Here’s something quite interesting (and scary). Harvard Medical School has produced a time-lapse video of bacteria reacting to increasingly potent anti-bacterial agents by mutating and surviving.
I’d like to show this to Ken Ham, who claims that no one has ever seen evolution in action. This video should be part of his Ark-ives.
As strawmen go, yours is not very effective. We’ve known for a long time that MICRO-evolution is a scientific fact.
MACRO-evolution, on the other hand, is perhaps the least-scientific theory ever devised. And prominent people have admitted as much. One of the Huxley family (I don’t remember which one) openly admitted that it makes no sense–but kept right on believing it, nevertheless.
Not a single cite or quote. Way to convince.
Ken Ham (and ninja Flyer) wouldn’t dispute that this illustrates micro-evolution (the evidence for that is indisputable), but those bacteria didn’t evolve together to form a multi-cellular creature with legs to stride over that toxic agar, now, did they (macro-evolution).
:smack:
I’d like to see the genetic analysis - were new genes formed by mutation, or was it a case of gene expression changing due to changing conditions - not that I doubt that mutation occurred, but as I understand it, antibiotic resistance is not necessarily entirely genetic, in the sense that gene modification is required.
There is no broadly accepted or well-defined distinction between “microevolution” and “macroevolution”, and the theory of natural selection (Darwin’s “descent with modification”) is one of the most strongly validated and documented theories in science, to the degree that the only way to deny the validity is to divert discussion from fact to errant speculation or outright lie about the extent and depth of observations across multiple disciplines from paleontology to molecular biology.
What some unspecified member of the “the Huxley family” may or may not have said is completely immaterial, as the theory of natural selection and the factual documentation of the evolution of species is not the purview of a single family or small cartel of individual scientists. The essential facts of evolutionary history and mutability of biology at the genetic level are accessible to anyone who spends the time to become educated in the essential sciences.
As for the experiment presented by the o.p., this is hardly novel. The evolution of phototrophic bacteria to optimize to a defined spectrum of light has long been an example of observable selection in response to controlled changes in environment. The reason we can’t observe speciation in nature is because of the long time periods over which it typically occurs, but we can observe phenotype shifts in populations of insects or birds within a few decades, and of course the forced selection from controlled breeding and culling.
Stranger
Millions of fossils say otherwise.
We have known for a long time the scientific fact that evolution exists…but we also know that there is no scientific divide that separates it into “MICRO” and “MACRO” categories.
Much more impressive than what some Huxley may have said is this:
Actually the experiment described in the OP is similar to one I helped carry out about 60 years ago. We got a flask of E. coli growing until it clouded up. Then we inoculated the flask with a bacteriophage (name means bacteria eater–this was a so-called T-virus, don’t recall which one) and the next day, the flask cleared and the bottom was filled with dead bacteria. But in another day, the bacteria came back from a few that had survived, presumably from a mutation ( we didn’t know about methylation in those days) and the flask clouded again. Then a mutated virus grew and the flask cleared again. By this time, there were not enough nutrients and too many waste products for the experiment to continue, but it really did illustrate evolution in action.
If we ever did devise an experiment that formed a creature with legs, some people would say, “That’s not REAL evolution – it didn’t become a dog or cat!”
macro-evolution IS micro evolution, just more of it and for longer…orders of magnitude longer.
Throw in population islands due to physical or social separation and macro-evolution is not only possible, it is almost certain.
There’s no micro or macro Evolution, there’s Evolution, period.
It’s like arguing that the micro gravity on an asteroid and the macro gravity on Earth are different things.
Well I’ve learned something from this thread, but it’s not about evolution per se.
Two farthings for your thoughts, kind Sir.
I dare not risk the mod warning
Mods don’t read my PMs.
Indeed. If you can observe microevolution over 11 days, imagine how much evolution could happen in 100,000 years, or 100 million.
Are you talking about this? Creationism: Lies Creationists Tell: The Julian Huxley Lie
Fuck that. Imagine 1 year, a decade, or a century. Maybe Noah could have repopulated the world from his ark.*