Fenrir wrote:The evolution of echolocation in bats Gareth Jones, Emma C. Teeling, Trends in Ecology and Evolution Vol 21:3.
Recent molecular phylogenies have changed our perspective on the evolution of echolocation in bats. These phylogenies suggest that certain bats with sophisticated echolocation (e.g. horseshoe bats) share a common ancestry with non-echolocating bats (e.g. Old World fruit bats). One interpretation of these trees presumes that laryngeal echolocation (calls produced in the larynx) probably evolved in the ancestor of all extant bats. Echolocation might have subsequently been lost in Old World fruit bats, only to evolve secondarily (by tongue clicking) in this family.
(Async comments: Ha ha ha! The Xhosa and Zulu people are all going to develop echo location too, are they? There's an awful lot of tongue clicking in those languages! Think they might all turn into bats too?)
Remarkable acoustic features such as Doppler shift compensation, whispering echolocation and nasal emission of sound each show multiple convergent origins in bats.
(Async: Wowee! How did these very first bats figure that lot out?)
The extensive adaptive radiation in echolocation call design is shaped largely by ecology, showing how perceptual challenges imposed by the environment can often override phylogenetic constraints.
(Async: What the hell does that mean???)
Were you planning on wheeling out the whole of the AIG "things which superficially support us if we misrepresent them the right way therefore god" archives one at a time or is there some point you are trying to make?
No, I'm pointing out the things which evolution cannot even begin to explain.
Recent molecular phylogenies have changed our perspective on the evolution of echolocation in bats. These phylogenies suggest that certain bats with sophisticated echolocation (e.g. horseshoe bats) share a common ancestry with non-echolocating bats (e.g. Old World fruit bats).
What utter crap.
Suppose they did show
'common ancestry' whatever the hell that may mean, how does that account for the existence of the echolocation apparatus in the first place?
Fruit bats have vision.
Suppose the microchiropterans 'diverged' (like hell they did!) from the fruit bat line. Then they must have lost their vision, and 'developed' echo-location. That seems logical.
Now your problems really begin. The very first bats had echolocation.
Icaronycteris, the earliest or maybe second earliest bat fossil found, shows the characteristic swellings on the head bones. So that didn't 'evolve'. But suppose it did.
The oldest known fossil from this period (Icaronycteris index) has been X-rayed and shows specialisations of the auditory region of the skull suggesting that it could echolocate.http://www.jwaller.co.uk/batgroup/biology.asp
What happened when the seeing, fruit-eating bat was changing (diverging, ha ha!) into the echolocating, insect eating microchiropteran? What happened to the digestive tract? What happened to the eyes? Where did the sonar arrangement suddenly come from?
You haven't got a clue, have you?
And then there's this problem: as I said, bats are mammals. Which mammals did they 'evolve' from? Did the ancestral mammals jump off cliffs or trees waving their FINGERS in the air? You can just see it happening, can't you? 'Oh there's a nice insect. I'll get it. Jump. THUDDDD!!! End of bat evolution. Heh heh heh!
And what about the instincts required to USE the equipment when it first appeared? I take it that you think the equipment appeared for the first time somewhere along the line? Well if it did, how did the bat know how to use it? Remember, asynctropy says: even if the organ is perfect, without the powering instinct, it is useless.
Mutations and natural selection, I suppose.
Got anything else less hopeless?
No? How about creation, then?