Posted on 02/22/2006 10:38:24 PM PST by quantim
Don't look now, but your backyard is evolving. It's no joke. There's a growing body of evidence that evolution is no longer something only seen either in this year's flu virus or Cretaceous tyrannosaur bones. It's happening everywhere, right now, and charging full-steam ahead.
Research on toads, frogs, salamanders, fish, lizards, squirrels and plants are all showing evidence that some species are attempting to adapt to new conditions in a time frame of decades, not eons, say biologists.
What's more, one of the biggest reasons for all this evolution right now may be that human-induced changes to climate and landscapes give species few other options.
Move, Adapt or Die
"Basically, a species can do three things," said the University of Sydney's Richard Shine: "go extinct, move or adapt."
The first two have kept conservation biologists working day and night, to the exclusion of the third, he said. But that's changing as real-time evolution is hitting the news wires and getting more attention.
The highest-profile case yet was made public by Shine and his colleagues in the Feb. 16 issue of Nature: the case of toxic cane toads at the forefront of a seven-decade Australian invasion. Measurements over the years prove that the leading toads have evolved significantly longer legs.
It appears that hopping further and faster rewards long-legged toads with the first crack at lush virgin territory, and therefore more offspring to perpetuate their athleticism.
Behind that story are even more cases of rapid evolution, says Shine, an evolutionary ecologist. Already he's seeing changes in native Australian snakes. First they tried to eat the toads, and died. Now, Shine says, the surviving snakes have modified jaws which make them unable to eat the toads and therefore safe from their toxin.
"Invasive species are a nice model," Shine said.
They hint at the rates of evolution that might be expected as species feel the increasing pressure of global warming. They also draw the attention of conservation biologists, who are often on the front lines of battles to save habitats and individual species.
"In the past 20 years, essentially all evolutionary biologists have come to widely recognize the importance and prevalence of (what's) often called 'rapid evolution,'" wrote evolutionary biologist Andrew Hendry of McGill University, who responded to questions via email from the Galapagos Islands. "Many conservation biologists have recently come to the same realization and I expect that the rest will soon follow."
Rapid evolution is good news for conservation biologists. It implies that the number of species that might go extinct will be less than some current estimates, which predict as many as one-third of all species alive today will be wiped out by 2050.
The first known case of a mammal responding genetically to warmer climate warming is the red squirrel of the Yukon Territory.
Canadian scientists have discovered that red squirrels are giving birth about 18 days earlier than their great-grandmothers. It's the early squirrel that gets the nut, after all: natural selection in action.
"...I thought humans were the top of the evolutionary chain and therefore that is where evolution should be taking place...."
That's because you don't understand evolution.
Every critter alive today is at the "top" of its evolutionary chain.
Well, they're certainly two hot-button issues guaranteed to draw a lot of frenzied activity -- I was thinking that the moment I saw the headline: INCOMING!
If we could find a way to work abortion into the headline, the whole site would melt down from the traffic.
On the other hand, you're mistaken if you think that "most of us" don't think that evolution exists. Just from participation, it seems about 50/50 or so. And the one time I'm aware of that there was a poll of FreeRepublic members, the results were:
Which do you believe?Evolution: 225 (65%)
Creation: 114 (33%)
I don't know/care: 6 (2%)
And all doing the devil's work!
</creationism mode>
It isn't, there are plenty of journal articles about human evolution.
I thought humans were the top of the evolutionary chain and therefore that is where evolution should be taking place.
There's no such thing as "the top of the evolutionary chain" (this is based on an extremely distorted misconception of evolutionary biology), and thus such a non-existent place is hardly "where evolution should be taking place". As others have pointed out, for a variety of reasons human evolution would actually be slower than that of many other animals.
I keep trying that "no sleep" thing, but I haven't got the hang of it yet, even though it'd be awfully handy. So at the moment I'm in the "up late" category.
I'll believe it when humans develop smaller mouths and stomachs so we can't pig out and get fat on fast food.
_____________________________________
The final results of the poll are as follows:
Which do you believe?
Evolution. 13.0% (225)
Creation. 86.7% (1501)
I don't know/care. 0.3% (6)
Total votes: 1732
Below are a list of those posters who attempted to violate the integrity of the poll. The last byte has been changed to protect the guilty (but if you mail me I will talk):
165.76.125.*** - Voted for Creation 990 times.
63.175.96.*** - Voted for Creation 399 times.
This is a somewhat appalling revelation about the honesty of certain extremists of the Creationist side. I admit I had not expected this, if anything I would have expected those who place such a high value on literal interpretations of the Bible to have a well developed sense of ethics and not desire to dishonestly inflate the prominence of their beliefs. I am enlightened by this experience.
For those who are interested the adjusted results after discarding the 1387 false votes by these 2 most egregious respondants are:
225 - Evolution
114 - Creation
Or, like the sharks and crocodilians, keep on doing what they're doing.
By the way, I use a Mac, and I think PCs suck.
Discuss.
My dogs get me up early, so I often put in a pre-dawn session on the internet. But unnoticed by you, there are several multi-hour gaps in my presence during the day. The rest of the world often intervenes.
No surprise if you follow a number of the threads on evolution.
Also no surprise if you followed the Dover case.
I suspect it's more about power than honest religious belief.
Dimensio, thought you'd like to add this to your collection if you don't already have it.
Those two cheaters bought one way tickets to the Hot Place!
I think that there is a big difference between affecting the environment we live in (locally) and actually changing the climate. It seems they are lumped together by the Chicken Littles. If we are culpable of the creation of hurricanes in the first place according to some of the fearmongers, then we ought to have the power to stop them also.
Can you imagine the hysteria when unrelated to each other another major earthquake/tsunami, a massive volcanic eruption, a couple of hurricanes going on in the same day as I'm sure has happened in the past? Do I also add INCOMING asteriod?
Do you suppose they agree with you?
I doubt it. I'm guessing that in their minds, they were striking a blow against the Horned One, so it was OK.
I've been told by at least one creationist here that it is permissable for Christians to lie to non-believers.
*************
Apparently, your creationist has a sense of humour.
You must be joking. How do you know that? What makes evolution stop and how do you know that it has stopped? And why would it stop?
Mainly because evolutionary scientists don't have an explanation as to why the human race doesn't appear to be evolving.
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