Chicken study reveals evolution can happen faster than thought
1–10 of 20 posts
Re: Chicken study reveals evolution can happen faster than thought
#2I never really understand the view that evolution can only happen over long timescales. From a theoretical perspective, natural selection can obviously have a huge effect over a single generation.
Imagine that the ability to swim was an extremely heritable, genetically determined trait. A flood on an island could select for the swimming gene in about 30 minutes.
Re: Chicken study reveals evolution can happen faster than thought
#3Url changed from http://phys.org/news/2015-10-chicken-reveals-evolution-faste... to a more original source.
Re: Chicken study reveals evolution can happen faster than thought
#4Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10462246
Re: Chicken study reveals evolution can happen faster than thought
#5I never really understand the view that evolution can only happen over long timescales. From a theoretical perspective, natural selection can obviously have a huge effect over a single generation. Imagine that the ability to swim was an extremely heritable, genetically determined trait. A flood on an island could select for the swimming gene in about 30 minutes.
Yes, makes me think that maybe evolution can be looked at as operating in two ways, temporal random variations that aren't a guaranteed to be long term directions (presumably the genes passed in this test could just as easily breed out) and the fossil based evolution that we understand pretty well.
Of course IANAEB so maybe someone can give us a more detailed explanation...
Re: Chicken study reveals evolution can happen faster than thought
#6> Previously, estimates put the rate of change in a mitochondrial genome at about 2% per million years. At this pace, we should not have been able to spot a single mutation in just 50 years, but in fact we spotted two.'
Doesn't sound as spectacular as the rest of the article.
Re: Chicken study reveals evolution can happen faster than thought
#7A new study of chickens overturns the popular assumption that evolution is only visible over long time scales.
And yet the popular assumption remains the same, because it is the ignorance of the general public that perpetuates it and not the lack of research.
The solution: stop calling it popular assumption and start treating it as fact, journalists.
Re: Chicken study reveals evolution can happen faster than thought
#8A new study of chickens overturns the popular assumption that evolution is only visible over long time scales. And yet the popular assumption remains the same, because it is the ignorance of the general public that perpetuates it and not the lack of research. The solution: stop calling it popular assumption and start treating it as fact, journalists.
I've read your comment three times and I still have no idea what it's supposed to say.
Re: Chicken study reveals evolution can happen faster than thought
#9A new study of chickens overturns the popular assumption that evolution is only visible over long time scales. And yet the popular assumption remains the same, because it is the ignorance of the general public that perpetuates it and not the lack of research. The solution: stop calling it popular assumption and start treating it as fact, journalists.
I've read your comment three times and I still have no idea what it's supposed to say.
I think he's assuming they're overturning a popular assumption with another piece of information that will just become another 'popular assumption' instead of explicitly stating "This new fact overturns the popular assumption..."
Re: Chicken study reveals evolution can happen faster than thought
#10> Previously, estimates put the rate of change in a mitochondrial genome at about 2% per million years. At this pace, we should not have been able to spot a single mutation in just 50 years, but in fact we spotted two.' Doesn't sound as spectacular as the rest of the article.
So basically n=12, and they saw 2 instances of one thing and 1 instance of another. Sure, maybe p<0.05 but a larger sample size wouldn't go astray.