Macroevolution: Its all around us...

I think AdminNosy has this covered, but let me just add this.There are a lot of people out there with no scientific credentials whatsoever masquerading as scientists and trying to promote a very unscientific agenda with glossy websites. Any wacko with a server can set up a website these days. If you consider yourself a student, it is your duty to learn to recognize 'bogus' science for yourself.

Jeese, where do I start."All observed biological changes involve only conservation or decay of the underlying genetic information. Thus we do not observe any sort of evolution in the sense in which the word is generally understood."Total crap. Peruse some of the threads in the science forums here and you will find many cogent explanations from molecular biologists (you know, the guys who actually splice genes for a living) on the NUMEROUS mechanisms by which genomes can generate and accumulate new information. It is not all "conservationa and decay" - they are trying to set up a strawman to imply the need for a creator.
I am scared to ask how they might "generally understand" evolution.(added in edit: As you can see below, one of our esteemed molecular biologists already beat me to the punch here )"The created kindsObserved variation does appear to have limits. It is tempting to use this fact to show that there are created kinds, and that variation is only within the limits of such kinds."Note that the term 'kind' is nowhere adequately (or even objectively) defined. The concept is totally subjective and completely useless from a scientific standpoint. There is no such thing. On truly objective level, the only really menaingful separation between animals is the 'species'. All higher taxa are objectively, but not biologically distinguished.Now, please, check out the primer on evolution I linked for you earlier. Study that and it should become clear why everything on this site if religious dogma and is completely mis-representing evolutionary theory. If you have a 'specific' question, come back and one of us will address it.EZThis message has been edited by EZscience, 06-06-2005 12:30 PM

We don't make any presuppostions. That is the whole point. It is creation science that is based entirely a presupposition: the bible is the only source of truth. A source of truth, unchanged, unrefined, and unmodified apparently in the last 2000 years. On the other hand, evolutionary theory is a virtual monument of human intellect contributed to by thousands of highly intelligent people over the past century and a half. It has proven infinitely more useful than creationism for anticipating, predicting and explaining biological phenomena of ALL kinds. Evolutionary theory is all that is left when all the suppositions are disposed of.Here's a clue. Why do all these bogus creationist sites always try and cite other scientists' evidence and portray it as against evolution ? Answer: They have no research of their own and, ergo, no evidence of their own. All these pathetic simpleltons can do is try and warp other people's data to try and make it fit their predetermined ideas. I have already directed you to a more reliable source in this message hereDid you go there and read anything at all?If not, come back later when you have.

While I agree 100% with Crashfrog, I can also empathize somewhat with your dilemma so honestly presented. You feel you are being required to 'have faith' in one or other explanation because neither are yet comprehensible to you. What you must do is carefully examine the reasoning and logic on both sides until you can make sense of it. Evolutionary theory is not that hard to comprehend if you read a reliable introductory source. But going to those lame creationist sites to get info about evolution is not going to help you. It is like going to a science textbook for information on Christianity (although science doesn't mess with Christianity - it is the other way round, unfortunately).These sites like 'answersingenesis' are purposely trying to confuse people like you with snippets of 'evidence' taken completely out of context to make you doubt evolution. They are a blatant source of disinformation which is why we despise them so much. Notice that they don't propose any of their own 'mechanisms' of organismal change, even though they are forced to admit such changes do occur. Rather, they argue that such changes are somehow limited within the 'kinds' of species god created and comprise only 'micro', rather than 'macro' evolution. It's nonsense. Just a few years ago, they would have said 'species' equal 'kinds', but now they have been forced to retreat up to some (undefined) higher level taxon. If you are really 'following the truth', take the time to learn how evolution really works and you will understand it requires no leaps of faith whatsoever, just logic. Once you learn the basics, all of the higher order explanations will make sense. You will also quickly see that the other side has no higher order explanations to offer - only dogma. Ton's of examples are possible here.ToE explains why a minimum population size is necessary in order to prevent inbreeding depression in outcrossing aninals held in captivity, prompting zoo keepers to 'exchange' animals in breeding programs.ToE explains the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria and predicts how quickly that can be expected to occur under different regimes of exposure. For example, it tells us we shouldn't be feeding prophylactic doses of anitbiotics to cattle because this is accelerating resistance of bacteria potentially pathogenic to humans. (Do you think the FDA and the USDA rely on anything but ToE to help them set antibiotic use policies?)ToE explains how insects evolve resistance to insecticides and is the basis for sustanable management policies that prevent are delay insecticide resistance in target insect populations. (Do you think companies like Monsanto ignore the evolutionary predictions of resistance development when they invest $100,000,000 in developing a new pesticide? - They don't - because they want to maximize it's useful lifespan and their profit.ToE explains how selection, both natural and artificial, acts on plant genomes, thus enabling plant breeders to continually breed improved crop plants and secure the human food supply, and this without genetic engineering - just conventional plant breeding. What do you think that creationist thinking has contributed to securing our food supply? Zero.Virtually every phenomenon we see in living things makes sense ONLY within the framework of ToE - there is no equivalent alternative.In the interests of keeping this thread alive, I am getting ready to post a nice piece of work that presents a number of inferences on the macroevolution of weevils in relation to their host plants. Hopefully I will have time later today.This message has been edited by EZscience, 06-13-2005 07:02 AM

I didn't say ToE explained natural selection. NS is merely one of many mechanisms of evolution that has been clearly explained countless times on this site and elsewhere. I don't understand your second comment. Of course ToE is not 'exclusive' to resistance evolution, but the latter makes perfect sense within the the framework of ToE. Surely you are not going to claim that anyone has made meaningfull use of YEC to explain resistance evolution? Then they need to make some predictions that run counter to those of ToE and show that they can be right when (if) ToE is wrong. Otherwise they are just redundant. And I take issue with their ability to explain anything. Neither YEC nor ID postulate any testable mechanistic explanations at all. No. This is only your warped interpretation of my logic. No we might be getting soemwhere. So you admit things evolve. And I would contend evolutions explains how - YEC and ID explain nothing and put forward no testable mechansisms. So the question becomes, how much can they evolve to be different. My question to you them, is why, a priori, should we assume there are any real limits to how different organisms (gene pools) can get once they comprise different species? Why should there be any limits to how different things can get? This is only pre-suppositional crap derived from trying to shoe-horn everything into conformity with a biblical account of nature. Many people on this forum have now explained to you why this is not true in any regard. This is intended to be a thread for more advanced discussion of macro-evolutionary prcesses - please don't waste anymore of our time with this ridiculous drivel. You have also lost that argument repeatedly over on the other thread. Please take it somewhere else. Also, note that convergent evolution is a concept that is derived 'from' ToE, not from the 'mechanism-free' concepts of YEC and ID. I think we can trust evolutionary theorists to understand its implications since they identified it the first place.Please desist in these pedantic rants here - I do not wish to clutter up the thread any further with these previously de-bunked and misguided allegations.This message has been edited by EZscience, 06-13-2005 02:30 PM

So back to topic...
Here is another interesting paper for discussion.Farrell, B. D., and A. S. Sequeira. 2004. Evolutionary rates in the adaptive radiation of beetles on plants. Evolution 58:1984-2001. pdf"Herbivorous insects and other small consumers are often specialized both in use of particular host taxa and in use of particular host tissues. Such consumers also often seem to show consistent differences in the rates of evolution of these two dimensions of host use, implying common processes, but this has been little studied. Here we quantify these rates of change in host use evolution in a major radiation of herbivorous insects, the Chrysomeloidea, whose diversity has been attributed to their use of flowering plants. We find a significant difference in the rates of evolutionary change in these two dimensions of host use, with host taxon associations most labile. There are apparently similar differences in rates of host use evolution in other parasite groups, suggesting the generality of this pattern. Divergences in parasite form associated with use of different host tissues may facilitate resource partitioning among successive adaptive radiations on particular host taxa."Basically, the study examines patterns of speciation among leaf-feeding beetles (Chrysomelidae) and their various food plants. The additional twist is looking at what parts of the plant are actually fed on. The interesting finding is that the insects more often change plant taxa than they change the part of the plant that they actually feed on (leaf, stem, root, etc.). So the adaptive radiation of species in the Chrysomelidae is more strongly constrained by ecological way of life (leaf-feeder, stalk-borer etc.) than it is by association with a particular plant taxon. (It was always thought that adaptive radiation in insects often paralleled adaptive radiation in the plants they fed on - but not necessarily it turns out.)I lost the reference for a similar article on adaptive radiation in weevils (Curculionidae), but I will try and find it again.

Where do I 'proclaim victory'?
I merely asked you to kindly take your off-topic rants elsewhere.
Your arguments have all been debunked previously whether you are able to appreciate the substantive nature of your debunking or not.
If you persist I shall be tempted to start calling you 'rant-man'. Could you desing an experiment to objectively determine whether a particular example of 'complexity' is 'irreducable' or not ? No you can't. It is not a prediction - it is a self-fulfilling prophesy. I really don't like it when people try and put words in my mouth. I never said anything of the sort. I said other theories that provided the same results as ToE would be redundant and superfluous. To be worth serious consideration, they would have to prove that ToE is wrong somewhere, or provide an explanation that is superior. This has nothing to do with ToE being exclusively true. It still has elements that will probably be improved upon, but it happen via the pseudo-logic of ID theorists or the like. You are so careless. I was refering to your erroneous claims about 'convergent evolution' - I have never heard of anything called 'convergent DNA'. Sheesh.All of the rest of your post is off topic. This thread is for discussion of macroevolution - not to defend or debate ID theory. Unless of course you could use ID theory to create a cladogram of some major taxonomic lineage. Can you do that? If not, then please, cease and desist cluttering up this thread with all this nonsensical drivel.

I give up. Please just go away.
Start your own thread or something.
I will not reply to any more of your posts.

I am not sure if anyone noticed this item from a few months ago, but I just rediscovered it looking for new evidence.It concerns the discovery of variations in the hox gene cluster that explain how a crusteacean with legs on every segment could very abruptly morph into something like an insect with legs expressed only on specific segments.More evidence that even large changes in morphology, claimed impossible by the anti-evolutionists, may not be so difficult to explain on a mechanistic level.

Yes, that's another good type of evidence Tim.
I had thought of ring species too.Let me look at your examples and see if there are some salient points for further discussion.Good to see you made it over to this board from the other one.
I think you'll find an overall better quality of conversation .

Boy, I'm not a virologist, but this is good stuff. I suppose the chance aquisition of viral symbionts could well have resulted in speciation events. I never really thought of symbiotic relationships as potential catalysts for phylogenetic divergence.I remember once writing a paper as an undergraduate on the evolution of internal fertilization. The information you present opens up new perspectives on the evolution of viviparity in higher animals... and the extension of that to prolonged gestational periods. Fascinating. I will have to read some of your links before I can comment further.
There are also a couple of molecular biologists haunting this board who might have some educated commentary on the subject.

I think that was Crashfrog's statement, but it is essentially true.Let's look at what transpired here.My original statement:ToE explains how selection, both natural and artificial, acts on plant genomes, thus enabling plant breeders to continually breed improved crop plants and secure the human food supply, and this without genetic engineering - just conventional plant breeding. What do you think that creationist thinking has contributed to securing our food supply? Zero.You wrote:The fact is even YECism explains those things as well. YECism predicts those exact same things as OECism and ID.I said:Then they need to make some predictions that run counter to those of ToE and show that they can be right when (if) ToE is wrong. Otherwise they are just redundant. And I take issue with their ability to explain anything. Neither YEC nor ID postulate any testable mechanistic explanations at all.So now you say:"I was responding to a quote by an evolutionist here that claimed 'anything that incorporates selection and mutation is the exact same thing as evolution. It's an evolutionary model.' "Well if it is not an evolutionary model, it would be *redundant* to an evolutionary model (and most likely inferior). It is not sufficient to say that ID and YEC 'allow' for the same observations and, ergo, may also be true. They must also frame testable hypothesis and conduct experiments. Neither can be afforded recognition as 'science' at all until they do.The truth of the matter is that scientists working on resistance evolution, plant breeding, wildlife management, and countless other fields all rely on evolutionary theory. I challenge you to find ONE scientific article in ANY of these fields that mentions even the most remote insight from ID or YEC. You cannot do it. But you *can* come along and spew out "ID theory and YEC both make the same predictions as ToE w/r/t microevolutionary change." Bullshit, I say. It wasn't until these nitwits were faced with the incontrovertable evidence of evolutionary change that they began to admit that living things changed AT ALL.So now, you and the rest of all these insidious, pedantic, disingenuous pseudoscientists want to take credit for detailing the 'hows' and 'whys' of all microevolutionary change ? I don't think so. Creationist ideas contributed NOTHING to the development of microevolutionary theory. Care to argue otherwise? Then why don't you explain how YEC 'theory' can explain the evolution of metamorphosis in insects as I use evolutionary theory to explain it here?Now you say "well, species can change, but they have to stay within their 'kinds' - there is no common descent". So I say to you, why don't you take up the challenge over here and explain what mechanism it is that puts some sort of limit on the degree to which organisms can change once they comprise separate gene pools ? Then you could have grounds to argue against common descent (which is NOT, incidentally, the topic of this thread).At this point I would like to direct readers of the thread to address the excellent topic of retorviral symbioses as a relatively unrecognized cause of speciation through a mechanism known as 'pandemic culling'. TimChase has posted some excellent articles outlining this subject and it is far more worthy of comment and discussion here than any pedantic argument about commonality of descent.This message has been edited by EZscience, 06-19-2005 04:24 PM

True, but they never developed a theory about *how* and *why* it works. Once again, you dodge all pointed questions. Please address them or desist in your rantings. If things can evolve, then what is stop them becoming more and more different until they are separate genera or families? What mechanism determines the boundaries of one 'kind' of animal and another? The fact is, there is no limit to how different organisms can get once they are separate gene pools. Then where the hell is it in the literature ? They offer no 'insights' whatsoever. You haven't found an example of a single one as I challenged you. You are still pissing in the wind. Once again, this thread is about inferences of macroevolutionary change. Lots of evidence on speciation processses have been discussed. We don't have to go all the way back to a single common ancestor to make some really strong inferences about phylogenetic divergence of major taxa, but both ID and YEC are COMPLETELY USELESS as tools for this purpose. They are intellectually bereft of mechanisms, inferences, and testable hypotheses. Can you come up with one model of evolutionary change derived from either? Anything quantitative or analytical published anywhere? You can't, becuase your 'theories' aren't theories at all int he scientific sense. They don;t 'explain' anything - they just pontificate.This message has been edited by EZscience, 06-20-2005 06:43 AM

Very nicely explained. I regret I am just to swamped with work right now to read all your citations, but I hope to eventually.

Can some one please explain or discuss the implications of this 'convergent DNA' to our current understanding of macroevolutionary processes, infered cladograms or phylogenies?