The argument goes that experimenters cannot genetically alter them through natural selection or even gene manipulation into a new species.
Is that correct?"
No.
The Drosophila fly (aka "common fruit fly") is often cited as a good example of evolution "caught in the act".
It breeds quickly and mutates readily, so evolution can be seen happening in a lab.
To which people like annalex have two main responses, as we've seen repeated here:
- Evolution doesn't count if it happens in small critters -- you need elephants producing manatees before evolution is "proved".
- It's not really evolution until it produces some "distinct" new species -- if you could make a fruit fly produce a zebra in a lab, then that might prove evolution.
Of course, much depends on our definition of the word "species".
Annalex insists that a "species" has to be "distinct", not just one sub-species that no longer wants to mate with another.
How distinct?
Well, in annalex's mind, monkey's and zebras are "distinct", but zebras and horses?
No real answer from annalex.
Scientifically speaking, annalex is out in looney-tune land.
Scientific definitions of terms like "sub-species", "species" and "genera" are set at degrees of differences and difficulty in interbreeding.
And so, by definition, two different sub-species of, let's say these common fruit flies, will become different species when they no longer interbreed.
Can this, has this ever been done in a lab?
I don't know, but what we do know is nature takes thousands-to-millions of generations of evolution to form truly "distinct" species, and that's asking a lot of even the most reproductively busy little fruit flies in a lab.
But some evolution -- so-called "micro-evolution" -- certainly has been reproduced in a lab, indeed is routinely produced for agricultural purposes and some of that "micro-evolution" even pushes into the "species boundary" where different sub-species no longer interbreed.
But none of it can possibly satisfy annalex -- nothing short of turning zebras into monkeys will do the job of providing "proof" of evolution theory in annalex's mind.
No number of "intermediate" fossils will do it, no counting of DNA alleles can matter, until you actually see monkeys coming out of zebras, in annalex's mind "evolution" is all just "voodoo" and "cult".
Some people are just harder to please than others... ;-)