Evolution illustrated first-hand (Science)

Hmm.. Source is subscription. You're going to demand I post the whole article, aren't you snif?
 
No I read recently about observed evolutionary changes in mosquitos but stupidly didn't write down the reference. It was an extract from a book actually but then I lost the paper it was in and couldn't remember the book title (doh!). Anyway it must be based on the original scientific research so I was hoping that somebody here would have a reference.
 
sniffy said:
No I read recently about observed evolutionary changes in mosquitos but stupidly didn't write down the reference. It was an extract from a book actually but then I lost the paper it was in and couldn't remember the book title (doh!). Anyway it must be based on the original scientific research so I was hoping that somebody here would have a reference.
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The link I posted above and the following link basically discuss what you were asking about.

http://www.gene.ch/gentech/1998/Jul-Sep/msg00188.html

A NEW species of mosquito is evolving on the London Underground in a development that has astonished scientists.

The insects are believed to be the descendants of mosquitoes which
colonised the tunnels a hundred years ago when the Tube was being dug.

When they went below ground they were bird-biting pests. But over a
century, deprived of their normal diet, the mosquitoes have evolved
new feeding behaviour, dining on mammals including rats and mice - and
human beings. They now plague maintenance workers.

Kate Byne and Richard Nichols of Queen Mary and Westfield College in
London have carried out tests to see if the Tube's mosquitoes, which
have been named molestus, are now different from Culex pipiens, the
bird-biting species which entered the Underground last century.

To their amazement they found that it was almost impossible to mate
those living above ground with those in the subterranean world,
indicating that the genetic differences are now so great that the ones
underground are well on their way to becoming a separate species.

This usually happens only when species are isolated for thousands
rather than tens of years.

The team, whose findings are reported in BBC Wildlife magazine today,
have also found genetic differences between mosquitoes on different
Tube lines. They believe this is due to the draughts dispersing the
insects along but not between lines.
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Yes it's good but I want MORE!! Now give me the title of the book I seek? I demand it. It had a photo of a mossy on the front, er and a flower I think :eek:


And this should be in biology.
 
Bells,

I wonder if they are morphologically different as well, nothing beats a proof the involves pulling out a hideous underground mutant and comparing to its relatively normal sunshine counterpart.

sniffy said:
And this should be in biology.
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Hear that SAM, move it!
 
GeoffP said:
"You are not currently authorized to access this article. Login to JSTOR."

Should I post the html text?
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Sorry I'm proxying through my universities account. See if you can find a public version of:

Laboratory Experiments on Speciation: What Have We Learned in 40 Years?
William R. Rice, Ellen E. Hostert
Evolution, Vol. 47, No. 6 (Dec., 1993), pp. 1637-1653
Publisher: Society for the Study of Evolution
 
Perhaps i missed something. Did the bacteria turn into a mouse?

You see, unless it is some change along those lines the of course it is evolution just not in the way some people here are claiming. I would say it is like comparing apples to oranges.

Evolution:

# development: a process in which something passes by degrees to a different stage (especially a more advanced or mature stage); "the development of ...
# (biology) the sequence of events involved in the evolutionary development of a species or taxonomic group of organisms
 
All off topic discussion deleted. Please keep the discussion about Biology
 
Apparently this is off topic, for some reason, but maybe it will stay up long enough to be read:
john said:
You see, unless it is some change along those lines the of course it is evolution just not in the way some people here are claiming.
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It was "some change along those lines". It was a dramatic evolutionary split into a different kind of bacterium. Sort of like turning into a different kind of insect, one that could eat much different food.
 
That is where we disagree. I cannot see why you would say there was change "along those lines".

To be clear, I am not discounting the importance of research on bacteria. They will continue to hold many mysteries to us and are significant to unlocking the secrets of life. Bacteria=the building blocks of life.
 
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What the paper described is the evolution of a novel trait. Observed macroevolution, so to say, though in the realms of prokaryotes the borders between macro and microevolution are even fuzzier than normal. In principle in a few human lifetimes, with the good design even maybe shorter) one could observe speciation in bacteria. However to see transition as big as from prokaryote to eukaryote (not to mention something as complex as a mouse) would be almost impossible. If the phylogenetic analyses are correct this transition only happened once up until now in the billion years of evolution.
 
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