’s just erasing the evidence of it? Okay, let’s call a spade a spade here. Dembski is a lying scumbag with no regard for the truth whatsoever. Period. Just when you think he’s hit rock bottom, Dembski begins to tunnel.

Furthermore, I catch IDers/creationists lying on a regular basis on almost every "crevo" thread here on FreeRepublic. Usually they're just cribbing from this extensive list of hundreds of persistent AECreationist dishonesties and distortions, but often they come up with new ones, including libeling via false accusations, misrepresenting what people have written, posting their false presumptions about science as if they were established fact, etc.

I have many hundreds of examples from my own personal experience with them.

So again, I thank you for helping to spread the word. It's important that conservatism does not let itself be tainted by the dishonest antics of a fringe element. This way leads to political defeat, as when all eight Republican schoolboard members in Dover Pennsylvania in a Republican district were booted out and replaced by eight Democrats during the recent election, because the Republican schoolboard members had made the mistake of catering to the AECreationists, and ended up misleading schoolchildren and perjuring themselves under oath in a trial.

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