Lizard evolution

[Mallon]

This is really cool. Rapid evolution of "new information" in action: scientists have demonstrated the evolution of cecal valves in lizards, concomitant with their switch from insectivory to herbivory, in just 36 years.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080421-lizard-evolution.html

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/still_just_a_lizard.php

The cecal valves are an evolutionary novelty, a brand new feature not present in the ancestral population and newly evolved in these lizards. That's important. This is more than a simple quantitative change, but is actually an observed qualitative change in a population, the appearance of a new morphological structure.
Evolution created something new, and it did it quickly (about 30 generations), and the appearance was documented. It's still just a lizard, but we expected nothing else — and it's now a lizard with novel adaptations for herbivory.

 

[Jimlarmore]

This is really cool. Rapid evolution of "new information" in action: scientists have demonstrated the evolution of cecal valves in lizards, concomitant with their switch from insectivory to herbivory, in just 36 years.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080421-lizard-evolution.html

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/still_just_a_lizard.php

The challenge of course is to show that this is anything other than an epigenetic change which is not associated with mutational influence. Otherwise is just a change within what the Bible calls "kinds" and does not reflect a macro-evolutionary modality.

God bless
Jim Larmore

 

[Mallon]

The challenge of course is to show that this is anything other than an epigenetic change which is not associated with mutational influence. Otherwise is just a change within what the Bible calls "kinds" and does not reflect a macro-evolutionary modality.

The challenge is only in the minds of neocreationists, who can't define what a biblical "kind" is anyway (probably because the word used in Genesis was never meant as a biological descriptor to begin with).

 

[gluadys]

The challenge of course is to show that this is anything other than an epigenetic change which is not associated with mutational influence. Otherwise is just a change within what the Bible calls "kinds" and does not reflect a macro-evolutionary modality.

God bless
Jim Larmore

But who is defining a "macro-evolutionary modality" as one that is not an epigenetic change and does not occur within the biblical kind?

Not biologists.

This is a creationist strawman. It is not what science understands as evolution--even macro-evolution.