Evolution in action:
You see, ideas are what evolve.
Posted on 07/10/2006 11:21:37 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Biologists generally accept that evolutionary change can take from decades to millennia, while ecological change can occur over mere days or seasons. However, a new Cornell study shows that evolution and ecology can operate on the same time scale.
When evolution occurs so quickly, the researchers conclude, it can change how populations of various species interact. Ecologists need to consider such evolutionary dynamics in their studies because evolution could affect populations being studied. This insight is critical to predicting the recovery time needed for threatened populations or for predicting disease dynamics, says Justin Meyer '04, who conducted the study as an undergraduate student with Cornell ecologists Stephen Ellner, Nelson Hairston and colleagues.
To observe ecological and evolutionary changes together, the researchers monitored the ecological fluctuations in a model predator-prey laboratory system: a microscopic organism called a rotifer that eats a single-celled algae.
Meyer developed a method to track genetic changes, and the researchers found that as the prey population fluctuated, the algae "evolved" from a type that grows quickly to a type that resists being eaten. The frequency of the algal-genotype changes in response to rotifer population flux clearly demonstrated the synchronicity of ecological and evolutionary time.
The study is published in the July 11 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Probably some stinky thing like Desulfosomething.
Damn. Natural Selection. Who'da thunk?
I didn't think you would understand what I posted. I am glad you didn't disappoint me.
Everything in this experiment in re evolution versus design has already been better demonstrated in the Hasbro Labs. That's my point.
"Everything in this experiment in re evolution versus design has already been better demonstrated in the Hasbro Labs. That's my point."
And it was a very silly point.
All those people had colds.
Evolution in action:
You see, ideas are what evolve.
"Everything in this experiment in re evolution versus design has already been better demonstrated in the Hasbro Labs."
Does Hasbro have a Law coloring book? Maybe you colored one earlier in life, and that is where you got hung up on the "Bible is Law" thing.
"No, it is not."
Sure it was. And your later posts have been no less silly.
Hydrogen Sulfide, and all it's relatives. Mmmmm mmmm. On a 100 degree July day, it just makes you want to purge yourself.
Like the dinosaurs, however, death of a bad idea is a long time passing. However design-free evolution is a dead and moritfied idea. Dead cat, too. Ugly, yucky, wormy, smelly, festering rot and no bounce at all.
"Dead cat, too. Ugly, yucky, wormy, smelly, festering rot and no bounce at all."
Whut?
Evolutionary.
Wow. If you ever find out that God's greatest accomplishment was creating a perpetual life engine so that life could go on forever, you might be a tad embarrassed.
Are you channeling Timothy Leary?
Like the dinosaurs, however, death of a bad idea is a long time passing.
So were dinosaurs an experiment?
"you sure have a lot of people mocking creationists and bringing the crevo debates into it from the get-go."
Creation isn't science. Why are they here? Do we go into the Religion Forum and tell them they are silly? They step into the arena, then get their feelings hurt and say we are bashing. Dang that parallels the typical Democrat, doesn't it?
"Are you channeling Timothy Leary?"
Ok, if we start mixing bvw's post's with "4 Way Window Pane" I'm checking out.
McClintock recognized that genetic change is a cellular process, subject to regulation, and is not dependent on stochastic accidents. The idea of internally-generated, biologically regulated mutation has profound impacts for thinking about the process of evolution. Darwin himself acknowledged this point in later editions of Origin of Species, where he wrote about natural "sports" or "...variations which seem to us in our ignorance to arise spontaneously. It appears that I formerly underrated the frequency and value of these latter forms of variation, as leading to permanent modifications of structure independently of natural selection." (6th edition, Chapter XV, p. 395).
To see the real-world evolutionary importance of built-in biological mechanisms of genetic change, we have only to consider the post-WWII emergence of multiple antibiotic resistance in bacteria. This phenomenon represents the largest and best-documented evolutionary experiment in the molecular biology era. Interestingly, when antibiotic use began, we had a robust theory of how resistance would evolve by modification of existing cell components so that they were no longer antibiotic-sensitive. This theory was confirmed by laboratory experiments. Nonetheless, when the basis of naturally evolving multiple antibiotic resistance was determined, the experimentally-confirmed theory was wrong. Resistance resulted from the presence of new biochemical activities in the bacteria, encoded by new transmissible genetic systems that could accumulate additional DNA encoding these resistance activities (35).
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