Posted on 09/15/2010 3:57:26 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Any culture’s religious ceremonies can seem strange to outsiders: For example, take the indigenous Zoque people of southern Mexico. To ask their gods for bountiful rains during the growing season they head to a sulfur cave where molly fish swim in the subterranean lake. They then toss in leaf bundles that contain a paste made from the mashed-up root of the Barbasco plant, which has a powerful anesthetic effect.
When the stunned fish–which the Zoque people consider a gift from underworld gods–go belly-up, people scoop them from the water and bring them home for supper. This fishy protein helps them make it through until the harvest. This ritual came to the attention of scientists studying the molly fish, who wondered how the toxic root might be affecting fish populations in the caves. So evolutionary ecologist Michael Tobler and his colleagues did a little field research.
From LiveScience:
“We learned about the ceremony, and actually attended it in 2007,” Tobler recalled. “The families each take a certain amount of the fish home. The way we had ours prepared was that they were just mixed with scrambled eggs, although I hear other families fry them. They had a funny salty taste to them, although I’m not sure if that’s because of their sulfuric environment, or something the cook messed up.”
The researchers got more than a taste of local culture, they also came up with evidence of evolution-in-action that they published in a study in Biology Letters. In lab experiments they compared molly fish from the ritual cave to others from an area upstream that had never swam in poisoned water, and found that the cave fish had a much higher tolerance for the Barbasco toxin.
Study coauthor Mark Tobler of Texas A&M University told New Scientist the results show that within the ritual cave, evolution has selected for fish that can survive the poison.
“The study indicates that the fish have adapted to the local Zoque traditions,” says Tobler, who describes the effect as “an intimate bond between nature and local culture.”
The relationship may be intimate, but the Mexican government is worried that it’s also detrimental–officials have banned the ceremony, saying it’s bad for the fish.
um... we have always known about developing a tolerance for some thing...
That’s not quite ‘evolution’
for example, where are the intermediate stages of a set of eyeballs?
from no eyeballs to fully developed eyeballs, never any evidence of something in-between
I for one welcome our new Poison-Tolerant Cave Fish.
nonsense - there are cave creatures with poor eyesight, but eyesight nonetheless.
Also moles fall into this category as well. Eyes, just not so good ones.
Technically this is not an example of evolution but rather (inadvertant) selective breeding.
Just like the Belyaev foxes (google it).
The reporter is not able to distinguish between adaptability, and evolutionary development. IMHO
And by the way, the government should keep the heck out of the it.
I conduct poison tolerance tests with scotch all the time.
They should have tested the people who are eating these fish.
Certain strains of Ebola have a 20% survival rate, so if an outbreak occurs, 4 out of 5 will die. That’s not really evolution happening to the 1 in 5. Whatever saved them was already there...
It is if the next generation is born with the tolerance instead of building it through exposure. The fish who have a propensity for tolerance are able to breed while those who don't are eaten. Over time, you get generations of whom the poison has no effect from birth. for example, where are the intermediate stages of a set of eyeballs?
Eye evolution is one of those items that is pretty well documented and can be seen in all its stages now in the mollusk to cephalopods, from simpler members of the family with just simple light censors to the advanced eyes of the squid and many stages in between.
Yeah, this is on the edge of either bad science or bad reporting.
What REALLY happened here is that those fish which ALREADY HAD a genetic resistance to the toxin survived to reproduce more than those members of the population which lacked those alleles/genes.
The non-resistanct fish did not live to keep their genes in the genome. Only those with the resistant gene survived and whelped their young.
This article hints at the usual bad language of ‘giraffes needed longer necks to reach the higher leaves so they adapted to have longer necks.’ um ... no.
Also see Lamarck — acquired traits are not inherited.
It has been shown that the rod and cone cells of our eyes are related to light sensitive brain cells that exist in a marine worm. This type of worm has not evolved itself much in the last 600 million years. link
So going from brain cells to light-sensitive brain cells would be an intermediate step.
Welcome them where?
They ain’t coming here.
We have enough Mexicans coming here now.
They can’t be born with it unless it was in the parents’ genome already. *OR* if it happened along as a recombinant mutation in the genes. Over time those without the new gene or allele(s) become predominant in the gene pool, even if they are recessive, since those without the gene DIE more.
correction - I mean WITH the new gene, not without.
Box Jellyfish have TWO different eye designs. It’s like they were being bred to provide replacement sensors for some sort of electronic device.
paging Captain Obvious...Will Captain Obvious please pick up the courtesy taco!
Nikko Tinbergen made these points 70 years ago ~ that ALL animals of ALL types Have the Same Organs or Organelles.
ALL means All.
Unless you have the organs to handle the processes you have no existence.
I think the Darwinian model fails because of this cold, hard fact about "organs" or "organelles". There simply isn't the EVOLUTION of a new organ or organelle to handle a totally new process not found in any other animal over a period of time extending over 600 million years.
Even the most ancient sponges have 70% of the same genes that modern humans have ~ and, essentially, the same organs.
If there's no evolution on the big stuff, then where is it? Seems to me all it may have added is a little whittling around the fundamentals ~ but nothing major!
So you are saying that it is “well documented”, that a light sensitive spot with all of the necessary combination of chemicals and material; the connective tissue with the correct balance of chemicals to allow the transference of this information to connect this light spot to the brain; the section of the brain that facilitates this tissue connection to be made to receive this stimulus; and the brain’s change so this new ability can be recognized -— (this ALL has to happen at the same time - one without the others is useless) -— THIS has been “well documented” -— all FOUR simultaneously occurring in one giant evolutionary leap ?????
would you like to explain that to me (and please use simple terms, I’m only an engineer - not a evolutionary scientist)
regards
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