Reddit reviews The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time
We found 27 Reddit comments about The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Vintage Books USA
We've already been attempting something like this at several islands in the Galapagos. There's an island, Daphne Major, that has incredibly restricted access where people have been studying finches since at least the '70s. The original ~20 year study was written about in The Beak of the Finch - definitely worth a read.
What you refer to as "hyper evolution" is called punctuated equilibrium. The Beak of the Finch is an excellent and very readable explanation of the process.
You might get "more" by starting to look at more specialized books. Biographies and non-fiction.
>evolution occurs- just not as fast as darwin would like in order to explain the creatures that exist on the timeline that the archeological record shows
Actually, can occur far faster than he anticipated.
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Additionally, if the planet were seeded, it would have to have been prior to the emergence of modern bacteria; otherwise, their phylogenies wouldn't make any sense. Which is probably before any of the archaeological evidence you're talking about.
Scientists agree on your first few points, everything doesn't have the same ancestor, some parts of the evolutionary tree are more like rings or networks, due to endosymbiosis and horizontal gene transfer.
What you'll have to realize for the rest of it is that there isn't any difference within species or cross species, evolution is always the change of allele frequencies in a population. It might be hard to grasp at first, but I'd recommend Beak of the Finch and The Panda's Thumb for some gripping but informative reading on the subject.
Here is a good book about the people who study Darwin's Finches in the Galapagos. The researchers have documented the birds evolving very quickly in response to droughts and floods on the island. It's fascinating!
No you're absolutely right. It's definitely something to be aware of. Probably a shit comment to make and I don't feel that great about it. But, ah well. I said it. Maybe I'm a superior asshole. I don't think so. But we'll not strike it from the record, your honor. lol. It can be a fair point though, depending on circumstance or individual experience.
Guess it's just hard for me to really understand someone considering themselves "intelligent", who voted for Trump, who also proudly proclaims their "disbelief" (what is it...a leprechaun?) in things like Global Warming or Evolution. Sorry, but your belief has nothing to do with it. You either understand it or you don't understand that you don't understand it.
Extra Blowhard Thoughts, Stop Reading If Not in the Mood for Some Blowing Hard.
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For everyone who has ever told me they don't believe in Evolution, I've recommended a book I read in my college Evolution class called "The Beak of the Finch" by Jonathan Weiner. Most I've recommended it to that don't "believe", have, unsurprisingly, never given it the time of day. But, I maintain if you read that book, you basically have to come away "believing" or understanding the truth of Evolution. It's a bunch of small, simple facts (i.e., there was less rain this year, we counted and there were fewer smaller seeds produced by plants that don't do well in dry times, hardier drought resistant trees produced more and larger seeds since there were more of those plants since the smaller plants died out in the dry time, we measured the beaks of the finches during this dry year and there was a slight uptick in finches with beaks that were shorter and thicker and with more of an angle on the beak, allowing them to crack larger seeds easier, because the finches with thinner and shorter and less angled beaks died of starvation because they couldn't crack the seeds, therefore more thicker shorter beaked birds were the ones producing offspring, which made for even more birds with similar beak types and on and on) that when taken alone and by themselves are irrefutable.
And once you finish digesting this story of simple fact after simple fact, you realize you've simply read a proof for evolution in a closed environment (the Galapagos) in a short period of time. If at no point did you stop and say "hey wait! That's not true! Those painstaking measurements they did over years and years are made up!" then you just educated yourself on a relatively simple and straightforward proof of evolution. But, most naysayers won't even take the time to read said book, because they're afraid of educating themselves with hard science. Because if you "believe" that when you drop a ball, it hits the ground accelerating at 9.8 m/s^2, then you believe in evolution. If you "believe" that when you flip a switch in your house, the lights come on because of electricity, you believe in Evolution. If you "believe" that when the Doctor gives you an antibiotic and you get better, you believe in Evolution. If you "believe" you were born following the principals of fertilization and genetics, then you believe in evolution. You just simply can't cherry pick science for the parts you want to believe in, the parts that are convenient for your life, and discard other parts that don't fit your world view. Science is a structure supported by every piece that's come before, and you can't pull the Jenga block of evolution out of the bottom but still hop in your combustion engine powered vehicle everyday to drive you around your various bastions of ignorance.
Take lots of classes and keep learning. When I was in high school, things like ecology and wildlife biology were appealing to me because I understood what plants, animals, and ecosystems were, but I had no idea what a ribosome or a micro-RNA really were. I found that the more I learned about molecular and cell biology, the more fascinated I became by these tiny little machines that power every living thing. I started taking neuroscience classes because brains are cool; I ended up getting a PhD in neuroscience with a very cellular/molecular focus to my research (my whole dissertation was on one gene/protein that can cause a rare human genetic disorder).
Get some experience working in a lab. Until you've spent time in that environment it's hard to know whether you'll like it. And as others have mentioned, population biology and evolutionary genetics can combine some aspects of field work and molecular lab work, so those might be areas to investigate.
Want some books? Try The Beak of the Finch and Time, Love, Memory. The first is focused on experimental validation of evolutionary theory (involving lots of field work), the second is about the history of behavioral genetics in fruit flies. Both were assigned or suggested reading in my college biology classes.
Good luck, and stay curious!
The Beak of the Finch is a great non-textbook about evolution to read. Evolutionary Analysis by Freeman and Herron is the text I used in class.
Male orangutans grow beautiful facial hair! I'm pretty sure this is just a coincidence, though.
It's not uncommon for two closely related species to sexually select for different traits in their mates, as it helps cut back on interbreeding (read The Beak of the Finch for an excellent example of this). Normally genetic variety is a good thing, but if a lineage diverges because it is specializing in two different niches, interbreeding between the two branches hurts both of them. Perhaps beards—and the sexual preference for them—developed in early humans because it set them apart from their cousins.
Evolution can happen quickly (not saying it has in this case... just that it can). Pickup http://www.amazon.com/The-Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution/dp/067973337X for an interesting read about fast observable evolution.
Your best bet is to contact the instructor(s) for any classes you're interested in to see if there will be lectures covering material you are uncomfortable with; it would be helpful to be specific (for example, if you're okay with diagrams of organs and tissues but aren't comfortable with images of the actual thing).
That being said, in my experience (4th year graduate student in molecular biology) few classes have been especially graphic. Off the top of my head, the only ones to be careful of are anatomy/physiology (duh :) ) and general bio as there is usually at least one dissection in the lab section (which you might be able to opt out of).
Another option is to explore your interest in biology and evolution outside of coursework. There are quite a few great books out there that discuss the field without being gory. I personally recommend “The Beak of the Finch”, which discusses the decades-long research project tracking finch evolution in the Galapagos. http://www.amazon.com/The-Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution/dp/067973337X
Good luck!
On earth, most speciation happens within a population that is not physically split up by anything (water, mountains, etc.). In fact, getting split up by some kind of a boundary actually makes it harder for two populations to evolve into different species; there isn't any evolutionary pressure on them to become sexually incompatible.
Most speciation occurs because there are two empty niches within the ecosystem, and a population splits to fill both of them. A really good lay explanation of how this happens can be found in The Beak of the Finch. I highly recommend this book.
A good real-life example of this would be the cichlids of Lake Victoria. When the ancestor of these cichlids first showed up in this lake, there were numerous empty ecological niches, and the descendants of these fish evolved various specializations to compete better against each other.
The thing with specializing, though, is you don't want to breed with a fish of a different specialization, because your babies won't be very specialized, and they'll get outcompeted by fish that are more specialized. For this reason, being a very picky fish—that is, having a strong sexual preference for fish who share your specialization—is a major evolutionary advantage.
And giving off signs to other fish like you, to let them know that you're one of their kind, is also an advantage. This is why the cichlids in Lake Victoria are so amazingly diverse, despite being closely related and living in amongst each other. If you're a blue fish, you know to breed with other blue fish, and not with red fish. If you breed with red fish, your lineage will probably die out, and your preference for red fish will die with it. (Obviously, red fish would evolve the same preference for other red fish and aversion to blue fish.)
Sexual preferences and sexual displays are not the only method animals evolve to avoid interbreeding with a population of a different ecological specialization. Some animals (like frogs and cicadas) evolve to breed at different times of the year from their closely-related neighbors.
And some species (including most plants) do it by merely having incompatible sperm and eggs (or pollen and ova), or by having flowers specialized for different pollinators. If you're an oak that's specialized for growing on a riverbank, for example, you don't want to get pollinated by an oak that's specialized for growing on higher ground, because you'll still drop your hybrid acorns on the riverbank, and they just won't grow as well. You can't stop that oak's pollen from reaching you (oaks are wind pollinated), so the next best thing is to build some kind of protein defense on your ova that stops the highland oak's pollen from working on your ova—but still allows the pollen of your fellow riverbank oaks.
In the case of two your two intelligent species, they need to possess two traits to be realistic.
1 — They need to fulfill different ecological niches. They must not compete directly with each other (only in indirect ways that are not enough for one to drive the other to extinction). They need to live compatibly with each other, not unlike the way wildebeests and zebras do (they don't compete directly with each other because they eat different grass). And, if they were to interbreed, the hybrid children would be at a biological disadvantage to purebred children (e.g., suffering more from malnutrition due to not being specialized for digesting the available foodstuffs, or being more susceptible to predation due to lacking the right equipment to escape or defend against danger).
2 — They need to avoid hybridizing. This can come about through several ways—finding each other sexually distasteful (the way we find chimpanzees unattractive), wooing prospective sexual partners at different times or in different ways, having incompatible gametes or genitalia, etc. There can be a social taboo against interbreeding, too, but it would almost certainly be rooted in biology (much the way that incest taboos are ultimately derived from our instinctual aversion to inbreeding).
The Beak of the Finch is a pretty good read.
If you find the finches even mildly interesting, read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/067973337X
Send him "The Beak of the Finch" (http://www.amazon.com/Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution-Time/dp/067973337X) It's very insightful and based on data from an experiment. It's also a very good and easy read.
There's a great book called The Beak of the Finch. It tells the story of how evolution has been observed occurring in the field, today, now, in the same Galapagos finch populations that Darwin observed.
It sounds like you now want an education in the whole process of science. The best way to get that is to read material directly on that topic. I suggest starting with Beak of the Finch but Jonathan Weiner. It is an account of a long term research project on Galapagos, but along the way Weiner does a very good job in showing the reader how science actually works. It is a Pulitzer Prize winner and very accessible. After than if you want something in depth, read, as I suggested, Science as a Process by David Hull. A deeper, much deeper, exploration into how science works and the philosophical underpinnings.
I don't see me as jumping the gun, I keep trying to get back to the topic.
Religious thought has been eliminated from the UK, perhaps by people like mark204, who made a new account just to post that unuseful trolling.
Also, JSavage37 didn't even bother to quote from the book he referred you to. That is lazy, not helpful.
Frankly, the guardian article was sensationalistic. However, it addresses the difference between epigenetics and Lamarckianism.
I didn't see your article as promoting Creationsim, and I doubt the other posters even read the article. But the title attacking evolution will invite a knee-jerk downvote here in /r/science.
I highly recommend reading about the research going on into evolution of finches in the Galapagos. They've been the subject of study since the 70's and it's fascinating stuff.
For a short read, check out this National Geographic article. There's also the Pulitzer prize winning book on the subject, The Beak of the Finch.
tl;dr - Significant evolutionary change can happen in the span of just a few months, rather then millennia. (E.g. researchers have seen the average size of finch beaks change by 15% in just 1-2 years).
The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner. Probably one of the best books that cover the research on the Galapagos finches.
Read "The Beak of the Finch," two species hybridized and essentially gave rise to a third species. The book talks about the research and discoveries of Peter and Rosemary Grant, both highly respected biologists. http://www.amazon.com/Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution-Time/dp/067973337X
The Beak of the Finch. It's nonfiction about how scientists are actually recording quantifiable evolution within Darwin's finches. Much more interesting than it might sound...
Beak of the finch by Jonathan Weiner is a pretty darn good book. It tells of one experiment on evolution and how it works. I have read a lot, but this one is more about the people as well as the new ideas of experiment than the theory of evolution.
Not necessarily slow...
Here’s a book about this
This book is an excellent and simple example of animals evolving now, right before our eyes: http://www.amazon.com/The-Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution/dp/067973337X