Something Other Than Adaptation Could Be Driving Evolution

[Techne]

Something Other Than Adaptation Could Be Driving Evolution

A computational model of greenish warbler evolution (left) fits real-world patterns of the species (right). Color corresponds to degrees of genetic difference. Image: Martins et al./PNAS​

What explains the incredible variety of life on Earth? It seems obvious. Evolution, of course! But perhaps not the evolution most people grew up with.

Some ecologists say the theory needs an update. They’ve proposed a new dynamic driving the emergence of new species, one that doesn’t involve adaptations or survival of the fittest.

Give evolution enough time and space, they say, and new species can just happen. Speciation might not only be an evolutionary consequence of fitness differences and natural selection, but a property intrinsic to evolution, just as all matter has gravity.

“Our work shows that evolution wants to be diverse,” said Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the New England Complex Systems Institute. “It’s enough for organisms to be spread out in space and time.”


In a March 13 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper, Bar-Yam and his co-authors, Brazilian ecologists Ayana Martins at the University of Sao Paulo and Marcus Aguiar at the University of Campinas, modeled the evolution of greenish warblers living around the Tibetan plateau.

Like any model, it’s based on assumptions and only imperfectly imitates reality, he said. Its more fundamental value, as with other work on neutral biodiversity, is that it critically examines whether adaptation really explains the natural world’s richness.

In other words, the theory of evolution is still evolving.

Citation: “Evolution and stability of ring species.” By Ayana B. Martins, Marcus A. M. de Aguiar and Yaneer Bar-Yam. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 11, 2013.

Update 3/28: Text modified to emphasize that neutral biodiversity theory does not exclude ‘traditional’ evolutionary mechanisms, but would be an addition to them.

Looks interesting.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

Something Other Than Adaptation Could Be Driving Evolution

A computational model of greenish warbler evolution (left) fits real-world patterns of the species (right). Color corresponds to degrees of genetic difference. Image: Martins et al./PNAS​

Looks interesting.

Cool, the more mechanisms evolution has to use the better. Maybe this gives humans the chance of evolving further too, telepathy ftw!

 

[DJ...]

I'm struggling to see what's new about what they're bringing to the table. They simply appear to be attempting to draw a line in the definition debate relating to ring species, and then extrapolating a bizarre conclusion.

Perhaps I'm missing something here, but hasn't there always been debate as to how one defines ring species?

 

[Ekstasis]

Yet ID can never be considered as an alternative

 

[Techne]

I'm struggling to see what's new about what they're bringing to the table. They simply appear to be attempting to draw a line in the definition debate relating to ring species, and then extrapolating a bizarre conclusion.

Perhaps I'm missing something here, but hasn't there always been debate as to how one defines ring species?

Try reading the PNAS article, it may take longer than 15 minutes.

 

[Techne]

Yet ID can never be considered as an alternative

Positing aliens or other unknown intelligent entities to interfere with God's act of creating and sustaining reality seems a bit daft don't you think?

 

[DJ...]

Try reading the PNAS article, it may take longer than 15 minutes.

So the Wired.com article can be summed up as "hey, check out what ring species are here"...?

PNAS wants me to create an account and buy the full text pdf. Nothing in the wired article points to me wanting to do that apart from the headline that is never, ever addressed in the article...

 

[Ekstasis]

Positing aliens or other unknown intelligent entities to interfere with God's act of creating and sustaining reality seems a bit daft don't you think?

Consider the statement again.

 

[Techne]

So the Wired.com article can be summed up as "hey, check out what ring species are here"...?

Maybe for you. I think it is more interesting than that.

PNAS wants me to create an account and buy the full text pdf. Nothing in the wired article points to me wanting to do that apart from the headline that is never, ever addressed in the article...

Nothing? Ok.

 

[RiaX]

errr .... i dont get this article ?

Evolution has no direction ... The thing that shapes life is natural selection. Bad evolution is eliminated because it cant survive. To me this is like saying "refraction is a photon" or am I missing something

The protea plant/flower is endangered because it has a stupid reproductive cycle that requires fire and very specific conditions and hence its endangered, even in areas where there are no human influences ecologists have reported a decline ... so obviously thats the forces of natural selection. It evolved this mechanism, it sucks so its dying off

 

[DJ...]

errr .... i dont get this article ?

Evolution has no direction ... The thing that shapes life is natural selection. Bad evolution is eliminated because it cant survive. To me this is like saying "refraction is a photon" or am I missing something

The protea plant/flower is endangered because it has a stupid reproductive cycle that requires fire and very specific conditions and hence its endangered, even in areas where there are no human influences ecologists have reported a decline ... so obviously thats the forces of natural selection. It evolved this mechanism, it sucks so its dying off

As far as I can make out, the article references the warbler's research, which is fascinating as ring species are in and of themselves are an interesting topic. Where there has always been debate on this topic is the speciation aspect. They attempt to draw a line in the sand on this debate and then a headline is extrapolated that is, as far as I can tell, never explained in the wired.com article. So yes, it is quite confusing.

Techne reckons it's all explained in the full text pdf which requires an account and the research is paid for...:erm:

Their results appear to mimic and confirm what we already knew about ring species...

 

[RiaX]

EDIT

Author and title of article

 

[Techne]

errr .... i dont get this article ?

Evolution has no direction ...

Of course it has. It is not a random process. At very least, the direction is forward in time.

The thing that shapes life is natural selection. Bad evolution is eliminated because it cant survive. To me this is like saying "refraction is a photon" or am I missing something

You probably have a very distinct definition/view of the concept of natural selection and fitness. Could you perhaps elaborate on your point of view here, given the fact that there is still and interesting debate about what exactly it is.

 

[SaiyanZ]

A new subspecies does not always have to be better than the previous one as long as there is an environment where it can live. i.e it does not replace the parent species. So this case can't technically be called natural selection. It's a randomly mutated species that found available resources In the environment to sustain the mutation.

 

[RiaX]

Of course it has. It is not a random process. At very least, the direction is forward in time.

No its random. Things evolve any how they want, the force driving it is not evolution its natural selection, they are not the same thing

 

[Techne]

No its random. Things evolve any how they want, the force driving it is not evolution its natural selection, they are not the same thing

I am not really sure how you view the concept of randomness (or natural selection and fitness for that matter). Anyway, the direction of evolution does not appear to be random given the view that randomness is the absence of all order.

 

[porchrat]

Correct me if I'm wrong here but the article seems to deal with a combination of distance and neutral trait development and its impact on speciation. So no specific environmental change needing to be adapted to but the fringes of the populations begin to diverge anyway thanks to limited exchange of genetic information.

If so then it is interesting but it doesn't strike me as being particularly new.

 

[DJ...]

Correct me if I'm wrong here but the article seems to deal with a combination of distance and neutral trait development and its impact on speciation. So no specific environmental change needing to be adapted to but the fringes of the populations begin to diverge anyway thanks to limited exchange of genetic information.

If so then it is interesting but it doesn't strike me as being particularly new.

Precisely. It is simple restating what we already knew about ring species as far as I can tell...

 

[JonnStar]

I am not really sure how you view the concept of randomness (or natural selection and fitness for that matter). Anyway, the direction of evolution does not appear to be random given the view that randomness is the absence of all order.

Given a closed scenario and the perspective from a casual observer it is random. Given a much broader scope of what reality may be, it could very well be the ongoing result of an unyielding sequence of events that began from the dawn of time already set in stone.

 

[Techne]

Given a closed scenario and the perspective from a casual observer it is random. Given a much broader scope of what reality may be, it could very well be the ongoing result of an unyielding sequence of events that began from the dawn of time already set in stone.

Evolution and the direction of it don't appear random to me. Neither does it appear to be fully deterministic.

Why would you argue that it does?