rationalskepticism.org

Spearthrower wrote:

Zadocfish2 wrote:As I read some of the materials linked to from this site, namely this one: http://corior.blogspot.com/2006/02/part ... ution.html . In it, it mentions a fact that I would assume is very common in Creationist literature: quote-mining scientists arguing about the differences between Punctuated Equilibrium vs Gradual Descent, and putting forth that proponents of the latter are denying evolution as a whole.

Now, to be honest, as much as I love biology and evolutionary biology as a whole, I mostly only know anything about the Gradual Descent model. To better understand what is being discussed in this article and others, and as a reference for any Creationist users this site may have, can someone explain or post a link explaining how the Punctuated Equilibrium model is thought to work?

Odd! Usually Creationists leap on punctuated equilibria as scientific jargon for the days of creation!

Punctuated equilibrium just means that species will exhibit little morphological change over long periods of environmental stasis, but will change rapidly, geologically speaking, when encountering new niches or facing new environmental challenges.

Creationists willfully misinterpret this along the lines of Richard Goldschmidt's 'Hopeful Monster', where dramatic evolutionary changes occur in just one generation - think Crocoducks. Basically, Creationists manage to simultaneously argue that this pokemon form of evolution is how scientists erroneously define evolution, and also declare that this is actually what is seen in the fossil record.

This exposes how Creationists ignorantly perceive scientific theories as loose threads which they just have to pull on to unravel. Consistency isn't important, it's the undermining of an evolutionary account that matters.

In recent years, biologists have increasingly recognized that evolutionary change can occur rapidly when natural selection is strong; thus, real-time studies of evolution can be used to test classic evolutionary hypotheses directly. One such hypothesis is that negative interactions between closely related species can drive phenotypic divergence. Such divergence is thought to be ubiquitous, though well-documented cases are surprisingly rare. On small islands in Florida, we found that the lizard Anolis carolinensis moved to higher perches following invasion by Anolis sagrei and, in response, adaptively evolved larger toepads after only 20 generations. These results illustrate that interspecific interactions between closely related species can drive evolutionary change on observable time scales.