Stanford Medicine Magazine: Something Fishy Is Going On

[Kyuuketsuki]

This is interesting:

Research On Sticklebacks Blows Anti-Evolution Arguments Out Of The Water
by
AMY ADAMS

More than 10,000 years ago glaciers covered the land, and a 4-inch, heavily armoured fish called the threespine stickleback cruised the ocean waters, gobbling up larvae and other prey. These fish were ubiquitous coastal denizens throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

Then something potentially tragic happened â€" the ice age ended and glaciers began to recede. Groups of sticklebacks swam up newly formed streams and became stranded in the many freshwater lakes that sprang up in the trail of the ebbing glaciers. The fish, once suited for an ocean environment, had to adapt or die.

Sticklebacks competed for food and mates and struggled to avoid predators and parasites in their new environments. These forces shaped which fish survived and reproduced. In lakes with quick predators, the smallest, sleekest sticklebacks prevailed. In other environments, slower, bottom-dwelling sticklebacks were best able to avoid predators. Still other populations developed bright colours, new ways of feeding or the ability to cope with more or less salt in the water. In all, sticklebacks became so diverse that naturalists originally divided them into 40 different species.               

Some adaptations were particularly remarkable â€" some fish populations lost entire fins, completely rearranged their jaws, doubled their number of teeth or shed their armoured plates. Creationists might say that God gave those sticklebacks the tools they needed to survive. Most biologists say, What a gorgeous example of evolution at work.

[Read The Rest Of The Article Here]

Kyu

[DennisK]

Thanks for the article, Kyu.  Very interesting.

One could argue that god put them on Earth as bait to lure us into doubt?  I just blew your mind "out of the water"'!  Mark another score for creationists!  Game, set, match (or in creationists' terms:  car, possum, lunch)!*

    * the part of the "creationist" was performed by DennisK. (this has been his first and final performance, maybe.)

[curiosityandthecat]

One could argue that god put them on Earth as bait to lure us into doubt?

Then God is a complete douche.  

[DennisK]

Hear, hear!  god IS a complete douche!

[curiosityandthecat]

[Kyuuketsuki]

Heretics!!!

Very funny heretics but blasphemers & heretics all the same  

Kyu

[PipeBox]

Heretics!!!

Very funny heretics but blasphemers & heretics all the same  

Kyu

I prefer to be sacrilegious.  

[karadan]

I just remembered something from A-level biology...

The cabbage white butterfly showed signs of rapid evolution to combat the climbing pollution in the UK in the early 1900's. There was a forest outside sheffield which had lots of silver birch trees (all of this is from memory so i may have got the species of tree incorrect - they were white anyway). The cabbage white used to sit on these trees because it afforded them a decent level of camoflage. When Sheffield became industrialised, the local pollution turned the bark of the silver birch trees a dark brown. Lots of cabbage whites started to get picked off by the birds as they were now highly visible on the brown trees. Within a couple of generations 90% of the cabbage white population was now brown.

Survival of the fittest is great!

[Kyuuketsuki]

The cabbage white butterfly showed signs of rapid evolution to combat the climbing pollution in the UK in the early 1900's. There was a forest outside sheffield which had lots of silver birch trees (all of this is from memory so i may have got the species of tree incorrect - they were white anyway). The cabbage white used to sit on these trees because it afforded them a decent level of camoflage. When Sheffield became industrialised, the local pollution turned the bark of the silver birch trees a dark brown. Lots of cabbage whites started to get picked off by the birds as they were now highly visible on the brown trees. Within a couple of generations 90% of the cabbage white population was now brown.

Creationists will claim that is just adaptation (or "micro-evolution" ... grr ... spit!) and not speciation (or "macro-evolution" ... grrr, snarl ... spit, spit!!!!) but it doesn't take a genius to realise that adaptation (small change) + adaptation + adaptation + adaptation + adaptation + adaptation (and so on) results eventually in speciation (big change) and if it doesn't then someone needs to say exactly what the mechanism is that stops successive small changes becoming big ones (and I guess that's where creationists could use that genius).

Kyu