Sexual selection has always been a part of Darwins theorie of evolution… No news there.
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Very interesting article!
I feel like alot of the traditional evolutionists err when they try to separate something like chemistry from the mechanism of their evolution model.
Chemistry is after all, the backbone of how life first came to be on earth.
Wherever there are geographic outliers, there will also be either an over-abundance or scarcity of certain molecules and associated nutrients, on a local as well as broader scale.
As recent studies have proven, nutrient uptake and other models similar to osmosis have the capacity to change the genetic make-up of an organism as well as the degree to which this is passed on to further generations.
With this in mind, why on earth would anyone not believe that chemical flux can impact the directionality of evolution? Especially through phenomena such as allopatric isolation and genetic drift
Just my take
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The WEIT link @annkatrinrose posted hits the main points of why this article is rather poor. However, another reason is that includes this photo (which I suspect many iNatters will be able to spot as a problem fairly quickly):
H/T Anton Sorokin
What flag would that merit if it were submitted as an iNat observation I wonder?
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Do you have any evidence for the claim that “Multicellular organisms often (but not always) retain eyes even when they live in complete darkness.”? This is a very bold statement! It implies that they retain eyes more often than they lose them, which doesn’t make sense from an evolutionary point of view. An organ that does not fulfill a function but is very expensive in term of resources to develop and to maintain (just like an eye or any part of an organism that is associated with the nervous system) is always disadvantageous if you would compare it to another organism of the same species that would not have to invest as many resources in a useless organ.
You have to consider time here. Just because a population that constantly lives in complete darkness still has eyes today, doesn’t mean that they will retain the eyes. They will most probably lose them at some point in the future (if they remain in constant and complete darkness) as there is no positive selection pressure acting upon the integrity of the underlying gene regulatory network that gives rise to eyes. Random mutations, which always occur, would accumulate in the gene regulatory network, which at some point would prevent the development of eyes. We always just see a snapshot and have to remember that evolution is an ongoing process.
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The article is a disgrace.
It’s throwing around so many catch phrases and doesn’t make a point at all. Moreover it promotes questionable scientists by quoting their straw man “arguments”. As someone who worked on experience-dependent plasticity for the last 5 years, the “plasticity” part of this pamphlet triggered me the most. Not a single biologist that wants to be taken serious would ever claim, that the field of plasticity is a niche and not already well-accepted or even implemented in modern evolutionary theory. Plasticity is one of the hippest fields in biology right now. Everyone throws this word around. It’s even used for phenomena for which it shouldn’t be used because it’s guaranteed to get your work more exposure.
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It’s obviously a true toad and not a spadefoot. Also bad photoshop.
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I withdraw that statement (I edited it out of the post). I have no evidence.
As well, I’m not saying the article is accurate. I just thought it was an interesting idea to consider. I simply see evolution as being a multi-pronged thing, in which classic Natural Selection plays a part, but cannot be the sole driver.
Sorry it got you riled up.
Plus there are at least three observation in the photo!
By the way, I know very little about plasticity, but find the concept quite intriguing. If you could point me in the direction of an introductory source, a primer if you will, I would be very grateful.
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No worries! It’s still good to know that some people write such articles and that they get published on well-known websites.
The thing is, that the article doesn’t bring anything new to the table. No serious biologist says these days that everything can solely be explained by natural selection (and if one does, this person should not have anything to say in science). There are so many other factors that play a role in evolution. But this is well-known and also accepted, contrary to how it’s depicted in the article.
One of the biggest problems in evolutionary biology are words that end with “-ist”/“-ism” and refer to certain schools of thinking (Neo-darwinism, Lamarckism, “mutationists”, synthesists). It’s problematic when biologists can identify themselves with only one of these schools as it puts your thoughts into a drawer and you miss out on different view points. A theory that fits into such a drawer can only be wrong or at least incomplete. And it’s also completely unnecessary to even create such drawers to begin with.
I think that the concept of natural selection is very misunderstood, even among biologists. I prefer not to think that natural selection selects positive traits of an organisms to adapt it in the most perfect way (“perfect adaptations” don’t exist). In my point of view, it acts in the exact opposite way, just how @jdmore has put it. It selects whatever is not good enough for survival and/or reproduction and wipes it from the population. This way you end up with populations that show variability in their phenotype and their genotype. Organisms don’t need to be adapted in best way possible. It’s enough if their set of traits is sufficient to survive/reproduce. If natural selection would only act on the most perfect traits, we shouldn’t see as much variability since, in theory, there should only be a very specific phenotype and genotype that fits a given environment in the best way possible. Interpreting natural selection in this way, it leaves more room for other factors such as randomness, genetic drift, epigenetics etc.
For your plasticity request:
William James already wrote about plasticity in an incredibly modern way at the end of the 19th century, when this term was taken from material sciences and applied to biological phenomena. He describes it in a very nice way and it’s easily accessible despite being written so long ago. It’s incredible, really. I couldn’t recommend it more: https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin4.htm
It gives an introduction to the original concept of plasticity. Nowadays the term is used for almost anything, a synonym for “change” or “difference”.
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Incidentally, a so-called controversy in science isn’t necessarily a big deal. (Think about all the taxonomic “controversies” that pop up on iNat and its sources.) The term suggests that more is at stake than what actually may be. All fields of science have “controversies” which are disagreements about what the evidence shows, how we should interpret it, what phenomena are involved and their importance. Also what positions different well-known experts take. Science works by playing different ideas off of each other. Hypotheses get kicked around and might end up being useful or not in shaping theories. So when you read “controversy” in science it’s usually not something we need to get excited about.
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There’s a lot of different ideas that fall under the umbrella of “evolutionary theory”, so it’s very difficult to figure out what they want to say. This article is not very well informed. The evolution of eyes, for example, is often brought up by creationists as proof that such a thing is impossible, but actually the evolution of eyes is really simple and well known. You can see different “eyes” in organisms from worms to fish and track the development of lenses and the whole shebang. Even Darwin talked about it at length in Origin of Species (Chapter VI Difficulties of the theory-The Eye, which, strange enough, the Guardian itself republished in 2008). So it’s difficult to accept this article as anything other than clickbait. Saying that we need a new theory of evolution is kind of gobbledygook. That evolution occurs primarily through natural selection (what survives) is inarguable as the existence of light or gravity. The problem is that survival can happen in many, many ways, a great many of which have probably not yet been discovered. It’s a complex theory that makes it susceptible to articles like this and fake problems like the evolution of eyes. So I guess my answer is: There is no possibility of a new theory of evolution, but there’s a lot more to learn about the complex way that it operates.
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Well said, and thank you!
Obviously, I don’t fall into the ‘ist/ism’ category.
I also stumpled a lot over the “mystery” of how wings would have evolved, which they also mention twice… I don´t find that very mysterious either. There are many species living today that show how “transitional features” could have looked like
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I wasn’t aware that a nickname for the Guardian was the Grauniad, a reference to typos that used to (and maybe still) appear in the publication. It sounded like an interesting organism I wanted to learn more about.
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I think only UK dwellers or those who follow it know what that term means. For all its flaws (see headline, and the photo-shopped image above) it is a very good news source.
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If you’re wanting to get a glimpse of what plasticity is like in the plant world, then these journal entries of mine should pique your interest considerably:
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/anthonywalton/39755-zaluzianskya-capensis-morphological-and-habitual-similarities-and-differences-from-specimens-in-3-widely-separated-localities
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/anthonywalton/35562-a-geographical-comparison-of-aloe-maculata
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/anthonywalton/36299-life-stage-and-flowering-of-stachys-aethiopica
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/anthonywalton/56368-senecio-arniciflorus
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I remember it’s still debated about wings of insects which exactly part became them.
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Do we need a new theory of evolution?
I thought Betteridge’s Law of Headlines was probably the right answer.
After reading the article, I still think it applies.
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I’ve read that before, but did not know it had a name. I think the law is appropriate!
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