ERV evidence for pastor with a lawyer's mind

Thank you T Aquaticus…I like that language analogy.

Now my question was more focused on the idea of on- going stasis. As I understand the phenomenon of stasis, it is the status of a species to maintain itself intact not being substantially changed by evolution into another species. And such stasis in the fossil record was the reason (largely) for Gould’s advancement of the argument for “punctuated equilibrium” …OK, I’m sort of taking off on that idea and asking this question…in my previous post I postulate the idea using horse to hippo asking if such a LIVING example of evolution exists. Here it is again in another formulation. And trust me, I’m not trying to incite or make anyone mad: I’m really trying to get information and if it is non existent … well, it is what it is. So here it is again: Are there any “living” creatures (I’m not asking a fossil question) or plants that can show a gradual change that demonstrate slow change (and are now living) that demonstrate discrete change so that one can identify enough changes in “advanced” individuals, so that the changes cumulatively can be shown to have created a new species? This would require not four or five similar looking individuals and then a jump…I’m wanting to know a stasis question answered…are there living individuals that show a lineage such that a new species can be seen … living… that demonstrates progress from one species to a clearly different species. Given the phenomenon of stasis, I think the question is not absurd. I doubt if an illustration can be shown but I ask here on this forum because the writers are very knowledgeable and understanding of a rather slow guy like me.

Hmmm…Look up studies on the planktonic foraminifera.Their plentitude and ready fossilization seem to allow solid historical data on evolutionary differentiation.

From what I read in “Finding Darwin’s God” Gould’s punctuated equilibrium has been deflated. But I am not a biologist, I only act like one on the internet.

There are several examples on the page I linked in my post above. I like the example of the cichlid fish. The new species might actually be able to interbreed with the parent population but behavior changes prevent the fish from making whoopee. It can be this sort of subtle change that leads to a new species.

This was an interesting story I read a couple of years ago:

https://news.utexas.edu/2014/10/23/anole-lizards-evolution-florida

And another lizard story from a few years prior:

Cichlid fish are a treasure trove of evolution in process. And another story with some guppies:

http://www.guppyevolution.org/science/

Deflated is a pretty good word choice, Bill. There are certainly periods of more rapid evolutionary change, but those periods are still measured in millions of years (and not four thousand!)

Your questions are often based on flawed premises, and that explains why they are sometimes hard to answer. In this case, I think I understand you to be asking about examples of rapid speciation that have occurred fast enough to have been observed in over human history. I may be wrong, though: maybe you are asking about currently living species and how they came about over the long stretches of time that is required for “normal” speciation. Either way, stasis is not really relevant. Sometimes there is rapid morphological change (i.e., change in physical form) in a lineage, and sometimes there’s very slow change, and sometimes there’s no change at all, for eons. I don’t see how that makes a question about rapid speciation more or less reasonable. Maybe it would be helpful to think about plate tectonics or the formation of mountains or river deltas. We know these things happen and we know a bit about how, but that doesn’t mean they always happen everywhere, and it doesn’t mean they always happen at the same speed.

If you are looking for examples of speciation (or the processes that lead to it) happening rapidly and observably in living species, here is a reading list. These are examples of great scientific investigations, some involving decades of work and some involving experimentation in the wild. All of them examine rapid morphological change. The links go to basic overviews, but there are tons of articles on each of these topics that can keep you transfixed for days.

Guppies in Trinidad: rapid evolution and experiments involving “transplantation” of populations between habitats
Anole lizards in the Caribbean: one famous lab at Harvard is led by author of a very recent book on evolution and convergence
Stickleback fish in lakes and rivers all over the continent
Corn and teosinte (my own blog, from 10 years ago, great story)
Darwin’s finches (Peter and Rosemary Grant, two titans of evolutionary biology; the book about them won the Pulitzer almost 25 years ago)
Cichlid fishes in African rift lakes
Nearly instantaneous speciation in plants
Various populations on the “sky islands” of Southeastern Arizona

My opinion is that only for very specific religious reasons would anyone even wonder about whether speciation happens or whether living species descend from ancestral species that were different from them. I don’t mean to claim that you are expressing real skepticism, but I do mean to say that there is no reasonable cause for doubt. Mountains form, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, by the accumulation of change. So do species. It’s not mysterious.

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Regarding existing species that are evolved from one another, it requires a lot of time so it is difficult to see from our limited view, but a fascinating example is perhaps seen with brown (grizzly) bears and polar bears. Polar bears have only separated into a sub species over the past 100k years or so , but given longer in separation might well totally separate into a new species. However with climate change ad melting ice, the subspecies of polar bears may be absorbed back in the population of brown bears and go “extinct” though some of their genes may live on.

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Here are a couple of papers from a few years ago on rapid (EXTREMELY rapid) speciation occurring due to intense natural selection (divergent selection; the phenomenon is called ecological speciation).
In plants on Mt. Etna
In fish in the Baltic

This has been seen in sticklebacks too, and recently examined at the genomic level.

Note that guppies, cichlids, and sticklebacks are all different fish.

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No, it would be not exhibiting significant changes in allele frequencies.

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You’re welcome. Just don’t believe anyone who describes it as mere similarity.

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Thank you Argon.
Now please remember, through my posts above, and often misunderstood, I’m not … repeat not… asking a differentiation within “kind” question. I’m asking a transition from one species to another species question.
But I will look at your suggested illustration.
Everyone has been very helpful in helping me understand and answer some of my questions.

Several of us have put forward examples of speciation either in progress or having already occurred. This is not a detailed account, but yet another link for several examples of observed speciation.

http://www.darwinwasright.org/observations_speciation.html

If you are looking for broader speciation events, it will be important for you to define what “kind” means.

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I understand, but realize that the differentiation within the made up non scientific “kind” is that it is first step to moving to a new species, with more time required to do so, by which time the original species is likely extinct. We see the leaves and buds, not the stems.

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If a species is well adapted to its environment then there are fewer and fewer changes that would increase fitness. This does tend to promote stasis.[quote=“senatorthomas, post:45, topic:36182”]
Are there any “living” creatures (I’m not asking a fossil question) or plants that can show a gradual change that demonstrate slow change (and are now living) that demonstrate discrete change so that one can identify enough changes in “advanced” individuals, so that the changes cumulatively can be shown to have created a new species?
[/quote]

There are many known examples of observed speciation, here and here. We have seen the process of one population dividing and turning into two populations that don’t interbreed or only rarely interbreed. We also have examples of domesticated species, such as horses and donkeys. Due to different mutations accumulating in each branch, the horse and the donkey can no longer produce fertile offspring. They are two different species.

Another interesting example is lab mice. In the past, scientists set up their own inbreeding colonies of mice to use in the lab. Some of these colonies of mice were established decades ago. Some decided to look at their genomes, and they found that those colonies are evolving their own genomes, accumulating different mutations in each colony. Those papers can be found here and here.

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Try “Family”. Maybe that narrowing gets me what I’d like to know. Thank you.

You are terrific. Thank you for your insights and links.

The family Hominidae is believed to have diverged from other primates between 4.5 - 6 million years ago and DNA sequences are well over 90% similar between humans and the closest primate relatives. With time frames like this, it will be a tall order to physically observe entire families diverging. Observation of changes at this level can only be done indirectly through genomic or fossil data.

Thank you sir. That basically corresponds to most assessments I’ve been reading. I was inquiring not about human ancestry alone … if you followed my inquiry it was, given the phenomenon of stasis, if in ANY plant or creature we can see discrete change from individual stasis number 1, then number 2 etc. I use stasis because that gives a “living fossil” to compare and if we have enough stasis examples exemplifying the progression then there is much less doubt as to the reality of movement from variety within a species (or family if one prefers a narrower subject class) to another identifiable family. Fossils (which you suggest) just seem be a less adequate form of such proof. And the target, when studying fossils, often seem to keep moving that confuses dating the items under observation as well as dating them…even human, where, for instance, we find Laetoli footprints press the time frame for fully developed humans back to 3.7 million years. Or whale evolution where there seems to be a continuum, but Rodhocetus must be removed now that we know Rodhocetus did not have a tail fluke or flippers. My point is that the target with fossils is a moving one and one trying to find his way can get very frustrated.

I observe all that because you mentioned “fossils” as one source for showing what I have been asking for … a few sure fire examples of transition from one family to another; or I asked “kind” or “species”. And I just asked if anyone knew of a “stasis” example of many living fossils that would demonstrate transition.

One reply to me pointed out that the very best evidence is in the genetics. I’ve been reading a lot there too in the past five years. What a maze. It is a maze and amazing. I mean, how complicated. I’ve studies lots of facets of “law” and thought some of that was tricky; not like genetics. The old formulation of neo-darwinism that I was taught when I was 16 years old is now apparently dated and nearly trivial if not flat out wrong. It used to be; gene mutation plus natural selection plus time = evolution into new species.

But with the advent of the likes of James Shapiro and Denis Noble who are evolutionists but anti the neo-darwinism of the “selfish gene” mentality, I perceive a new wave is coming that will relegate the old mutation idea that essentially with natural selection gives us evolution…a thing of the past.

The point is this; if the best evidence for Modern Synthesis is found in genetics then the new-darwinists have, along with their evidence (ERV, similarity between genes of human and chimp, intron-exon, etc)…along with those examples of evidence for common decent there is a two edged sword that exists…namely… now, I mean in 2017, we see “networks” at work within the Genome, with a sophistication unimaginable 50 years ago. It is not just “the” genetic code but multiple inter related codes and crisscrossing relationships and interactions; apparently thousands of those interactions working in tandem. I’m currently immersed in one of Shapiro’s papers, a pdf available on line, “How life changes itself; The Read-Write genome” and the sophistication I saw in the cell when a young biology student and was so amazed with, pales in comparison to what we know today. The totality is breath taking; mind boggling.

Well said, but a minor correction here. The Laetoli footprints were likely made by Australopithecus afarensis. Even though bipedal with a human-like foot, they were far from fully developed humans. Fully developed humans, meaning H. sapiens physically indistinguishable from us, are usually called “Anatomically Modern Humans,” but they do not show up until ~200,000 years ago. This can get a little confusing because many resources, like the Smithsonian National Museum of History website on human evolution, seem to call almost every hominid “early humans,” which is a slightly misleading bit of propaganda, if you ask me. (They didn’t!)

Agreed! Although there are explainable scientific observations at every step along the way, the sheer complexity behind it suggests (to me, at least) an explanation beyond those explainable scientific observations.

I’m going to have to respectfully disagree a bit here. What Shapiro and Noble propose is not a new paradigm, but more of a recognition (and not a unique one) that there is a lot more to evolution than DNA mutation and selection. The thought that you mentioned, “gene mutation plus natural selection plus time = evolution” was an easy way for the general public to perceive evolution, but this has not been the working paradigm for quite some time.

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