Also from the article: Polyploid animals are far less common than polyploid plants. Professor of Zoology Gary Thorgaard says, however, that polyploidy may have been important in the evolution of lower vertebrates. Fish, frogs, salamanders, lizards and chickens all have some polyploid species.
As to why it's not more common in animals, Thorgaard says there are a variety of ideas as to why. "Animals usually have sex chromosomes while plants rarely do, and these must be present in the proper ratio for a fertilized egg to develop," he says. Sometimes more genes are expressed from one of the parental sex chromosomes. Again, the proper ratio of chromosomes from each sex would be crucial. In support of these ideas is the observation that polyploid animal species tend to have sex chromosomes that are more similar than those of animals that do not.
It may also be true that basic differences in how plants and animals grow are involved. Plants have an open growth pattern – they just keep growing, says Doug Soltis. Animals have more deterministic growth patterns. They have a multitude of complex systems, skeletal and nervous for example, that must be precisely integrated. Extra gene products from extra chromosomes could easily upset the balance needed for this integration. "The errors in egg and sperm production that would result in polyploidy probably also occur in animals, but these cells don't survive," he says.
I think I dated her once. Or maybe her sister. She kept changing her mind. It was weird.
YEC INTREP
So I would be pretty comfortable with evolution on this level. Now when you get to the level of phylum, it gets murkier; various phyla originated in the "Cambrian explosion" in a rather short amount of time (50 million years?). That, and especially the origins of life, is when intelligent design starts to be a cogent explanation for the origins of life.
As a Christian, I believe that God created the universe, life and humankind. I also believe it's reasonable on the basis of the scientific evidence to conclude that God made some use of evolution to do this. God wanted life to be adaptive and resilient to change; evolution at least to some level would accomplish this. Also, evolution would enable the various ecosystems to develop on their own into their unexpected and beautiful modern forms.
The principle is the same as that demonstrated in astronomy. Instead of the planets each depending on concentric crystalline shells, pushed along by angels, the modern view of the solar system is of planets staying each in their own orbits in a stable way due to the inverse square law for gravity and the three laws of Newtonian mechanics. Likewise, I believe God would want a natural order of life that requires little or no intervention.
Naturally, I'm not a believer in plenary verbal inspiration, or in young Earth creationism. I hope no one would argue that belief in these doctrines is necessary for salvation. Likewise, I hope my defense of an old Earth or evolution (at this level) is not a stumbling block for anyone else's faith.
Assuming that there is no genetic transfer (i.e., via pollen) between these geographically separate populations, I think the best "mechanistic" interpretation is that it's a complex example of "recessive" traits being expressed. These would be "throwback" cases, not "evolution."
>>"We may have to fundamentally change the way we view evolution," says Professor of Botany Doug Soltis. <<
Oh,no! NOT AGAIN!
Heh, heh. The more we know, the more we know we don't know. Any guesses how complex life REALLY is and how many eons you have to throw at it to get even the simplest DNA strand to "evolve."
I read a year or so ago that if you really want to de-throne all the arrogant evolutionists, just bring up plant evolution.
Aren't begonias highly polyploid?