Scruffy little weed shows Darwin was right as evolution moves on

Times Online | 2003-02-20 | Anthony Browne, Environment Editor

[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.

[general_re]

LOL - apparently so ;)

[Condorman]

Now THAT is the understatement of the century. It's only the third year into the 21st century, but I'd bet that holds up until the 22nd century.

Yeah, I'll go along with that. I suspect it'll probably hold up until just after the nuclear holocaust and the apes take over the planet. Unfortuantely, you has still failed to provide support your statement "Humans are not primates."

[foghornleghorn]

Explain please, how this "proves" Darwinism/evolution.

[Rudder]

Where's the advantage in that?

Great question! Heuristic, in and of itself, it---along with your other post on this matter--- provides also insight into your outlook. One conclusion I'm drawing is that your course at Berkeley was not focused on the life sciences, correct?

Just a guess, let me know if I'm wrong.

At any rate, this question is frequently asked of biologists, etc., etc., and many of them do succumb to an easier social grace by indulging public expectations by trying to ascribe an "advantage" of a particular fossilized feather. Such speculation is required for the job as a scientist, but the popularization of the pursuits of scientists has left some unexamined misperceptions. Speciation is not about a particular advantage, it is about reproductive success. The term, "advantage" was originally used, in evoution-discourse, to describe (pontificate,actually) to the media the "purpose" of, say homeothermia in Dinosaurs, any number of the daily scientific discoveries which caught the reporters' eyes.

I think you really want to see how all these "adaptive advantages" result in a rapidly evolving evolution.

"They don't." (Julian Huxley,1963)

The heart of speciation is akin to that of a new ship: will it float? The test is empirical in the extreme. Reproductive failure dooms the putative species. It is for this, that there is only one rigid definition of speciation: Reproductive isolation and success.

[Sabertooth]

English PoliSci at Cal. My friends were all physicists, so I feel somewhat at ease in the scientific terrain.

My question about advantage pertained to natural selection. If you don't have "advantage," you don't have natural selection.

That doesn't mean that you don't have evolution, nor does the absence of natural selection in the speciation of this weed mean that it never happens. I was just clarifying what the mechanism for this particular case of evolutionary speciation actually was, and wasn't.

[Rudder]

Cool.

What caught my attention was the dismay you indicated over the notion that hybrids might not be able to breed with their parental generation ("What's the advantage in that?" I think you said.)

[gore3000]

Your claiming Darwin to be a racist and thus discounting anything he may have said

Darwin's racism is the basis of evolutionary theory. The idea that some species are simpler, less fit and less worthy than others. You cannot take the racism out of evolution.

[gore3000]

"Except a human is not a primate." 56 posted on 02/20/2003 6:48 PM EST by Con X-Poser

For someone so touchingly devoted to that assertion, you sure seem to have an inordinate amount of trouble supporting it.

Well, evolutionists have been looking for the missing link between men and apes and were forced to give it up because there was none. Now they say there is a link between man and primates and they have also not found any. In fact, they keep pushing the supposed link back further and further each year, we are back to 10 million years now and some even say 20 million years. It is he who makes the original claim that has to give evidence for it and you the evolutionists do not have any. How much time do you guys need to back up your assertions which you claim everyone is an idiot for not believing even though you do not have an ounce of evidence for them????????????

[gore3000]

Darwin has commented on what happened.

No, Darwin was showing joy at the destruction and obliteration of the Turkish race. Something similar to the feelings that Hitler must have had towards the destruction of the Jews.

[gore3000]

evolutionary science is about how

Acutally there is no 'how' to evolution. They have been looking for it for 150 years and the best they have come up with is 'natural selection' and the 'struggle for life'. Problem is that natural selection destroys, it does not create and there is no Malthusian 'struggle for life'. Species are very adaptable and can make do quite well in different circumstances and with varied amounts of nutrition.

[Junior]

And Luther's anti-Semitism is the basis for all of Protestantism (hence the occasional pogrom). You really have no clue about that which you speak, do you? You spout inanities without evidence, and occasionally you post an out-of-context or doctored quote to back you up. You evince all the characteristics of Holy Warrior Syndrome.

[Junior]

It doesn't "prove" anything. It's a piece of evidence in favor of the theory of evolution ("Darwinism" is such an outdated term). It definitely is another nail in the coffin of creationism.

[PatrickHenry]

Another placemarker in the coffin of creationism.

[farmer18th]

Surely at Stanford you found your way into the library occasionally, with its large collection of scientific journals not accessible electronically?

As I am now some distance from Greene Library, I will need to wait until this ground-breaking, earth-shattering, empirical proof of Darwin's theory makes its way to the internet. (Weren't you the one, some posts back, talking about the great march of technical progress, by the way?). When this article does appear, it would be interesting to see how how much thinking is done inside and outside of the box.

By the way, if were cruising the stacks at Greene and I found a book not in the catalogue, um, would it be, well, you know, a new...

[general_re]

By the way, if were cruising the stacks at Greene and I found a book not in the catalogue, um, would it be, well, you know, a new...

We know with a fair degree of certainty one thing about libraries that we do not know with any certainty at all about ecosystems - libraries are designed by intelligent agents. Different premises, different argument, different conclusions.

[farmer18th]

Different premises, different argument, different conclusions.

It is interesting in this respect: I don't know a librarian alive who would swear that every single volume housed in his edifice was actually catalogued. I can't imagine a warehouseman who would risk his reputation on the notion that every product in his building were identified and inventoried. Isn't it strange that these custodians of more finite quarters are more humble than the botanists who have thousands of square miles to chronicle and inventory?

[general_re]

O noble librarians, ever mindful of the limits of human endeavor, etc., etc., etc....

Perhaps they ought to borrow the methods of the botanists. Split the territory into managable sub-units - the "shelf" would seem to be a natural unit of division in a library - and assign an observer to each subunit. Each observer records the books currently on each shelf, and then records the appearance of every new book over a period of several years. Compare final lists, eliminate duplicates, and there's your master list.

Or perhaps - a thesis I tend to prefer - it's just a faulty analogy to begin with. In addition to intelligent agents designing and administering libraries, librarians have a host of external agents that they must deal with, who are constantly removing, replacing, destroying, and losing the books in their care, whether legitimately, as when they check them out and return them, or illegitimately, as when they steal them. This is not a set of influences that botanists have to worry about - the life cycles of wild plants are not subject to the whims of any known intelligent agent, unlike the life cycle of a book in a library.

[Jael]

X-man will be back next week. :-)