Genome complexity: epigenetics in action (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, April 06, 2017, 12:55 (2576 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "It shows that adaptation to these subterranean habitats can be fast, and just a few thousand years might be enough for a fish to adapt to cave life, says Behrmann-Godel. “Cavefish could exist virtually everywhere in principle, and there’s no good reason to expect long evolution times for them to adapt to cave environments,” she says.

DAVID’s comment: this shows how rapidly epigenetic adaptations can occur to changes in environment. Reznick's guppies took only two years.

A few thousand years is short in geological time, but I’d be surprised if cavefish took that long. The guppy example shows far greater rapidity! All this raises the whole question of the extent to which epigenetic changes (whether necessary or the result of exploration) may eventually lead to new species and even new organs. I’m thinking once more of the process that led from water-based to land-based life.

Not unrelated to this subject is the article you have given us (thank you for both articles) on plankton weaponry:

QUOTE: Now, new research finds that the tiny weapons of Nematodinium and related dinoflagellates are their own invention: Though the weapons look a lot like the stingers of jellyfish, the structures evolved independently, possibly because an arms race has developed in a plankton-eat-plankton world.

DAVID’s comment: A very simple animal has very complex weaponry. It is another example of convergence. I think this was not developed stepwise because of its complexity.

Of course I like the word “invention”. Even very simple organisms develop their own complex methods of survival. If your God did not preprogramme or personally dabble each of these weapons, and if they were not the product of chance mutations, we are left with the hypothesis that these simple animals invented them – which suggests an autonomous inventive intelligence (perhaps God-given). Interesting!