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.
The notion that there is such a category as dog is silly?
If words had no meaning, as you seem to suggest my FRiend, how then are we able to communicate?
If I'm going to design and build a 1,500 sq. foot rambler, my foundation will take a vastly different form than if I build a 78-story skyscraper. With the former, I can use brick-and-mortar. No 78-story brick building exists. The difference is not merely one of degree, it is one of principle. To the evolutionists' way of thinking, elaborately precise and loquacious as they are, everything looks to be the former. That is a simplistic mode of thought.
The point is, organs as vastly complex as the mammalian eye, stand as irreducibly complex examples of something designed for a purpose (remember our discussion about meaning? the same applies to purpose). One would sound rather ridiculous if he tried to explain how such a marvelous organ could arise piecemeal. Hence, punctuated equalibrium i.e. don't you dare question the theory. It's become a sort of religious dogma in some academic circles.
--EvoDude
Gotta run now.
"Order/genus/species are categories."
I never said they weren't. Nor did I ever say that pigeon wasn't a category. I just simply corrected your error when you said there was only one species of pigeon.
Words have meanings.
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