Radio Smart Talk for Monday, March 14th:
One of the major criticisms of those who don't understand or accept evolutionary biology is that they can't "see" evolution taking place around them – a dog today looks like a dog tomorrow. Man can't have evolved from a monkey because one looks different from the other – if you can't observe it, it must not exist.
That's where evolutionary biologists like Christopher Wills come in. Wills has traveled the world and has first-hand experience observing what he calls the interaction of ecology and evolution.
In his new book The Darwinian Tourist, Wills invites us to explore the world through "evolutionary eyes." He takes us from the underwater life of Indonesia's Lembeh Strait to a valley in Northern Israel, to a coral reef off the island of Yap, and beyond. Along the way, we're introduced to ecosystems we don't normally see, which demonstrate how the process of evolution has given rise to complex and diverse forms of life.
We'll welcome your questions for Christopher Wills about exploring the world through evolutionary eyes, on Monday's Radio Smart Talk.
Listen to the program:
comments
1. You seem to connect the environment and evolution through the evolutionary New Synthesis. Yet, since the mid to late 19th century, at least two other scientific undercurrents have attempted to complement the so-called New Synthesis:
a. symbiogenesis (organisms helping -- rather than competing -- with each other (see Margulis et al. work) and
b. "systems theory" (in the late 19th century, called "organic selection", these days, a molecular explanation, epigenetics -- see Hall 2006 for possible origins with Gulick, mid 19th century and enormous literature on epigenetics) where the environment - broadly understood - has a more direct role of directing the path of evolution.
Do you have a sense of the overall contribution of these hypotheses to evolution?
2. In the context of diseases, do you think dinosaurs were extinguished by pathogens and parasites?
Other examples of studying the marine wind and water clockwise currents** are as simple as China’s similarity to the Eastern US and ease of transplanting organisms from one to the other - the Pheasant for example.
*or distance from the equator
**counterclockw ise in the southern hemisphere
Thanks for your comments. Yes, the evolution of cooperation is a huge and fascinating aspect of evolution theory. I talk about it a little in my book, and will be expanding on it in the sequel. But it is important to remember that while there may be strong cooperation within and even between species, the result is that it makes the cooperators better competitors against the rest of the world. Sooner or later, cooperators must compete with somebody, and cooperation is selected for only if it makes them better competitors.
(more to come)
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