Arete

No they did not. You misread or misunderstood the article. It cites bacterial-bacterial HGT only. http://www.scienceda...11101125958.htm Original peer reviewed paper the science daily article is about: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10571.html

I know I'm just feeding the troll but for the purposes of those who might end up here via google: Natural selection is a very simple concept. 1) Due to random mutations in genotypes, there's a range of phenotypes in a given population. 2) Due to a myriad of environmental parameters affecting that population, certain phenotypes are more reproductively successful than others. 3) The genotypes of the next generation (and thus the heritable portions of the phenotype) are influenced by this differential success and thus the population, through generations, evolves. This theory has been tested in a scientific framework countless times, with even more replications, by thousands of people all over the globe and not once has there been a result which significantly rejects the fundamental principles of the theory. That's an exceptionally large body of support... however if you or someone else could find an empirically supported alternative that better explains our large body of observations, demonstrate that it works and how it works - it would mean all us evolutionary biologists would have a fair bit of hat eating to do, but on the flip side it would make it a very interesting time to be working in the field.

This might be nit picking, but no evolutionary biologist worth noting believes that either - chimps and humans evolved from a common ancestor. This ancestor was neither chimp or human, and a number of intermediate organisms have existed (as documented in the fossil record) between the two modern states and that common ancestor - no one sensible is suggesting a chimp gave birth to a human one day. http://en.wikipedia....olution_fossils In the strict scientific sense, evolution is a continuous process, the division into macro (e.g. speciation) and micro evolution (population level change) is an artificially applied concept. Given that speciation due to divergent selection has actually been experimentally modelled and directly observed, I would personally find it hard to reconcile a viewpoint that speciation cannot occur, and the line drawn between micro and macro evolution becomes a lot more subjective and blurred. I'm not challenging your views - they're your business, but I am wondering where you draw the line? http://www.jstor.org/pss/2410209, http://www.genetics....184/2/401.short, http://www.annualrev...urnalCode=genet

"It is often stated" is an incredibly poor way to start an argument, particularly in science - try citing somewhere where the statement is actually made that way we can all see what the original statement was made in context to and probably have a better chance of understanding your topic. Topic 1: Evolutionary selection ONLY applies to traits you can pass on to your children, or ones that assist them in surviving. For this reason, exceptional longevity is not necessarily selected for. I.e. an 80 year old woman and a 100 year old woman have had equal opportunity to breed and raise children, thus living for the extra 20 years that the older woman has no evolutionary advantage... make sense? Topic 2: It may have been described poorly by whoever described it to you - they may have been referring to the presence of an evolutionary equilibrium. (examples) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/game-evolutionary/ To take a hypothetical approach - we have a flock of sheep predated by a wolf. a) Obviously the sheep are at an evolutionary advantage (i.e. they have a higher potential to create more offspring than other sheep) if they can outrun the wolf. b)However running fast comes with an evolutionary cost (e.g. higher energy requirements - you need more food and thus are more likely to starve t death if food becomes scare and not get to pass on your genes) c) So, evolutionarily speaking, the optimal phenotype to have is one that allows you to outrun the wolf, but has minimal energy requirements - i.e. the sheep that can "just outrun" the wolf. d) The overriding caveat is that wolves also evolve, so that optimal point is always changing. vice versa works for the wolf - you want to be fast enough to regularly catch a sheep, but not so fast you have excess energy requirements.

We've known that bacteria experience a lot more gene flow between independent lineages than eukaryotes for a long time. The way prokaryotic cell division takes place means there's a lot fewer constraints on combining genetic information from different individuals/lineages/species than there is in eukaryotes. http://en.wikipedia....ial_conjugation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitosis The resultant article therefore doesn't raise any scientific surprises or revelations. From previous posts, I'm going to infer that you think you're raising a problem for evolutionary theory (apologies if I'm mistaken) which it isn't. The issue you're raising is (well, was) a problem for the concept of species, which is related to evolution, but distinct. The use of reproductive isolation as a strict criterion for defining species is problematic and for this reason was largely discarded under the biological species concept proposed by Mayr in the 1940's. http://en.wikipedia....species_concept http://www.blackwell...ies_concept.asp Since then the concept has undergone a huge amount of debate, conjecture and refinement to emerge as the current best practice concept - The general lineage species concept (GLSC). http://sysbio.oxford.../56/6/879.short http://plato.stanfor...ntries/species/ In short, the GLSC defines a species as a metapopulation of organisms with a distinct evolutionary history. The means by which we can identify these metapopulation lineages - genetic distinctiveness, moprhological distinctiveness, reproductive isolation from relateds metapopulations, distinct ecological requirement etc ad infinitum are secondary operational criteria by which metapopulations are discovered and defined but not strict criteria defining what a species is. Hope that adds a bit of clarity - it's a complex topic with a long history of conjecture and debate

Genomic sequencing will not tell you anything about the basics of evolutionary theory that common garden experimentation/field observation/chromosomal assays/allozymes/existing molecular data hasn't already confirmed thousands of times over.

Natural selection is a very simple concept. 1) Due to random mutations in genotypes, there's a range of phenotypes in a given population. 2) Due to a myriad of environmental parameters affecting that population, certain phenotypes are more reproductively successful than others. 3) The genotypes of the next generation (and thus the heritable portions of the phenotype) are influenced by this differential success and thus the population, through generations, evolves. That's really it. All the models of evolution - divergent selection, purifying selection, directional selection etc are all variations or continuations of the same theme. Co-evolution, convergent evolution, parallel evolution, mosaic evolution, etc all involve assumptions regarding the environmental parameters and directionality of increased fecundity, but also rely on the same, fundamental principle. The concept of "choice" is not part of the scientific theory.

As a staunch secularist, this is a fundamental disconnect. No evangelism method is acceptable to me. I strongly support everyone else's right to their religious views (and even AiE's right to his, despite the fact I find them abhorrent). Having billboards, advertisements, pamphlets stuffed under my car's wipers, people knocking on my door, etc. is a direct affront to that right (this goes for atheistic evangelism as well). As much as it is someone else's right to build a church and worship in it, it is MY right to express my spirituality in my way without having to be regularly confronted with someone either trying to convince me to do it their way, publicly condemning me to hell for no doing it their way, trying to change the laws so I have to live by their moral code... etc. So IMHO, have a church, worship whoever you want in it, feel free to leave the doors open so anyone interested in sharing spirituality with you in your way can come and do so. The "word of God" is right down the street if I want to hear it. I simply want those who subscribe to a particular version of spirituality to respect my right NOT to subscribe to it as much as I respect theirs to do so.

Self-regulation worked great for BP!... Oh wait, no it failed spectacularly, both environmentally and economically. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill Environmental degradation has generally not been included as a cost of doing business in the past, yet it is a cost and one that has to be answered for eventually. As a result, the general public tends to end up meeting the costs of a private entities' profit. As a member of the general public, I personally object to living with or cleaning up someone else's mess so they can make money. If the cost of meeting environmental regulations means your business model is unprofitable, your business model is unprofitable full stop and you shouldn't be in business.

You presented a hypothesis, which makes a prediction which people on this board suggested could be verified by observation. Observation yielded results contrary to prediction and thus you hypothesis is not supportable. Welcome to science, where the trash can of ideas that didn't work out if considerably fuller than those that do.

Generally, the assumption of reproductive isolation between chimps and humans (and bird species) is reasonably sound. HGT through a retrovirus is likely to minute/undetectable on the genomic scale: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/11/276

1. Mutation rates are subject to differences based on organism, gene and time, so direct comparison between birds and homonids is not appropriate e.g. http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/7/1561.short 2. Most mutations are silent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_mutation and thus don't result in phenotypic changes. 3. Phenotypically divergent species can share most of the same genes (e.g. "genomic islands of speciation" model) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16076241 4. Morphologically indistinguishable species can be genetically divergent. (e.g. cryptic species http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptic_species_complex) 5. Genetic drift means reproductively isolated species accumulate more genetic divergence the longer they have been isolated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_drift 6. Selective sweeps will cause rapid phenotypic differentiation whilst leaving most of the genome identical http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_sweep Thus an expectation of a linear, direct correlation with phenotypic divergence and genetic divergence is no founded

For clarification, you're suggesting that somehow, pebbles accrete material in concentric layers? If so: First pebbles with no striations and no evidence of depositional history: Lateral, rather than concentric striations in this pebble: Oh noes, cross bedding in a pebble... Concentric accretion hypothesis broken! Basic geomorphology to the rescue Igneous rock: http://en.wikipedia....ki/Igneous_rock Beaches: http://w3.salemstate...s214_beach1.htm Vertical Accretion: http://sepmstrata.or...-Formation.html Cross bedding: http://en.wikipedia....i/Cross-bedding Pebbles, can be made up of any rock material, containing striations, or not. Most rocks of sedimentary class will contain signatures of accretion which - being not concentric, contradict your hypothesis. We have a series of theories which substantiate all observed patterns. Without meaning to disrespect in any way, your hypothesis is rather strongly and conclusively refuted through field observation and is thus a speculation.

I work as an evolutionary biologist - in particular, using evolutionary models and theory in epidemiology. I personally think that spirituality belongs in the personal sphere. i.e. each person's spirituality is their own business and it's an intrinsic right to reconcile your version of God or lack thereof with your personal perception of the world around you. As much as wish I could avoid involvement and simply get on with doing research that potentially helps mankind, the truth is we, as the scientific community have to involve ourselves. First, the example here of fabricating a den of immorality based on non-truths and then using it to lay blame on other people for a natural disaster is intellectually dishonest and morally reprehensible. Using your own fundamental religious beliefs in order to make justifications of that ilk is, at least in my humble opinion as offensive as using race, gender, sexual orientation to make similar condemnations and shouldn't be tolerated in a civilised society. Second, deflecting blame in such a manner detracts from efforts that can make a tangible, positive difference to the people affected by such a disaster. Were' not far away from the suggestion that predicting earthquakes, setting up warning systems, modifying human settlement and behaviour to minimise the chances of such an event in the future is contrary to "God's will" and should devote our attentions to forcing, in global terms, a minority group's moral and religious agenda on others to prevent God doing it again. Again, in my humble opinion, such a distraction would be a second tragedy all over again. The example in this thread is minor - I currently experience religion coming at science in the classroom, ethics committees, through politics, laws and funding agencies. People with similar mindsets to Aristarchus in Exile are gunning for us. If we don't defend ourselves, our research and our philosophies from what is in reality extreme minority agendas, we could end up paying dearly for it. It's not people like Aristarchus in Exile we need to change the minds of - that's impossible. What we do need to do is through outreach, improved public communication and education and publicly confronting and exposing the agendas of fundamental religion, show the general public what our goals are, how it helps society and how detrimental the effects of curtailing scientific endeavour with fundamental religion are on broader society.

Did you just cite personal experience in Canada to totally dismiss all the available academic, NGO, governmental and UN evidence regarding human trafficking and slavery in a place in another hemisphere, you can't even spell the name of, in order to condemn some of the most vulnerable and exploited people in the world for immorality? And you expect to be taken seriously on the topic of ethics? Dates are listed after each quote but for your convenience I'll note Einstein's age at the time of each: 1. 31 2. 65 3. 55 4. 67 5. 48

Wrong again. Einstein also said: “I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.” Albert Einstein, upon being asked if he believed in God by Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue, New York, April 24, 1921, published in the New York Times, April 25, 1929 “I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”Albert Einstein, letter to a Baptist pastor in 1953; “It is quite possible that we can do greater things than Jesus, for what is written in the Bible about him is poetically embellished.”Albert Einstein; quoted in W. I. Hermanns, "A Talk with Einstein," October 1943, “I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.”Albert Einstein, quoted in The New York Times obituary, April 19, 1955; “Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being.”Albert Einstein in response to a child who had written him in 1936 and asked if scientists pray; “The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously.”Albert Einstein, letter to Hoffman and Dukas, 1946; “For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts.”Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1970, p. 25. http://www.stephenja...s_einstein.html

Yes the silver fox experiment. It's pretty famous in the world of animal behaviour. As domestic dogs are descended from wolves and not foxes, the results of the silver fox experiment are correlate-able, but not directly comparable to domestic dogs - it's an independent domestication event. Artificial selection in dog breed marks one of the starkest deviations from natural selection in existence. In which many traits in dog breeds which would be otherwise extremely deleterious have been selected for - sloping hindquarters in the German Shepard, malformed brain cases in King Charles Spaniels, the ridge in a Rhodesian Ridgeback is actually a variant of spina bifida and the curl in a Pug's tail is a spinal malformity. So you have sanctioned selective breeding for certain traits which make no evolutionary sense and evolutionary principles don't necessarily apply. Second is that many traits that make a breed appropriate for historical tasks make them appropriate for modern tasks - guard dogs, protection dogs, police dogs, etc which leads to breed persistence. Also, traits in originally developed in dogs for one purpose can serve another - e.g. the loyalty to a master required for a dog to fight on command can make them very trainable for other tasks. Third is the misconception that certain breeds more readily attack. The stance of the AVMA and the CDC is that no one breed is more or less likely to bite than any other - environmental factors (training, socialisation, perception of threat etc) are much more important in the tendency to attack than genetic. HOWEVER of the the 4.7 million dog bites that happen per year, the average 16 that result in fatality do show breed trends with more powerful breeds (Pit-bulls, Rottwielers, Malamutes, St-Bernards, Great Danes etc.) due to a physiological ability to do more damage. A pit is not necessarily more likely to bite you than a Lab, but when it does it has the capability to hurt you more. http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/dog-bites/dogbite-factsheet.html http://www.avma.org/press/publichealth/dogbite/messpoints.asp In summary, while the likelihood of a dog attack being life threatening are exceptionally low, we still have potentially dangerous dogs because breeders select for traits that make a dog potentially dangerous, people want dogs with those traits and environment is more influential to the propensity of a dog to attack than genotype. If you're looking at it from a purely evolutionary angle, the only measure of success is fecundity. Gates has 2 children, Hawking 3, Johnson (the rock) 1, Bolla (the hulk) 2 (co wikipedia). Hawking is, evolutionarily speaking, the most successful.

Which was shown to be false. Prostitution is illegal in Thailand. http://en.wikipedia....ion_in_Thailand It isn't in Canada. http://en.wikipedia....ution_in_Canada A significant proportion of the women and children in the Thai sex industry are forced to work in it. Over half the women in the Thai sex industry are not from Thailand, many are trafficked from poorer, surrounding nations by organised crime rings. http://www.uri.edu/a...es/thailand.htm How is death by natural causes and lifestyle disease in any way comparable to a natural disaster? I'll give you the benefit of having noticed that all organisms expire. You openly suggested that 250 000 people were killed (245 000 of which didn't even live in Thailand, let alone Phuket) by God due to supposed immorality in Phuket. That's rather patently a judgement. That judgement is based on a series of gross exaggerations and blatant fallacies which you use to place those people at odds with your own personal belief system and moral code. You use that deviation as a basis to blame the victims of an indiscriminate natural disaster for their own misfortune. The inconsistencies and double standards in the justifications you've made leave your entire perspective on morality rather open to dismissal.

Firstly, you either need to brush up on your geography or actually read a bit about the natural disaster you've just managed to attribute blame for. Casualties in India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia outnumbered those in Thailand. Casualites were also suffered in Malaysia, Somalia, the Maldives, Tanzania, Myanmar, Yemen, Kenya and South Africa. Look at a map. Note relative geographic location to Phuket. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_and_tsunami Secondly, some basic knowledge on Phuket (pronounced "poo-ket" and derived from the Thai "buhkit" meaning hill, incidentally - bearing no relation to the English profanity pertaining to coitus): as an avid scuba diver I've visited, multiple times. I've taken my family there, (grandparents and all). It's the largest city in Southern Thailand, capital of Phuket province. Built on a major trading route between India and China. With over 3 million visitors annually it's major industry is TOURISM - it's renowned for it's beautiful beaches and as a stepping stone to the rest of the Thai-Malay archipelago. Most visitors to Phuket (like myself and my family) are there to enjoy the beach, the national parks on the Phuket island and some of the world's best scuba diving. If you ever visit, you'll find the average citizen of Phuket friendly, hospitable and not involved in the sex trade. However there is a sex industry with a red light district and unlike many parts of the world, it is highly visible. Most of the women involved originate from poor rural regions in Isaan province. Most of the customers of the industry in Phuket are foreign tourists. http://www.knowphuket.com/ So what it seems you've managed to do is take a particularly visible part of a global industry (I'd bet that a sex trade exists your location and cite a high likelihood that if it's major European or North American city its sex industry is considerably larger than Phuket's), which in this particular instance is an exploitative trade where transient, predominately Caucasian men exploit a poor, uneducated local population. You've then used an extreme level of hyperbole to claim that this sex industry is the predominant industry in the city, which it is not. Then you've managed to attribute blame for a widespread, indiscriminate natural disaster across the entire Indian Ocean to the fact that this industry and its participants do not subscribe to your personal belief system and moral viewpoints... if that is indeed what you're trying to say, such a comment is potentially interpretable as ignorant, self righteous, hypocritical and offensive.

It is plausible that functional genetic differentiation between individuals could result in your hypothetical observation. Say two people are observing the same object (subject A and B). It's reflecting a certain wavelength of light (Y). Light of wavelength Y is being absorbed by the eyes of subject A and B. Information pertaining to Y is gathered by the eye, transported to the brain and interpreted. In your model, it is then conveyed verbally between A and B. An assumption of the test you seem to make is that the verbal conveyance of either/both A and/or B will =/= Y. There's a number of plausible reasons for observing this result (if in fact you do observe it) all equally plausibly attributable to the environment or genotype. a) Phenotypic differences in A and B's eyes. b) Phenotypic differences in the transportation from the eye to the brain in A and B. c) Phenotypic differences in the brain's interpretation of information from the eyes in A or B. d) Cognitive/Learned differences in interpreting the brain's perception of Y. e) Cognitive/Learned differences in communicating Y. If you could control for environment (not sure how'd you'd manage this with human subjects), then get a positive result for the experiment (one twin verbally relates the observation of Y to be not Y) you could start trying to isolate the physical/cognitive cause of the discrepancy through examination of functional gene regions from each subject. Supporting the hypothesis relies on the assumption of a positive test and a genotypic explanation of the observation, however, so I personally wouldn't consider the hypothesis - as posed to be a great research concept in itself as making assumptions regarding the outcome of an experiment to pose new hypotheses and outcomes can bite one in the behind.

Hold the phone - are you attributing the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami - a natural disaster that indiscriminately killed a quarter of a million people and displaced tens of millions of people across the entire Indian Ocean region to a few naughty backpackers in the Thai town which is actually spelled Phuket?

At the individual scale, it's a rather simple question, insofar as that all one needs to ask is "Does being a member of a religion increase an individual's reproductive success?" The answer - for a large part of the world in the past and even now is an emphatic "yes" in that at least publicly adhering to a religion increases one's potential reproductive partners, their supportive community and thus the chance of having and successfully rearing offspring. Thus, being a member of a religion increases individual reproductive success and has and in some places, still does represent a successful evolutionary strategy. On a larger scale, does having a religious motivation increase the evolutionary success of a population? The answer again, at least in my opinion - yes. Motivated by religious ideals, populations of human have en masse been able to remove land and resources, enslave and marginalize other populations of humans, putting religious populations at an evolutionary advantage. At a species level, it's slightly more muddy. It can be argued that certain religious ideals lead to overpopulation, unequal resource distribution, etc and so on. It can be argued that religious ideals lead to the opposite through motivation of charitable behavior, planetary custodianship etc.

Ok, then I'm not sure what you're asking for. Yes you can induce genetic mutations by exposing an organism to a mutagen. High energy forms of radiation such as X-rays are capable of doing this, but are generally unsafe to use in a home laboratory setup. When exposing an organism to a mutagen, you are essentially "damaging" its DNA. This is why mutagens tend to cause cancer in organisms that are exposed to them and are by definition hazardous materials. X-rays are used to create mutations for evolutionary experiments in Drosophila, however because the most likely thing that happens when you damage an organism's DNA is it dies, many many flies need to be exposed before a non-lethal, phenotypically manifesting mutation is produced. By using an ant colony, you're restricting yourself to a single reproducing individual. You might need to irradiate thousands of colonies before you manage to mutate a queen in such a way that an observable mutation is caused. It might need to be millions before a behavioral mutation occurs. If you irradiate the entire colony, it will be impossible to rule out the fact you've just damaged the DNA of all the workers, giving them the equivalent of radiation sickness, creating a behavioral change completely irrelevant of adaptive evolution. Your experimental design isn't going to work. What's the motivation behind the experiment? We might be able to suggest more workable designs to answer the research question at hand.

Is this a school project? If so check with your teacher/instructor before conducting live animal experiments. 1) Since you have a single breeding individual in a colony (i.e. the queen) in terms of experimental design your proposal is not much different to using a single individual. The most likely outcome from mutagenic exposure is death. http://mostgene.org/gd/gdvol12f.htm In turn, the most likely outcome is a failed experiment. There's a reason scientists don't usually use ants as a model system for evolutionary experiments 2)Mutagens are dangerous substances. They will give you cancer, sterilize you, cause your children to have birth defects, etc and so on. A few are used in molecular labs and require dedicated equipment, nitrile gloves, face shields, lab smocks, fume hoods and special detergents to clean up afterwards. You can't really use them safely at home nor would anyone in their right mind want to. There's a lot of other experiments one can do with an ant colony, but exposing them to a mutagen in the hope you'll observe "adaptation" is not a realistic idea. You could look different substrate preferences, dietary experiments, set up a temperature/salinity/moisture gradient in the farm and observe, alter the circadian rhythm (lighting), etc.

You seem to be describing deleterious mutations. They happen all the time, e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/omim. No one ever argued that deleterious mutations do not occur and their existence does not prevent potentially advantageous mutations - i.e. selectively driven evolution. Your previous post stated : If I'm interpreting correctly what you're saying is that traits will follow directional selection to a point of equilibrium, where any mutation from the current form will be deleterious. This is false: 1) Environments change. What is selectively disadvantageous today might be selectively advantageous tomorrow. Continuing your giraffe example - say a disease decimates acaias in Africa and being tall no longer offers any advantage as the food is now grass on the ground. The shortest giraffes are at a selective advantage and thus contribute more to the gene pool of the next generation than the tallest. Giraffes get progressively shorter - a giraffe 2 foot shorter than the mean is at a distinct selective advantage. 2) Predicting every possible mutation, and the phenotypic outcome of that mutation is impossible. Not only are there a myriad of possibilities due to point SNP mutation, but recombination can render entire genes non functional or switch on silent gene copies, etc. Using your "cell cycle" example - are you saying there's no possible way a mutation could make the process of mitosis more efficient? It's simply not sensible to suggest that ANY mutation to a particular gene will be deleterious given the spatial and temporal variability of environmental selection and the sheer number of potential mutations. The presumption that paticular genes stop evolving as suggested in this part of your post: is simply not cohesive with evolutionary theory.