Thread: Evolution: Loss Or Gain Of Information?

Evoltution just happens, it even quite logic on certain scales.

EXAMPLE:

You have 3 groups of monkeys of the same kind, they can breed but lately they don't, there are allso some differences between the groups. All the monkeys eat bananna's, but becouse of hilter (or becouse of locust) the bannana-supply has been short.

The monkeys of one of the 3 groups of monkeys all have a bit of a thick skull. They find out that with their thick skull they can somewhat break open some coconuts, and eat them. In their part of the forest over the years there are hardly any banana's, so only the monkeys with thick heads survive. When hilter (or locust) finally gas all the bannana's only the monkeys with the thickest of skulls can survive. Over the years they don't even know how a bannana looks, and over the centuries they don't even like them.

Back to the start: Another group of monkeys live in a part with just enough bananna's. They just survive hitlers (the locusts) attack on their food supply and slowly just mirate to a part with more bananna's. They just stay eating them bananna's.

Back to the start again: The other group of monkies are a bit of a weird group, they are like little pitbulls, and they have a bit more theeth then the other monkey families. When the lack of bananna's drives them mad, out of desparation and anger they kill a moose. They notice that the red bouncy stuff in the moose tastes pretty good. Becouse in their part of the forsest bannana's also run out, only they monkies that eat meat can survive. The monkies that don't have pointy theeth, or are just plain pussies, all die. Over centuries, with the occasional shortage of moose, only the most pissed-off sharp-theeth monkies survive.

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After centuries or even millenia, the monkies will not be able to cross breed. Two new species have been formed. What happed here, looks like this:


A B C
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b

From the old model monkey, b, 3 groups split off. The new kind of monkey B however, looks just like it. However if a species can just survive properly, a species can stay unchanged for years and years, like the crocodiles.

Kind A, the thick skulled ones somewhere got split between b and B, and so did C. Their DNA changed, becouse somewhere after monkey b, only a few of the b monkeys could survive certain things becouse they had a small advantage towards other monkeys in their environment. Over time monkeys change from 'thick skull' genes to 'huge freaking skull' genes. When the monkeys stop or can no longer mate with 'other' monkeys, at some point their amount of choromosones might even change, becouse of the huge amount of mutations every persons DNA goes trough, at least 100 since you have been reading this.

You could re-create evolution quite well. For one thing, appels like we know them didn't exist before the persians had a bunch of old-age-mini-crappy-appels that they would select so only the biggest juiciest one's seeds would be planted. Over time, you would get nice big appels like we know them now.

If you would plant alot of appels, and only plant the seeds of appels that had the tendency to taste like battery acid, you might created appels that would make people puke. Just for fun.
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If you split a group of induviduals long enough from another group of the same species, and put them in two difficult, barely livable, different environment, over centuries they wouldn't be able to mate, and two different species will be.

that is not neceserally the gain of genes

[edit] oh, and different spieces can't mate, can they? I'm not sure about this bit, but if that is so, then are the monkeys a different spiecies (then is man a different spiecies from other men?)

Organisms of the same species can mate with eacother and have offsprings that can also mate. I know that if a horse and a zebra "do it" then you get a zorse!

Evolution isn't the loss of DNA (that I know of), its the gain of new traits or the loss of some.

Think of putting an elephant in a cold place with snow ect, after years it will grow fur to adapt like the wooly mammoth. New trait.

Put it back in a hot area and after years it will lose its fur. Lose a trait

but it already had the DNA it need to make hair, and could still mate with another elephent.

I'm a little confused by your question: "Is evolution the loss of genetic data or the gain of new traits?", are these not very similar to one another? (as i beleive 'traits' are directly connected to 'genetic data&#39. If it is the first option, then evolution is losing genetic data and eventually there would be none left for an organism. If it is the latter, then species would continually gain traits, and humans would still be able to swim and breath underwater, because we wouldn't have lost that trait from our ancesters who were aquatic.

As far as my understanding goes, evolution is the change of a species' DNA in order for the better survivorship of the offspring - this is a lot more complicated than your either/or question. This involves not just the loss of old genes and the gain of new genes, but also keeping old genes.

Consider recessive genes and genetic throwbacks which occur every now and then, E.g. humans have an appendix. In rabbits, the appendix produces Cellulase, an enzyme to digest fibre from plants.
What if we needed to get more energy from our diet? Could natural selection pick out individuals with slightly working appendixes? Could evolution bring back this, at the moment, useless appendage?

I would try and define evolution as the adaption of an organism's DNA(or RNA) to better survive the environmental and social pressures acting on it. This is because those individuals with more desirable traits out-compete their fellow individuals, such as producing more offspring, growing faster, resisting disease better, consuming resourses more effectively and so on.

Edit:
It is true that similar species can mate with one another, such as the Zorse reffered to above. Also possible are Mules, Ligers(lion+tiger)and many more. But if the mating is actually successful (the embryo is viable and actually develops, which it often doesn't) then the offspring has a slim chance of being fertile itself. If this occurs, then it is a sign than the two breeds are drifting apart, and in several thousand generations time will be unable to mate, even in this fashion.

Really, I think its both.

We're gaining new knowledge, inventing new technologies, creating artificial intellegence ect. But our minds are becoming lazy. Soon it will come to a stand still and nothing really new will be created.

We're letting technology do things for us, and not using our heads as much as we used to. So really, I think we're evolving and devolving at the same time.

I'll post more later. My sleepy mind cant think right now

Interesting views

well, I have a new question to ask: In addition to the above, is there any rercorded data of a animal developing a entirly new appendage, that was NOT originaly in thier DNA.

For example: Four eared cats, flies with eyes on thier legs, etc. dont count, due to the existins of the information for eyes and ears already in thier makeup.

Originally Posted by Keeper

Interesting views

well, I have a new question to ask: In addition to the above, is there any rercorded data of a animal developing a entirly new appendage, that was NOT originaly in thier DNA.

For example: Four eared cats, flies with eyes on thier legs, etc. dont count, due to the existins of the information for eyes and ears already in thier makeup.
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Horses used to have "toes" but they adapted to hooves thousands of years ago.

Originally Posted by NeAvO

Horses used to have "toes" but they adapted to hooves thousands of years ago.
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but how do you know? What if they didn't?

Originally Posted by Keeper

but how do you know? What if they didn't?
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Fossils have been found of the first species of horses. As well as foot prints ect.

I think it's incredibly important to clear up a few things that may be fuzzy because of wording others have used...

Genes do not change for a specific purpose. Your children will not have new genes simply because it would be easier for them if they had them... it doesn't work that way. Natural selection, which is the type of evolution we're talking about here, works only with the traits that already exist within a group. The more variation a group has, the more likely it is to survive a change in environment, for example.

Classic example: A species of moths are more typically brown-winged, but there is a recessive gene for white-winged moths. This moth species lives in a forest with primarily pine trees (brown bark), with a few aspens (white bark). A logging company comes through and destroys great stretches of pines, but leaves the aspens where they are (or alternatively, something natural happens to the pines and they eventually die out, leaving more room for the aspens to take over). With the pines gone, the brown-winged moths are easier for birds to see on the aspens, and thus get eaten more often than the white-winged moths. Because the white-winged moths now have an advantage over the brown-winged moths, more white-winged moths are able to reproduce, leading to a greater number of white-winged moths than brown-winged moths. If the brown-winged moths ALL get eaten by birds, the recessive white-wing gene will be the only color choice left, so all the moths will be white.
Voila, evolution through natural selection.

No new genes were "created," but an old gene can be lost, though not necessary for the shift is color for said moths. In this example, we're not even discussing the possibility of random genetic mutations... that isn't necessary for natural selection because it works with what is already available.

THAT is micro-evolution, and that happens all the time.

Macro-evolution is the type of evolution that is often frowned upon by creationists. That's when a single species goes through enough of these micro-evolutionary changes that it either splits into multiple species or the old species is gone and a new one has evolved.

At what point do we know that a new species has evolved? That's another sticky question simply because we don't know everything (duh). This can be problematic when we can't prove whether or not the two groups can produce viable offspring...

At this point in our understanding, species are defined in such a way that two species cannot create viable offspring. In other words, the donkey and the horse are NOT the same species because a mule is infertile, a.k.a. inviable. Critters that CAN produce viable offspring would be called the same species, but sometimes people have a hard time doing that when the two critters might LOOK very different or what-have-you (lions & tigers, if they can produce viable offspring, would be considered the same species, with "lion" and "tiger" being a sub-species).

So... those monkeys that someone else used as an example... would only be different species if, over time, their differences were so great that they could not produce viable offspring... in the sense that they could not produce offspring at all or their offspring were infertile.

As for your question about new appendages forming that were not in the DNA... that's impossible, as you might have guessed, because evolution only works with what is already there. However, a species can develop new traits through random mutations. Mutations happen all the time... sometimes they result in miscarriage (i.e. the offspring does not even survive the fetal phase), and other times the trait is such that it doesn't do anything good or bad for the individual (i.e. you get a mutation that results in a green-eye gene instead of two blue-eye genes, which still results in blue eyes).

Anyhow, I hope that clears up at least some of your questions. I have to run some errands and eat lunch now.

Ciao