Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Interesting article. How quickly CAN life evolve to meet new conditions?
In the face of intense environmental pressures, species either evolve quickly or go extinct. Both have happened with regularity. See Gould's punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution.
Evolution is just a piece of non sense. How come humans did not become pigs or horses...?!. hahahah. Mod note: Stupidity or trolling, either way it’s an infraction. NOTE : I think I gave my honest oipinion . Both Big bang and evolution are mere theories and not 100% true scientific data . I have no idea why this warning or whtever . If we can not give our opinions then why debate at all...???!!!!. If you ban me I am not going to die. hahahahahahah
We’ve known for a long time that evolution can proceed very quickly, but 36 years is amazingly quick for a vertebrate such as a lizard. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=980661#post980661
Evolution is quite amazing. I am stuyding microbiology, and with microbes these changes are even quicker. With viruses, changes are so quick that drugs are often unable to cope. An example is HIV. When you start giving a HIV+ person drugs, the virus evolves within a matter of days to completely bypass the anti-viral effects. The fact that changes can be this quick in macroscopic creatures is just another proof of the complexity and practicality of evolution and genomics.
This certainly defies my understanding about how evolution works. I always understood it to be a slow gradual process over thousands of years, but evidently this is not so. What amazes me most is at the genetic level the rapid appearance of adaptive mutations that allow this kind of physical transformation to occur. I thought mutations were a rare occurrence, but evidently that is not the case, and when they prove beneficial in a novel environment they can quickly transform the genome of a species.
I think this is because our recorded history (fossils and so forth) are so limited as to be separated by sometimes thousands of years. Looking at our past evidence paints a picture of very long, gradual change. But in fact, even between months there are constant fluctuations. Check out the book "The Beak of the Finch" for hardcore evolutionary data. http://www.ventrella.com/Alife/Cells/GlidersAndRiders/Cells.html Run that simulation, and look at the graph. It shoots back and forth most of the time. From what I remember, the data from the Galapagos does the same thing.
Yes, good man! :thumbsup: I spotted this yesterday and started writing a reply but my work intervened and I never got back to it. Obviously the modern day descendants cannot be genetically identical, even if these lizards are employing some form of parthenogenetic reproduction. As far as I know, all instances of parthenogenesis seen in vertebrates, such as reptiles, involve meiosis and, hence, produce shuffling of genetic sequences through meiotic recombination. I attribute the confusing statement to the usual scientific inaccuracy that we see in mainstream mass media science reporting (or in this case, a personal blog). I haven’t read the original publication, but I would make a solid bet that the statement regarding the Pod Mrcaru lizards being “genetically identical” to the source population refers to the results of genotypic/population analysis techniques, such as microsatellite analysis or mitochondrial gene analysis or rRNA sequences, and not the whole genome.
Even so, what's 36 years in lizard generations? How soon do they start breeding after birth, and how much genetic change could take place over that number of generations?
I think it ranges from smaller lizards like Anole being a few years to iguanas reaching 10. In the wild you can cut those numbers in half and maybe in half again. Also I think they mate seasonally and usually have like 10 to 20 rubbery eggs at a time. I would estimate they could start producing eggs in their first year. But the last two sentences are just speculation
