Posted: Jul 27, 2010 12:32 pm
Interesting post Cali, which also got me thinking about the potentials of doing selective breeding experiments with fish, perhaps in order to among other things, demonstrate something more along the line of speciation often claimed impossible by creationists and ID-proponents.
When I say selective breeding I should perhaps clarify a little that having scientists involved in directly selecting fish to breed with may not be an absolute requirement. It may indeed be enough to simply make artifical environments for the fish, with strong selective pressures for some desired trait we might be interested in demonstrating be able to evolve.
Consider a simplistic proposal for such an experiment : Artifical environment with a strong selective pressure for the gradual evolution of land-based locomotion ability in fish. I imagine you simply place the food the fish are to eat in hard to reach areas in an aquarium with competition for being able to reach that food between the fish, lesser able ones dying out from a lack of nutrition, simply losing out to more able ones.
As the population of breeding individuals slowly develop whatever minor phenotypical expressions making them more competent food-reachers, you simply increase the difficulty in the artificial environment, again putting strong pressure for the further development of the ability to reach the nutrition.
Does this sound feasible? I don't see why not myself in my immediate thoughts. I can imagine some hurdles like the prospect of inbreeding if the populations sizes are too small, or the inability for something definitely "alien" to develop within meaningful timeframes, even at this strong, artificial level of selection. Any thoughts?
When I say selective breeding I should perhaps clarify a little that having scientists involved in directly selecting fish to breed with may not be an absolute requirement. It may indeed be enough to simply make artifical environments for the fish, with strong selective pressures for some desired trait we might be interested in demonstrating be able to evolve.
Consider a simplistic proposal for such an experiment : Artifical environment with a strong selective pressure for the gradual evolution of land-based locomotion ability in fish. I imagine you simply place the food the fish are to eat in hard to reach areas in an aquarium with competition for being able to reach that food between the fish, lesser able ones dying out from a lack of nutrition, simply losing out to more able ones.
As the population of breeding individuals slowly develop whatever minor phenotypical expressions making them more competent food-reachers, you simply increase the difficulty in the artificial environment, again putting strong pressure for the further development of the ability to reach the nutrition.
Does this sound feasible? I don't see why not myself in my immediate thoughts. I can imagine some hurdles like the prospect of inbreeding if the populations sizes are too small, or the inability for something definitely "alien" to develop within meaningful timeframes, even at this strong, artificial level of selection. Any thoughts?