Here in Australia, farmers have been plagued by “locusts” for years. It’s a little insect creature that feeds on crops. For many years, farmers used a certain type of pesticide to counter them, and it worked remarkably well. Over the years, the product became less and less effective. Now, the product is useless, and covering your crops does nothing to stop the locusts munching away on it.
Why?
The T.V. told me (and because it was on T.V., it must be true) that it’s because when the pesticides were initially used, a small group of locusts had an in-built immunity to it that was in their genes. Over the years, those without the gene died off and those with it passed it along to their offspring. Eventually these locusts flourished and the pesticide is now useless.
If that’s not evolution, then please tell, what is it?
There are numerous examples of modern day evolution being clearly evident. I saw a television special (again, HAS to be true!) about Hawaii that explained about lava flow creating little “islands.” When the lava flows around a particular space,leaving it isolated, species evolve within that space very quickly.
I think this Chick tract will answer your question. Young-earth creationists have no problem with this sort of “micro-evolution.” But unless those grasshoppers turn into kangaroos, they figure there’s no evidence that natural selection leads to speciation.
Oh, but see, that’s microevolution. Which is, um, totally different from macroevolution.
See, I could get in my car and drive the two blocks from where I’m sitting now over to the mall to get a sandwich from the food court. But of course I could never get to Los Angeles that way.
Not to burst your bubble, but you don’t know what your talking about. The genes for a kangaroo don’t exist inside a grasshopper. Creationists think that without gods help no matter what the genes for a grasshopper will never be created. It would be more like driving to the moon, from a creationist perspective.
Okay, I don’t have anything specifically for kangaroos and grasshoppers. But here’s a National Institutes of Mental Health press release discussing genes for biological clocks which are found in fruit flies, mice, and possibly people. This National Institutes of Health press release talks some more about how surprisingly (or not-so-surprisingly) many similarities there are between the fruit fly and human genomes. Various news reports, like this one, repeat the statistic that humans and fruit flies share 80% of their genes.
I can see having similar genes, but are the genes exactly identical? If not, would this just show that that life on this planet follows the same genetic track, instead of identical traits?
There are variations in the genes; the corresponding genes of a human and a chimpanzee will be more similar than the corresponding genes of a human and a dog, which will in turn be more similar than the corresponding genes of a human and a fruit fly. There can also be homologies in the order in which genes occur, as well as homologies in the individual genes. There are similar patterns in the proteins for which the genes code.
In response to the OP. Technically the situation described in the OP isn’t evolution. No new genes have found there way into the locust populations due to mutation or whatever. The genes were always there in some individuals and have become widespread due to environmental selection. It’s another example of natural selection, and very similar to the famous peppered moth example discussed here recently. Now if the locusts didn’t have these genes available at the onset of spraying with carbamates, and they arose spontaneously as the result of mutation and spread throughout the entire populaion then this would be evolution. Exactly this type of evolution has been demonstrated in auxotrophic microbes, but the example of locusts given by the OP is not relevant to evolution.
To answer the question ‘If that’s not evolution, then please tell, what is it?’ the answer is ‘It’s natural selection, which is considered by Darwinists to be the prime driving force behind evolutionary speciation, but it is not evolution in its own right.’
Fundamentalist Creationists have no problem with this because the locusts remain exactly as God made them, or at least exactly as God made some of them. No problem there.
Huh? I just found a bunch of references–college lecture notes and so on–which say “evolution is defined as a change in gene frequency within a population” and variants thereof.
I imagine it’s an educated guess. However, nota bene, the locusts don’t have genes for pesticides, rather they have some traits which just happen to confer some resistance to whatever compounds the pesticides are based on. The locusts with such trait(s)likely always had them, although a chance mutation luckily coninciding with the use of pesticides might also be the case. However, all in all, the resistant locusts probably were always around.
You really do have an unfortunate habit of either not reading or not understanding the OP Ben.
Understand now? I would have thought you would have enough knowledge of natural selection torealise this was the likely case even without this however. I never said, the locusts never had genes for pesticides and I can’t imagine why a professional biochemist like yourself would assume that they would have. They may have had genes that countered naturally occurring plant toxins that are also anti-cholinesterase compounds. More likely the variation in the structure of neurotransmitters was always within the population due to random mutation, and those that carried receptors that didn’t respond strongly to the chemicals survived. Apparently that’s been the major cause of resistance to these compounds in other insects.
MEBuckner
I’m not going to argue your definition, but it seems exceptionally broad, and by using it immigration, emigration, deaths, the birth of any individual, or even the production of a clone, results in provable, demonstrable evolution, since they change the gene frequencies in a population. Like I say, I won’t argue it’s correctness, however I don’t think this is the definition of evolution that the Doc Moss was referring to in the OP since I can’t think of many creationists who would argue that gene frequency changes within populations.
My definition from Henderson’s Dictionary of Biological Terms says “the gradual development of organisms from pre-existing organisms since the beginning of life.”. The New Oxford Dictionary of English states “noun [mass noun] 1 the process by which different kinds of living organism are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth.”
None of that going on here that I can see. The locusts are exactly the same organisms they were when spraying commenced. Nothing has developed. That’s why I said that ‘Technically the situation described in the OP isn’t evolution’. I’ll stand by my definition, though you are free to use other broader definitions of evolution if you wish.
