Innovation and Speciation: whale changes (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, May 21, 2017, 18:54 (2741 days ago) @ dhw

David: Species therefore most likely appear without reference to environmental drive.[/i]

dhw: “Relationship”? No matter how it comes into being, it must “relate” positively to the environment or it won’t survive, so it can hardly be “separate from environment”, but thank you for agreeing that a change in the environment can trigger speciation. It was I who drew your attention to the Cambrian as an example. “Environmental drive”? The drive is for survival and/or improvement, which you call complexity. Both must interconnect with the environment, and if environmental change INITIATES new species (which I think is “most likely”), it is a contradiction in terms to say that speciation appears BEFORE the environmental change.

You totally miss the point. A change in environment offers an opportunity for speciation changes but does not require it.

dhw: I don't know why the whale, which you hold up as a shining example of your God's work, would have moved from land to water if it hadn't involved some kind of improvement, but in any case it provides a shining example of the interconnection between speciation and the environment.
DAVID: An animal cannot suddenly enter the water as a lifestyle without prior change. Speciation first to adapt to the new lifestyle environment brings.

dhw: The answer to that is that it doesn’t enter the water as a lifestyle. It enters the water to see if it can improve its lifestyle. And when it finds that its lifestyle improves, step by step it improves its adaptations – precisely as the video illustrates. No need for “prior change”.

Wrong. There is no step by step if you study the whole series, one at a time. You sound like Darwin again. Each of the gaps in fossil form is enormous. Just consider that sex underwater requires pudendal changes in both. Giving birth underwater requires the newborn get to the surface very quickly when he is barely alert. Suckling underwater requires other alterations. To be successful each of these major adaptations must be present all at once, or there would be no whales. And I'm just discussing the reproductive process at the eight or ninth endpoint. Please look at each phenotypic change for each step. They are not small. No little steps have been found. There is no getting around speciation first.