Evolution in a Lab

blackheart · Jun 15, 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1797814,00.html

Butterfly effect: New species hatches in lab

James Randerson, science correspondent
Thursday June 15, 2006
The Guardian

The creation of a new species, something that scientific orthodoxy says should take thousands of years of genetic isolation has been achieved in the lab in just three months.

Scientists think they have recreated the process that produced a stunning South American butterfly called Heliconius heurippa virtually overnight. And they suggest that similar rapid species creation could help to explain puzzling groups of closely related species such as Darwin's finches and cichlid fish. The finding is yet another challenge to the charge from creationists that evolutionary biologists are unable to explain large scale evolutionary shifts that result in new species.

Article continues
Biological dogma is that speciation, the process by which a new species forms, happens when two populations of the same species become separated for millennia by a new mountain range or a change in a river's course, for example. In their separate environments, the two diverge genetically and cannot mate when reunite. "The orthodoxy up to now is that it mostly has a destructive role," said George Turner, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Hull, "That's how species sometimes come to an end when they collapse into each other and all their unique adaptations are all mashed up together."

But Chris Jiggins at the University of Edinburgh and his colleagues were able to recreate butterflies with the same characteristics as H. heurippa after just three generations of breeding in the lab between two related parent species - H. melpomene and H. cydno.

"It was quite surprising how easy it was," said Dr Jiggins. "That really implies that the process of speciation could also have happened naturally very quickly." He said the process may explain the remarkable diversity among Heliconius butterflies. The research is reported in the journal Nature.

Anyone care for a rebuttal?

Pyrite · Jun 15, 2006

This explains how evolution might occur among some strains of animals on a 6000 year timeline!

puglover · Jun 15, 2006

Is this macroevolution though? How is this a new species of butterfly, and not just another variant?

Sahkuhnder · Jun 15, 2006

puglover said:
Is this macroevolution though? How is this a new species of butterfly, and not just another variant?

The article clearly says "new species", so that sounds like a new species and not just a variant. Is there a specific reason you doubt this article's source or conclusion?

blackheart · Jun 15, 2006

Pyrite said:
This explains how evolution might occur among some strains of animals on a 6000 year timeline!

Except most vertebrates don't produce as avidly as butterflies.

Erik Mesoy · Jun 15, 2006

blackheart said:
Anyone care for a rebuttal?

I'll wait for carlosMM and TLC to comment.

.Shane. · Jun 15, 2006

blackheart said:
Anyone care for a rebuttal?

What is there to rebut? Evolutionary science is going to change a lot and have many refinements as we learn more.

blackheart · Jun 15, 2006

.Shane. said:
What is there to rebut? Evolutionary science is going to change a lot and have many refinements as we learn more.

I'm waiting for the creationist viewpoint to provide an argument...

.Shane. · Jun 15, 2006

blackheart said:
I'm waiting for the creationist viewpoint to provide an argument...

lol, why are we so interested in arguing w/ creationists? Their belief is not one of logic or reason, but one of belief. You might as well be arguing w/ the Pastafarians or druids.

Anyway....

croxis · Jun 15, 2006

Species is an artifical construct anyways. We create boxes in order to organize the living world and it tends to work well, but it doesn't always model reality as well as we would hope (see: that artic bird textbook example).

Stile · Jun 15, 2006

croxis said:
Species is an artifical construct anyways. We create boxes in order to organize the living world and it tends to work well, but it doesn't always model reality as well as we would hope (see: that artic bird textbook example).

Yeah, I don't get the species definition. I thought it was when no interbreeding could occur. How is this different from recreating the breeding process that lead to a poodle, for example? Guess I'll have to shell out the hundreds of clams for a Nature subscription. Good thing creationists are here to drive scientific pursuit.

blackheart · Jun 15, 2006

.Shane. said:
lol, why are we so interested in arguing w/ creationists? Their belief is not one of logic or reason, but one of belief. You might as well be arguing w/ the Pastafarians or druids.

Anyway....

I want to see how this will be rationalized to fit a specific view

Aramazd · Jun 15, 2006

Stile said:
Yeah, I don't get the species definition. I thought it was when no interbreeding could occur.

The definition of species that I learned in Bio, is a group of organisms that can produce fertile offspring (i.e. a tiger and a lion can breed, but only produce infertile Ligers or Tigrons, depending on the parentage).

This is interesting because I had always thought that 2 different species couldn't produce an offspring that was fertile, but this will change how evolution is taught now.

Stile · Jun 15, 2006

Abgar said:
The definition of species that I learned in Bio, is a group of organisms that can produce fertile offspring (i.e. a tiger and a lion can breed, but only produce infertile Ligers or Tigrons, depending on the parentage).

This is interesting because I had always thought that 2 different species couldn't produce an offspring that was fertile, but this will change how evolution is taught now.

Thanks for the clarification. Are you serious about Ligers? I've never heard of them outside of the movie Napoleon Dynamite. Somehow the joke in the movie just became less funny. (Mules I'm familiar with.)

Souron · Jun 15, 2006

It strikes me as odd that one of the cheif motivation of this group is "to challenge to the charge from creationists". Most scientists would not take chalanges from people who do not believe in the principles of science.

blackheart · Jun 15, 2006

Stile said:
Thanks for the clarification. Are you serious about Ligers? I've never heard of them outside of the movie Napoleon Dynamite. Somehow the joke in the movie just became less funny. (Mules I'm familiar with.)

Ligers and tigons, oh my!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigon

puglover · Jun 15, 2006

.Shane. said:
lol, why are we so interested in arguing w/ creationists? Their belief is not one of logic or reason, but one of belief. You might as well be arguing w/ the Pastafarians or druids.

Anyway....

How would proving evolution disprove the existence of a creator God? Wouldn't it just show another aspect of the natural creation?

Souron · Jun 15, 2006

puglover said:
How would proving evolution disprove the existence of a creator God? Wouldn't it just show another aspect of the natural creation?

Yes, that's the way most christians understand evolution to be. But then most christians belive in evolution.

Those that don't, do so for religious reasons only. And faith based debates are usually pointless. Many people would forsake logic if it violated heartfelt beliefs.

classical_hero · Jun 17, 2006

This is not evolution in action. What would be evolution is the fact that you saw one animal become a total different type of animal. The thing is that we already have had butterflies and we already have thousand of varieties of butterflies. All that happened what yet another variety of butterflies, not a whole new animal. Variety in species has always happened and all they are is just sligh genetic variation from another of the species. This is not evolution in action.

Boris Godunov · Jun 17, 2006

classical_hero said:
This is not evolution in action. What would be evolution is the fact that you saw one animal become a total different type of animal.

And you're totally wrong. Please look up the scientific definition of evolution and get back to us.

Oh, all right, I'll give it to you: Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations.

And thus, we have in this example evolution.

Evolution in a Lab

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