We are also a ring species.
Posted on 02/20/2003 2:30:45 PM PST by Junior
IT STARTED with a biologist sitting on a grassy river bank in York, eating a sandwich. It ended in the discovery of a “scruffy little weed with no distinguishing features” that is the first new species to have been naturally created in Britain for more than 50 years.
The discovery of the York groundsel shows that species are created as well as made extinct, and that Charles Darwin was right and the Creationists are wrong. But the fragile existence of the species could soon be ended by the weedkillers of York City Council’s gardeners.
Richard Abbott, a plant evolutionary biologist from St Andrews University, has discovered “evolution in action” after noticing the lone, strange-looking and uncatalogued plant in wasteland next to the York railway station car park in 1979. He did not realise its significance and paid little attention. But in 1991 he returned to York, ate his sandwich and noticed that the plant had spread.
Yesterday, Dr Abbott published extensive research proving with DNA analysis that it is the first new species to have evolved naturally in Britain in the past 50 years.
“I’ve been a plant evolutionary biologist all my life, but you don’t think you’ll come across the origin of a new species in your lifetime. We’ve caught the species as it has originated — it is very satisfying,” he told the Times. “At a time in Earth’s history when animal and plant species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate, the discovery of the origin of a new plant species in Britain calls for a celebration.”
The creation of new species can takes thousands of years, making it too slow for science to detect. But the York groundsel is a natural hybrid between the common groundsel and the Oxford ragwort, which was introduced to Britain from Sicily 300 years ago. Hybrids are normally sterile, and cannot breed and die out.
But Dr Abbott’s research, published in the journal of the Botanical Society of the British Isles, shows that the York Groundsel is a genetic mutant that can breed, but not with any other species, including its parent species. It thus fits the scientific definition of a separate species.
“It is a very rare event — it is only known to have happened five times in the last hundred years” Dr Abbott said. It has happened twice before in the UK — the Spartina anglica was discovered in Southampton 100 years ago, and the Welsh groundsel, discovered in 1948.
The weed sets seed three months after germinating and has little yellow flowers. The species, which came into existance about 30 years ago, has been called Senecio eboracensis, after Eboracum, the Roman name for York. According to the research, it has now spread to spread to several sites around York, but only ever as a weed on disturbed ground.
However, more than 90 per cent of species that have lived subsequently become extinct, and its future is by no means certain.
“It is important for it to build up its numbers rapidly, or it could get rubbed out — which would be sad. The biggest threat to the new species is the weedkillers from the council,” Dr Abbott said.
However, he does not plan to start a planting programme to ensure his discovery lives on. “The next few years will be critical as to whether it becomes an established part of the British flora or a temporary curiosity. But we will let nature take its course,” he said.
If evolution is true, what is wrong with sexism or racism?
Great questions! I am sure your post will be carefully ignored by evolutionists!
Yup, for every argument, there is a different lie made up by evolutionists. If there are similar features in two species, then that is evolution. However, if the features could not have descended from each other, then that is evolution too. If it is gradual change it is evolution. If it is sudden change, it is evolution. There are always two sides to every story and whatever side it is it is evolution. That is why evolutionists will never state the theory of evolution, they will never say how evolution happens. They always leave the question open so that they can make up some ad hoc nonsense to cover their behinds.
Aaah, the Clinton defense - everybody does it', or more accurately, I can always point to someone else that has committed the same sin and smear someone who others hold highly. Well, sorry, Luther did not kill 10 million Jews and doubt very much that you can quote anything from him advocating such a thing. However, Darwin did advocate numerous times in many ways the destruction of 'lesser humans'.
Well, this is what Darwin has to say about those things.
It has been already remarked, that the degree of fertility, both of first crosses and of hybrids, graduates from zero to perfect fertility. It is surprising in how many curious ways this gradation can be shown to exist; but only the barest outline of the facts can here be given. When pollen from a plant of one family is placed on the stigma of a plant of a distinct family, it exerts no more influence than so much inorganic dust. From this absolute zero of fertility, the pollen of different species of the same genus applied to the stigma of some one species, yields a perfect gradation in the number of seeds produced, up to nearly complete or even quite complete fertility; and, as we have seen, in certain abnormal cases, even to an excess of fertility, beyond that which the plant's own pollen will produce. So in hybrids themselves, there are some which never have produced, and probably never would produce, even with the pollen of either pure parent, a single fertile seed: but in some of these cases a first trace of fertility may be detected, by the pollen of one of the pure parent-species causing the flower of the hybrid to wither earlier than it otherwise would have done; and the early withering of the flower is well known to be a sign of incipient fertilisation. From this extreme degree of sterility we have self-fertilised hybrids producing a greater and greater number of seeds up to perfect fertility.
Hybrids from two species which are very difficult to cross, and which rarely produce any offspring, are generally very sterile; but the parallelism between the difficulty of making a first cross, and the sterility of the hybrids thus produced two classes of facts which are generally confounded together is by no means strict. There are many cases, in which two pure species can be united with unusual facility, and produce numerous hybrid-offspring, yet these hybrids are remarkably sterile. On the other hand, there are species which can be crossed very rarely, or with extreme difficulty, but the hybrids, when at last produced, are very fertile. Even within the limits of the same genus, for instance in Dianthus, these two opposite cases occur.
The fertility, both of first crosses and of hybrids, is more easily affected by unfavourable conditions, than is the fertility of pure species. But the degree of fertility is likewise innately variable; for it is not always the same when the same two species are crossed under the same circumstances, but depends in part upon the constitution of the individuals which happen to have been chosen for the experiment. So it is with hybrids, for their degree of fertility is often found to differ greatly in the several individuals raised from seed out of the same capsule and exposed to exactly the same conditions.
With the *minor* little difference that the various eohippi, mesohippi, etc,etc, appear in a definite order in the strata. At the time of eohippus there were no mesohippi, etc.
If you take a deserted island suitable for horses, and release 100 Shetland mares and 100 Clydesdale stallions (or vice versa) would there be any mating and any viable offspring? (Serious question, I don't know the answer, thinking of the attempted mating gives me the willies).
My *guess* is that horses (and also dogs) are an example of ring species, where the smalest can mate with the next-smalest, etc, but the largest and smallest are too far apart to mate.
< paranoia > How many creos are actually D*m*cr*ts trying to discredit conservatives?< /paranoia>
We are also a ring species.
He/she/it is pretty froward for the two+ weeks of experience.
Put up or shut up. I was in high school in the '60's and Piltdown was never mentioned - just the Leakeys' discoveries, Neanderthal/Cro Magnon, et al.
Please post where Darwin advocated the destruction of 'lesser humans'.
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