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Speciation is not evolution. Rapid speciation is part of the creation model. 8-18-18 Joel Tay J. C has accused CMI of being ignorant of science, evolution, and speciation. Typical for such commentators, he demonstrates a lack of understanding about what biblical creationists actually believe. We reproduce his letters to us below. CMI’s Joel Tay responds:

My first love will always be archaeology and the study of what makes us human.This article is speculation. This is my personal musing on the development of certain psychological and physiological human traits. This is not to be taken as anything but my personal opinion. I have no evidence that there was an Asperger’s man. This article was also written several years ago and since then more evidence for the possibility of interbreeding with other hominids has come to light in Russia and in Africa that may support my original idea... Part 1Part 2

Scientists have watched as a new species is “born”—or is that “evolved”?—on one of the Galapagos Islands, home of Darwin’s famous finches...

Speciation and the Animals on the Ark by Daniel Criswell, Ph.D.* Many people who use biological data to support an old-earth position believe that the appearance of millions of animal species does not support a young earth interpretation of creation. Nor do they think that a recent global Flood would support the existence of a great number of animals today if Noah only took two of each kind on the Ark. However, the science of how speciation occurs, and the definition of a species versus the biblical kind, does explain how many variations of the same kind of animal can...

Some cichlid fish see red better while others only have eyes for blue. This difference in vision, observed in fish in an African lake, could be pushing red-bodied cichlids to branch off from their blue-bodied brethren and to form a new species. If so, it would be the first time that scientists have caught evolution in the act of creating a new species because of changes in sense organs. For one species to diverge into two, some barrier must prevent two groups of individuals from interbreeding. Physical separation of two groups and changes to reproductive organs are two of the...

The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist. 100,000 years into the future, sexual selection could mean that two distinct breeds of human will have developed.

Scientists at Texas Tech University argue that defining mammalian species based on genetics will result in the recognition of many more species than previously thought present. This has profound implications for our knowledge of biodiversity and issues based on it, such as conservation, ecology, and understanding evolution. Their study is published in the latest Journal of Mammalogy. The classical definition of species was proposed by Ernst Mayr in 1942, defining it as reproductively isolated groups of organisms. According to this study, the problem with applying this concept is that it is hard to observe mating and to know whether there...

Avoiding quicksand along the banks of the Ivindo River in Gabon, Cornell neurobiologists armed with oscilloscopes search for shapes and patterns of electricity created by fish in the water. They know from their previous research that the various groups of local electric fish have different DNA, different communication patterns and won't mate with each other. However, they now have found a case where two types of electric signals come from fish that have the same DNA. The researchers' conclusion: The fish appear to be on the verge of forming two separate species. "We think we are seeing evolution in action,"...

Modern genetics has uncovered new species evolving in situations that would even impress Darwin. The current journal Nature features two different cases — involving palm trees and lake fish — in which genetics have shown single species splitting into two new species while living side by side. The most common sort of evolution is thought to happen when different groups of the same species are separated by some physical barrier, and then adapt to different environments without any chance of interbreeding. Eventually the populations diverge and adapt to differing lifestyles so much they can't successfully interbreed. That's what biologists call...

Scientists at the University of Arizona may have witnessed the birth of a new species. Biologists Laura Reed and Prof Therese Markow made the discovery by observing breeding patterns of fruit flies that live on rotting cacti in deserts. The work could help scientists identify the genetic changes that lead one species to evolve into two species. The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. One becomes two Whether the two closely related fruit fly populations the scientists studied - Drosophila mojavensis and Drosophila arizonae - represent one species or two is still debated...

Picky female frogs in a tiny rainforest outpost of Australia have driven the evolution of a new species in 8,000 years or less, according to scientists from the University of Queensland, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. "That's lightning-fast," said co-author Craig Moritz, professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley and director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. "To find a recently evolved species like this is exceptional, at least in my experience." The yet-to-be-named species arose after two isolated populations of the green-eyed tree frog reestablished contact less than 8,000 years ago and...

Charles Darwin, the 19th century geologist who wrote the treatise 'The Origin of Species, by means of Natural Selection' defined evolution as "descent with modification". Darwin hypothesized that all forms of life descended from a common ancestor, branching out over time into various unique life forms, due primarily to a process called natural selection. However, the fossil record shows that all of the major animal groups (phyla) appeared fully formed about 540 million years ago, and virtually no transitional life forms have been discovered which suggest that they evolved from earlier forms. This sudden eruption of multiple, complex organisms is...

Why one species branches into two is a question that has haunted evolutionary biologists since Darwin. Given our planet's rich biodiversity, "speciation" clearly happens regularly, but scientists cannot quite pinpoint the driving forces behind it. Now, researchers studying a family of butterflies think they have witnessed a subtle process, which could be forcing a wedge between newly formed species. The team, from Harvard University, US, discovered that closely related species living in the same geographical space displayed unusually distinct wing markings. These wing colours apparently evolved as a sort of "team strip", allowing butterflies to easily identify the species of...

A bedrock tenet of biogeography holds that organisms separated from their ancestral population will set off on their own evolutionary trajectory. Continental drift provides one such isolating mechanism, illustrated perhaps most spectacularly by the unique flora and fauna found on the island of Madagascar, which broke off from the southern supercontinent of Gondwana some 90 million years ago. Mountain upheaval and river formation can also divide populations. But a new study reveals that the barriers need not be physical. Paleontologists have unearthed fossils of giant amphibians that indicate that climate, too, can effectively isolate organisms and thereby foster endemism. In...

Researchers have identified corn genes that were preferentially selected by Native Americans during the course of the plant's domestication from its grassy relative, teosinte, (pronounced "tA-O-'sin-tE") to the single-stalked, large-eared plant we know today. The study revealed that of the 59,000 total genes in the corn genome, approximately 1,200 were preferentially targeted for selection during its domestication. The study, by University of California, Irvine's Brandon Gaut and his colleagues, appears in the May 27 issue of the journal, Science. Understandably, a primary goal of teosinte domestication was to improve the ear and its kernels. A teosinte ear is only 2...

A unique fly from the Canary Islands has helped shed light on one driving force behind the birth of new species, Nature magazine reports this week. The robber fly is found nowhere else, and scientists speculate that the rich biodiversity on the islands may actually have led to its emergence. The researchers think sharing an island with a myriad of other lifeforms may push one species to evolve into another. This new theory adds fresh insight into how biodiversity arises. "Why some areas contain greater species diversity than others has been a fundamental question in evolutionary ecology and conservation biology,"...

In 1927, Karpechenko made a hybrid of the common radish, Raphanus sativus, and cabbage, Brassica oleracea. Each parent has a diploid chromosome number of 2N=18. The hybrid also had 18 chromosomes, but because normal sperm and eggs could not be formed, the hybrid was sterile, as is common in such cases. However, some of the "sterile" hybrids produced a few viable seeds. These seeds were produced when the chromosome number spontaneously doubled. The doubling permitted the pairing of partner chromosomes and the formation of gametes with 1N=18. Karpechenko witnessed the birth of a new species in the passage of only...

Laboratory Speciation in Helianthus Evolves a Native Species DNA examination of five species of Helianthus (H. annuus, H. petiolarus fallax, H. anomalus, H. paradoxus, and H. deserticola) suggested that H. annuus and H. petiolarus fallax are the evolutionary parents of the other three species (Rieseberg 1993, 1995, 1993). All five species are self-incompatible and fertile. Typically, H. annuus (the ancestor of the commercial sunflower) and H. petiolarus fallax form hybrids that are almost fully sterile. However, the few fertile hybrids, when subjected to sib-matings and back crossing regimes yield a new species that is fully fertile and cannot cross with...

 Female crickets choosey with their mates Lehigh and U. of Maryland biologists have found that speedy speciation curtails courtship options for the Laupala crickets of Hawaii’s forests. Biologists at Lehigh University and the University of Maryland have identified a cricket living in Hawaii’s forests as the world’s fastest-evolving invertebrate. Finicky mating behavior appears to be the driving force behind the speedy speciation of the Laupala cricket, the scientists wrote in the Jan. 27 issue of Nature magazine. Females in the Laupala genus detect tiny differences in the pulse rates of male courtship songs, which differ from one Laupala species to...

Snakes bite back at poison toads Snakes in Australia have evolved to counter the threat of invasive, poisonous cane toads, scientists have found. The toads ( Bufo marinus ) were only introduced in the 1930s but have already overwhelmed the local wildlife in Queensland with their rapid reproduction and toxic flesh, which kills many predators foolish enough to make them a meal. But for two species of snake, at least, natural selection has produced a defence: the snakes have developed relatively smaller heads and longer bodies. In essence, the reduced gape of the animals limits their ability to eat the...