One of the most shrill arguments from alarmists is the idea that climate change will wipe out species because they can’t adapt. The claims run from polar bears to tortoises, to plants and coral. Yes, if we listen to these arguments, Nature so poorly equipped it’s creatures that they can’t adapt to a slightly warmer future.
Except when the last ice age ended, and it got warmer, and the saber-toothed cats got bigger because the prey got bigger…instead of disappearing due to “climate change”.
From the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
La Brea Tar Pit fossil research shows climate change drove evolution of Ice Age predators
LOS ANGELES — Concerns about climate change and its impact on the world around us are growing daily. New scientific studies at the La Brea Tar Pits are probing the link between climate warming and the evolution of Ice Age predators, attempting to predict how animals will respond to climate change today.
The La Brea Tar Pits are famous for the amazing array of Ice Age fossils found there, such as ground sloths, mammoths, and predators like saber-toothed cats and powerful dire wolves. But the climate during the end of the Ice Age (50,000-11,000 years ago) was unstable, with rapid warming and cooling. New research reported here has documented the impact of this climate change on La Brea predators for the first time.
Two new studies published by research associates at of the Page Museum document significant change over time in the skulls of both dire wolves and saber-toothed cats. “Different tar pits at La Brea accumulated at different times,” said F. Robin O’Keefe of Marshall University, lead author on the dire wolf study (Palaeontologia Electronica, April 9, 2014). “When we compare fossils deposited at different times, we see big changes. We can actually watch evolution happening.”
After the end of the last Ice Age, La Brea dire wolves became smaller and more graceful, adapting to take smaller prey as glaciers receded and climate warmed. This rapidly changing climate drove change in saber-toothed cats as well. “Saber-toothed cats show a clear correlation between climate and shape. Cats living after the end of the Ice Age are larger, and adapted to taking larger prey,” said Julie Meachen of Des Moines University, lead author on the sabertooth study (Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 2014).
The two scientists discuss their work in a video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK_DKSNbgR4&feature=youtu.be
“We can see animals adapting to a warming climate at La Brea,” said O’Keefe. “Then humans show up and all the big ones disappear. We haven’t been able to establish causality there yet. But we are working on it.”
The emerging links between climate change and evolution needs further study. There are many unanswered questions; such as why predators change in the ways that they do, the importance of factors other than climate, and whether the arrival of humans played a role in the mass extinction at the end of the Ice Age. “There is much work to be done on the specimens from the tar pits. We are working actively to bring together the researchers and resources needed to expand on these discoveries,” says John Harris, chief curator at the Page Museum. “Climate change is a pressing issue for all of us, and we must take advantage of what Rancho La Brea can teach us about how ecosystems react to it.”
O’Keefe, F. R., W. J. Binder, S. R. Frost, R. W. Sadleir, and B. Van Valkenburgh. 2014. Cranial morphometrics of the dire wolf, Canis dirus, at Rancho La Brea: temporal variability and its links to nutrient stress and climate. Palaeontologia Electronica.
Palaeontologia Electronica was the first peer-reviewed online paleontology journal in the world and has been in publication for 17 years. On April 9, visit palaeo-electronica.org/content/2014/723-canis-dirus-craniometrics
Meachen, J. A., F. R. O’Keefe, and R. W. Sadleir. 2014. Evolution in the sabre-tooth cat, Smilodon fatalis, in response to Pleistocene climate change. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 27: 714-723. Visit http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jeb.12340/abstract
About the Natural History Family of Museums
The Natural History Family of Museums includes the NHM, the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits (Hancock Park/Mid-Wilshire), and the William S. Hart Park and Museum (Newhall, California). The Family of Museums serves more than one million families and visitors annually, and is a national leader in research, exhibitions and education.
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Bacteria and viruses have been creating GM organisms long before humans learned the technique
============
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_(genetics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transduction_(genetics)
evolution in action:
look up any of many works by Pimentel et al (Cornell University) who studied the development of pesticide resistance in insects. One replicated study determined that in only takes 25 generations for a SNP conferring pesticide resistance to spread in a population of houseflies. That’s equal to 25 x 3 weeks = 75 weeks = 1.44 years. So not only is there adaptation but there is also potentially speciation if that SNP (or any mutation) causes the individual to form a new species. For that matter, read the classic about the moth that changed it’s pigmentation due to pollution during the industrial revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution
Most folks think that species formation takes a long time. This is incorrect. Species formation can take as little as a few hours / weeks / years but it also can take a long time as most have learned. There are millions of species on earth; there is NOTHING NEW (conceptually) under the sun. In the billion+ year history of life on earth, most everything has been tried and discarded over and over again.
Maybe they should have read this study first. Stasis!
Size and shape stasis in late Pleistocene mammals and birds from Rancho La Brea during the Last Glacial–Interglacial cycle
Abstract
Conventional neo-Darwinian theory views organisms as infinitely sensitive and responsive to their environments, and considers them able to readily change size or shape when they adapt to selective pressures. Yet since 1863 it has been well known that Pleistocene animals and plants do not show much morphological change or speciation in response to the glacial–interglacial climate cycles. We tested this hypothesis with all of the common birds (condors, golden and bald eagles, turkeys, caracaras) and mammals (dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, giant lions, horses, camels, bison, and ground sloths) from Rancho La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles, California, which preserves large samples of many bones from many well-dated pits spanning the 35,000 years of the Last Glacial–Interglacial cycle. Pollen evidence showed the climate changed from chaparral/oaks 35,000 years ago to snowy piñon-juniper forests at the peak glacial 20,000 years ago, then back to the modern chaparral since the glacial–interglacial transition. Based on Bergmann’s rule, we would expect peak glacial specimens to have larger body sizes, and based on Allen’s rule, peak glacial samples should have shorter and more robust limbs. Yet statistical analysis (ANOVA for parametric samples; Kruskal–Wallis test for non-parametric samples) showed that none of the Pleistocene pit samples is statistically distinct from the rest, indicating complete stasis from 35 ka to 9 ka. The sole exception was the Pit 13 sample of dire wolves (16 ka), which was significantly smaller than the rest, but this did not occur in response to climate change. We also performed a time series analysis of the pit samples. None showed directional change; all were either static or showed a random walk. Thus, the data show that birds and mammals at Rancho La Brea show complete stasis and were unresponsive to the major climate change that occurred at 20 ka, consistent with other studies of Pleistocene animals and plants. Most explanations for such stasis (stabilizing selection, canalization) fail in this setting where climate is changing. One possible explanation is that most large birds and mammals are very broadly adapted and relatively insensitive to changes in their environments, although even the small mammals of the Pleistocene show stasis during climate change, too.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2012.08.015
Oh really?
Leiden University
Super-fast evolution
http://www.news.leiden.edu/news/super-fast-evolution.html
hehe @ur momisugly ferd berple
except the species concept does not apply too well to bacteria & virus lineages. too much cross taxa exchange of genetic material in so many groups. Perhaps we should only apply the species concept to eukaryotes. Dunno
LOL @ur momisugly julianbre says: April 10, 2014 at 1:06 pm
BINGO !!
thanks for the cite.
Adaptation as used by the IPCC is in fact intended to be conscious or cultural evolution. Ecosystems are people among other things to those who push these concepts. In the early 80s Ervin Laszlo among others created a both sides of the Cold War Group called GERG-General Evolution Research Group. It is still around and it calls its conscious evolution initiative the Darwin Project.
Laszlo is involved with the Club of Rome’s lesser known but affiliated Club of Budapest that pushes cultural evolution. At the moment it is called the Holos Consciousness and again it bears a striking resemblance to the kinds of personal transformations to achieve Climate Resilient Pathways that the IPCC considers to be Adaptation.
When it comes to schemers with transformational plans, never assume terms have their dictionary standard definition.
Janice Moore says:
April 10, 2014 at 11:01 am
Re: “Evolution can and does lead to the origin of new species”
This has NEVER been observed.
_______________________
Actually, we’ve witnessed speciation in our own lifetimes. Here’s just one example:
http://www.livescience.com/7984-human-feeding-creates-population-birds.html
Does this example increase our understanding? Belief can impede our understanding. A very limited view of evolutionary process is that a species randomly evolves to fit a particular need of conscious performance in order to cope with environmental pressures. Observed data implies something far more profound at work. For one thing, there is no reason that perfectly viable, yet non- specialized mutations could randomly occur and coexist with extant species. We haven’t seen that happen. We have observed a new species evolve to fit a particular need. This seems entirely purposeful to me. In other words, it seems to me that the species doesn’t randomly evolve to produce a consciousness tailored for specific circumstance, but that the consciousness evolves to produce the species, specifically tailored to meet a need.
Disclaimer: I do not know anything at all about, nor have I studied evolution or any counter theories. I’m just thinking out loud.
@Alan Robertson
Moral – DO NOT FEED the BIRDS! 😉
But thanks for the link. It was a fascinating read.
OK. I can post. Another comment of mine hasn’t appeared yet. Sorry for delay but I do have work to do.
Maybe you object to my reference to ignorance, but what else would you call it? To that I would add willful ignorance, since Janice didn’t bother to do the least bit of research before commenting. I’m sure that evolution has been explained to her before on this blog if not elsewhere.
I’ll take examples from both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, but bear in mind that there are at least dozens in the literature. Bear in mind that it is populations of organisms which evolve.
As noted, it is harder with bacteria than sexually reproducing eukaryotes to define “species”, as opposed to “strain”. (Bacteria have “sex”, too, but not in the same way as multicellular organisms. Their “sex” is horizontal gene transfer. Normally they just split to reproduce.)
But a bacterium that evolves from eating sugar to eating nylon is a new species as well as a strain of its mother species. This evolution occurred naturally in Flavobacterium and has been induced in the lab for Pseudomonas, apparently using a different enzyme. Further, via plasmid transfer, the Flavobacterium enzyme has been implanted in E. coli. This example is so well known I’m surprised that Janice has never heard of it.
The Founder’s Principle is also a well known (at least to anyone who has ever studied biology) evolutionary process leading to speciation. It has been observed in the lab repeatedly. Here’s one example:
Weinberg, J. R., V. R. Starczak and P. Jora. 1992. Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory. Evolution. 46:1214-1220.
I could go on for pages just with instances of single-celled organism evolution, so familiar to hospitals and dangerous to people. But since I have other things to do today, on to multicellular organisms. Species here are easier to define, although of course problems always arise, as with ring species (Google that), because unlike creationists, scientists know that species are not discrete but often shade into each other. The basic concept is though that for sexually reproducing organisms, a species is a group consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding to produce offspring also capable of reproducing. The classic example is the mule, a hybrid which usually is infertile.
In plants, it’s common for new species to emerge in a single generation through polyploidy, ie genomic duplication. The resulting plant breeds with others of its species but not with the parent species. Instances are too numerous to mention, but readily found on the Net. It’s rarer in animals, but does occur.
Similarly, hybridization can produce new species, ie a population produced by rare successful mating between related “species” which produces a new species that breeds preferentially with itself but not the parent species. Even some mules are able to produce offspring. Here’s a recently discovered example of speciation by hybridization:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140111-hybrid-dolphin-species-ocean-animal-science/
Butterfly species that occur in the wild have been shown in the lab to result from hybridization by recreating the same species experimentally:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/supplementary/1471-2148-7-28-s1/index.html
Also in the lab new species of plants have been produced, as with hybrids not just from different species, but even genera to make a new genus. In the 1920s a cytologist crossed the radish and cabbage (Raphanus and Brassica) to produce a sterile hybrid (Raphanobrassica). But some unreduced gametes formed in the hybrid, from which seeds could be produced and individuals of the new species and genus grown. Unfortunately, the new plant had radish leaves and cabbage root.
But often speciation occurs more slowly, over generations, which in the case of insects are short enough to be observed. Speciation by natural selection has also been observed in animals with longer generations, such as lizards introduced to islands in the Caribbean & Adriatic Seas.
In the lab, speciation through reproductive isolation and natural selection for more than one trait has been shown by Lenski:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment
Not a bad treatment on speciation, well sourced, from Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation
An outdated but still valid list of observed speciation events in lab & the wild:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
If these aren’t enough instances for you, I can post more at length, but really, why should I spend time educating Janice, when the Internet is such a great research tool? Too bad no amount of education can overcome religious prejudice against science. Not that there haven’t been a lot of great scientists with religious faith. They just don’t substitute faith for evidence.
I let a lot of time slip past before I completed my reply to Janice and many others have weighed in… further thoughts:
Catherine Ronconi, I’ll say welcome, even though you were snotty as all get out to my friend, Janice. Please follow through and add to the conversation.
Alan Robertson; the example you mentioned is typical that evolution is thermodynamically driven, the new species follows the track of minimising energy and maximising entropy. So his wings adapt for shorter distance.
I forgot to add in this case it means degradation
Here ist a interesting lecture about this fossil founds in LA. Note especially the remarks after 36:47 ! It seems that too little CO2 might be a bigger problem for the biosphere than too much…
Gary Hladik says:
[from the link posted]:
These things were not observed in populations… eighteen labs attempted unsuccessfully to reproduce these results… None of their gametes passed into the next generation… they found that many of the hybrids were inviable… During early growth, just after the four leaf stage, the leaves of many of the hybrids turned yellow and became necrotic. Death followed this. And so on. That does not instill confidence in verifiable proof of evolution. But thanks for posting, it was an interesting link.
==============================
BioBob links to the debunked [IIRC] study of the peppered moth. I’m too lazy to look it up, but as I am ignorant of biology and have used that same example in the past — and was soundly thrashed with links falsifying that study — I’m pretty convinced that it is not, in fact, a proven case of evolution in action.
In fact, out of the many comments following my request for Catherine Ronconi to post verifiable proof of evolution, no one has done so to my satisfaction. All the examples are iffy. And Catherine has not posted any satisfactory links.
I believe in evolution. But so far, no one has posted any conclusive examples.
==============================
ferd berple says:
…I would like to see some proven observations showing evolution in action.
So would I.
For those interested in a well-documented case of a new (1870) and, incidentally very successful, species I suggest that You google Spartina anglica
dbstealey says:
April 10, 2014 at 2:14 pm
Did you actually read every single link in full that I posted? I doubt it, or you would not have made such a ridiculous claim.
To take but one example, how is a new polyploid plant, genetically distinct from and incapable of crossing and producing offspring with its parent species but interbreeding freely with other polyploids with the same genome in its environment, not an example of speciation? It fits the classic definition of a species to a T.
What more evidence could you want showing an instance of rapid evolution?
Speciation via polyploidy is so common in vascular plants that its frequency can be analyzed statistically:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2728988/
Will you ignore this study, too, in order to cultivate the ignorance to which you seem so attached?
Maybe you “believe in” evolution, but apparently not in science or the scientific method. Evolution makes predictions which are confirmed. Creationism makes predictions which are always found false.
Alan Robertson says:
April 10, 2014 at 1:37 pm
What’s the point of adding to the conversation when my examples & links are ignored.
I used to respect this blog before I found out that it’s a hangout for creationist cretins.
Goodbye.
[This mod recommends more time be allowed for various readers and writers to respond. Mod]
JJM Gommers says:
April 10, 2014 at 1:46 pm
I forgot to add in this case it means degradation
_____________________
That makes sense. Since we know that creatures can and do degrade their future chances of survival by changing to fit within narrow little niches, why then do we lay waste to wide swathes of the economy in order to afford them protection, a la the Delta Smelt in California?
BioBob links to the debunked [IIRC] study of the peppered moth. I’m too lazy to look it up, but as I am ignorant of biology and have used that same example in the past — and was soundly thrashed with links falsifying that study — I’m pretty convinced that it is not, in fact, a proven case of evolution in action.
you mean like these ?:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/icons/peppered-moths/
You do need to do your homework, my good man. “lazy” and “ignorant ” don’t cut it. Just because some strawman arguments were foisted by anti-evolutionists does not mean the science does not exist. Of course, there is all kinds of science good and bad but a modicum of study should help. The DDT debate is another good example of bullshit attempting to overwhelm science. Rachel Carson predated environmental watermelons by 30 years but still the marxist try to link the stupid with the ignorant.
Catherine Ronconi says:
April 10, 2014 at 2:32 pm
________________________
I made that request of you before your remarks appeared, (still in moderation,) so thanks for the information. I don’t think that you were calling me a cretin (although I am that and far worse in many regards.) People from all sorts of backgrounds come here and exchange knowledge and ideas. No one makes them stay, but bad actors sometimes are made to go.
If you decide to really go, I would first ask, in all of your acquisition of knowledge, have you gained wisdom or understanding?
Catherine Ronconi says:
April 10, 2014 at 2:32 pm
Alan Robertson says:
April 10, 2014 at 1:37 pm
“What’s the point of adding to the conversation when my examples & links are ignored.
I used to respect this blog before I found out that it’s a hangout for creationist cretins.
Goodbye.”
The above is one of the worst bits of reasoning I have encountered on WUWT since beginning reading here in September of 2008.
—————————————
Gentle Tramp says:
April 10, 2014 at 2:14 pm
. . . “ It seems that too little CO2 might be a bigger problem for the biosphere than too much…”
Much better that it double or triple than to be cut in half or to 1/3 of current levels.
Geez Catherine! Your detailed rebuttal was only up for an hour when you stormed off. Ya gotta give folks a chance. Even though I was raised as a devout baptist I don’t understand the creationists skepticism regarding evolution. I guess they’re generally put off by the constantly changing “truth” inherent in good science, and the lack of simplicity. I also understand the frustration that the definition of a species can get a bit blurry on the edges.
dbstealey says (April 10, 2014 at 2:14 pm): “‘These things were not observed in populations…’ [snip]”
Whoa! Nice selective quoting! If deliberate, kudos!
If, on the other hand, this was a misunderstanding due to your self-described laziness and ignorance of biology, please focus your short attention span for just three brief paragraphs:
The full version of the first quote is “These things [some sterility and assortative i.e. non-random mating] were not observed in populations which were separated but raised under the same conditions“. These are the control groups, whose perfectly ordinary behavior strengthens the experiment, i.e. the opposite of your conclusion.
All but one of your other half-quotes are similarly misleading; the only one that stands is the “eighteen labs” one, i.e. the original results were indeed not reproducible. In other words, so far you’ve only thrown suspicion on one of the listed observations, with of course the assistance of the lister himself.
Now I’m somewhat lazy myself, and frightfully ignorant of many subjects, at least one of which (women) I’ve studied for a lifetime. Generally when I’m unqualified to judge the truth of a claim of little practical importance to me, I go with the “experts”, e.g. if particle physicists say they’ve definitely found the Higgs boson, I say “Congrats!” If the topic is iimportant or interesting to me, I try to educate myself to the point where I can make judgements. If evolution is important to you, perhaps you should educate yourself on biology enough to understand the evidence.
Mod:
If my long comment wasn’t blocked, why then has it not yet appeared? When it didn’t show up even with an awaiting moderation notice, I posted it again and got a notice that it was a duplicate. So what happened to it?
Alan: I’m wise enough to know not to waste my time on a blog that purports to promote science yet is infested with creationists. I’m also wise enough not to consider blog posters as “friends”, even if I don’t consider them ditzes. To me a friend is someone I know, who will help me move house or reroof the one I have and in whose care I feel safe leaving my kids.
Comments on my leaving: I did give people time to reply, long enough to learn that D. B. rejected my comment without having the decency even to read my links. When my patients die of MRSA, C.Diff, VRE, CRE and other hospital superbugs after I saved their lives, then I find on an ostensible science blog the most ignorant possible garbage about evolution, which has produced MRSA, et al, you’ll have to excuse me for not wanting to try to cast more pearls of reality before swine uninterested in learning.
“We can see animals adapting to a warming climate at La Brea,” said O’Keefe. “Then humans show up and all the big ones disappear. We haven’t been able to establish causality there yet. But we are working on it.”
The big ones thought they could whup those pink apes. The pink apes stuck ’em with pointy sticks, then went hunting for more big ones to kill. The little ones stayed away and survived. Duh³.