Are you a creationist? Are you skeptical of the theory of evolution? Do you think it has never been observed and all the experiments and observations are either interpreted incorrectly or are the product of a global conspiracy? Well, now's your chance to be involved in an evolution experiment yourself!
The experimental subjects are Triops, little crustaceans that have generation times of less than a month.
"But Sarah, I don't want to take care of any gross looking vermin". No worries, I'm going to take care of these guys for you.
"But Sarah, I actually do want some Triops and to do the experiment directly with my own hands". No problem, Triops are very easy to care for, and the great part about experiments is that they are repeatable. So, as long as you do what I do, you'll get results!
"So Sarah, exactly how are we involved in the experiment?" An excellent question. What you'll be doing is acting as "natural selection". You decide what traits should "improve survival", and which ones won't. This will be determined by vote: make a post with the 2 traits you want our experimental population to develop, and I'll change the conditions to those which would result in that trait being favored gradually enough that we don't just kill off the whole population.
Here are the traits you can select, and be sure not to pick contradictory ones!
Longer tails
Shorter tails
Wide bodies
Narrow bodies
More color
Less color
"But Sarah, they'll still be Triops, and that's not evolution". I'm not going to argue about what evolution is with anyone in this particular thread; however, this experiment will continue until the experimental population and the control population are recognizably distinct from each other, or when the control population and the experimental population can no longer interbreed. "How long do you think that'd take, Sarah?" Years; I'm prepared to continue this experiment for a decade, posting the current progress every month on this site. This is probably going to be an aspect of my master's thesis.
"Sarah, are any Triops going to be killed because they don't have the traits we asked for?" Nope, the ones that don't exhibit the traits are put into a third tank. They can't be put into the control tank, though, because that'd likely skew the gene pool of that population to favor the opposite qualities of the experimental tank, which would make the results in the experimental tank seem more drastic than they really were. However, in case the control tank does have some genetic anomalies, I am going to carefully measure members of the first 2 generations to make sure the original average bodies are recorded.
So, any creationists want to have some fun with evolution?
