just curious on hearing the Barrier Reef story and wondering how quickly animals cna evolve to cope with increased heat. Evolution is a generational thing, right? So in short life-span creatures like flies, do you see rapid examples of evolution?

Yes – that’s why geneticists / scientists use fruit flies in experiments.

Yep, the short life cycle of the fruit fly makes it ideal to study dna changes, we share approx 60% of our dna with a fruit fly, although some folk share 99% of their dna with bluebottles (tory voters btw)

Typically, I believe so – fruit fly example above was going to be in my reply too!

That’s my series of tortoise experiments humped then?

Are you asking what animals “we” think will evolve quickest, given the current climate changes?

I think Chickens will grown four more legs, to cope with the rapid expansion in Chicken Fried Shit shops that seem to appear in their ‘00s along any high st near you.

Not for eating, no… for running away from the knife…

🤢🤮

To be pedantic, it must be the generational time, not the lifespan itself that matters. For example, humans can easily live for 80 years, but that’s not the important number, it’s that we are capable of having kids in less than 15 years that governs the speed of evolution, surely.

With all that speedy evolution you’d have thought flies would have evolved an aversion to glowing blue lights in kitchens and butchers shops. But no, they still fly past all their crispy chums to see what the blue light’s all about and then… ZAP, fizz.  Proof that evolution was just made up by Darwin because he wanted fame but couldn’t work out how to be an influencer on Instagram.

Gradual or punctuated evolution? That is the question

Yes – that’s why geneticists / scientists use fruit flies in experiments.

idiots

For evolution to happen random mutations need to occur that produce traits useful for survival and reproduction. I guess it depends on how prone that organism is to beneficial mutation and how its reproductive cycle and lifestyle affect how the mutated individuals live.

In thepurist’s example, an attraction to UV light could be beneficial in the wild (which is presumably why they have it) and the small number of flies that die on UV light traps is outweighed by the large number that experience the benefit in the wild.

Punctuated equilibrium is about rapid speciation, evolution is just a change is allele frequency.

For evolution to happen random mutations need to occur that produce traits useful for survival and reproduction

Not true, they can be non useful too. You are correct for evolution by natural selection but other ways for evolution to occur are possible.

I think Chickens will grown four more legs

Rather more legs than arms and opposable thumbs. Have you looked into their cold, dead calculating eyes? Once they’ve got thumbs we’re all ****!

Well evolution is just the process of genetic variability due to random changes in the DNA/phenotypes of offspring…so yes, bacteria who have very rapid generation cycles change very rapidly.

What people often mean is natural selection via the process of evolution, whereby those changes may offer a reproductive benefit, and those changes are more dominant in the following generations (i.e resistance against antibiotics in bacteria will lead to more of THOSE bacteria surviving and reproducing/multiplying…)

But to answer your question, yes.

DrP

Time flies like an arrow.

Fruit flies like a banana.

Undone flies like a flasher.

Are creationists imune to superbugs which are ‘evolving’ antibiotic resistance?
Or is God making these new bacteria and releasing them into the wild?
.
Evolution can be seen in action in less than a human lifetime at both ends of the spectrum. Antibiotic resistnace with little things, elephants with smaller tusks demontrating it in big things, whatever advantages bigs tusks confer they do make them a target and so those with less-good small tusks are the ones which survive and breed.

There is more to evolution than just random genetic variations. More fundamentally it’s a hereditary thing so you inherit traits from your parents which improve your chances of survival and procreation. If a non inherited feature occurs which increases the chances of survival then that becomes part of the ongoing hereditary ‘signature’ that is passed onto further generations.

Genevaly it takes manny generations but It can happen in the space of one generation. I read about an observation in Finches in the Galápagos Islands. They ate berry’s off trees and used their beaks to break the berries open. Finches with larger beaks could break open the harder berries. One year there was a drought causing only trees to bear the larger berries with the harder shells. As a consequence a significant number of small beaked finches died and only the larger beaked birds survived. Due to this the average beak size of the birds increased. So that’s evolution occurring quickly. You can transpose that mechanism to giraffes as their necks and other species with similar features. So not driven by random features, mostly by inherited features.

There is more to evolution than just random genetic variations. More fundamentally it’s a hereditary thing so you inherit traits from your parents which improve your chances of survival and procreation

Not necessarily as said above, you are confusing natural selection and evolution. Evolution is justva change in the frequency of alleles in a population. Natural selection is just one way it can happen.

look up the Rice and Salt fruit fly experiments of the 1980s, I think it took something like 30 generations of isolating flies in various conditions, so light/dark and dry/wet  etc. To produce speciation in the fruit flies to mate only with others of their preferred locations.

For evolution to happen random mutations need to occur

Look up “modes of Speciation” you’ll enjoy it.

The current Great Barrier Reef is only about 8,000 years old, so any unique species on it may be recent.