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> Now let me guess. You don't believe in evolution, Wrong. > Evolution matters to geology because specific fossils are often used as a cross-reference for the

by anamax 14y ago

> Now let me guess. You don't believe in evolution, Wrong. > Evolution matters to geology because specific fossils are often used as a cross-reference for the age of specific rocks. Evolution doesn't tell you how old a fossil is. Evolution says that there's a path, but doesn't say how long each step took. > There are also applications of fossils to astronomy, for instance fossil corals have been used to verify how the number of days in a year have changed over time. You're confusing evolution with fossils. Slaver ant behavior isn't dependent on evolution. (Also, everyone believes in selective breeding. Evolution is more.)

btilly 14y ago
Evolution tells you that a fossil of a given type cannot be older than ancestral types, and is unlikely to be younger than descendant types. That sandwiches the age fairly nicely. But if you want a prediction that applies to geology, evolution predicted - long before physical mechanisms were known for it - that specific land masses must have been connected in the distant past. And even put approximate dates on the connection. This lead to endless speculations of land bridges, etc - and also a crazy theory called continental drift. (Which was eventually proven correct.) There you have it. Relevant predictions in the field of geology which depend in critical ways upon Darwin's theory of descent with modification. As for slaver ant behavior, you asked for a prediction from evolution. The detailed study of ant behavior was undertaken exactly because evolutionary theory predicted specific behavior. Thus it is a prediction of evolution, regardless of the fact that you can try to explain it with selective breeding. But that said, the time it would take selective breeding to match the exact ratios predicted by theory is sufficiently long that you wind up with evidence of evolution. Evolution further predicts that the actual genetic mechanism by which this behavior is controlled is likely to be conserved across many ant species. I do not know whether this has been studied (it probably has, but I cannot confirm that), but there is another prediction for you.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  Just a nit-pick: Continental Drift is the theory that the continents were floating on the ocean and has been replaced by plate tectonics. It's not right to say that theory is correct, even though it does align with the facts about Pangea, etc.
  - btilly 14y ago
    If you're going to nitpick, choose your words carefully. :-P http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift puts it, Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other by appearing to drift across the ocean bed. Note that "appearing to drift" and "floating on the ocean" are very, very different things. A trivial comparison of rocks and water demonstrates that "floating on the ocean" would be inconceivable for something natural that is as big as a continent. That said, plate tectonics is a much better theory. But I would say that it has the same relation to continental drift that Newtonian mechanics has to Special Relativity. The theory is clearly wrong, but the succeeding theory explains why the less detailed theory appears to work. Furthermore plate tectonics is itself a theory that in due course of time will be (and to some extent already has been) replaced by something more complete. For instance consider Hawaii. We have a chain of islands that is produced by the movement of the Pacific plate over a hot spot. What creates these hot spots? What role do they have in pushing plate tectonics? A theory that explains all of this will be undoubtably differ in detail from the original theory of plate tectonics, though it will have to explain why plate tectonics seemed to work.
    - MartinCron 14y ago
      OK, I stand corrected. I thought the continental drift was a more literal and less poetic theory. That's what I get for nit-picking.
- anamax 14y ago
  > But if you want a prediction that applies to geology, evolution predicted - long before physical mechanisms were known for it - that specific land masses must have been connected in the distant past. Evolution did no such thing. I can't tell if you're confusing fossils (same creature, same time, must have been same location) or thinking that land masses "evolve", but either way.... > The detailed study of ant behavior was undertaken exactly because evolutionary theory predicted specific behavior. Actually, it doesn't (there are non-slaver ants, so if their behavior is also evolutionary, you have evolution predicting X and not-X). > Thus it is a prediction of evolution, regardless of the fact that you can try to explain it with selective breeding. The claim was that evolution was necessary to predict something. If said something can be predicted by other means, evolution is not necessary. As I've written before, I believe in evolution, but most of the arm-chair supporters offer false arguments.
  - btilly 14y ago
    Evolution did no such thing. I can't tell if you're confusing fossils (same creature, same time, must have been same location) or thinking that land masses "evolve", but either way.... Actually evolution did predict that. The earliest example is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line which was named after Alfred Russel Wallace who independently discovered the theory of evolution. This line indicates, based on the distribution of related species today, what islands were connected with Asia in the last versus which other nearby ones weren't. The line was drawn before fossil data or underwater topography could confirm or explain the past connection. Without the hypothesis that similar species are similar because they share a recent ancestor, this data on extant species would not have lead to any conclusions. Moving forward, in decades after evolution and before plate tectonics, there were many examples of scientists drawing connections between once connected masses based on related species - but not the same species in both places. For instance both India and Madagascar contain rich lemur fossils that are different but clearly related. That relation was explained by a past land mass called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemuria_(continent) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemuria_(continent). The conclusion was incorrect, but it is true that Indian and Madagascar once were connected and did exchange fauna, including lemurs. Actually, it doesn't (there are non-slaver ants, so if their behavior is also evolutionary, you have evolution predicting X and not-X). You clearly have failed to understand the example. Ants generally feed female larvae something like 3x as much as they feed male larvae. (I think the ratio is 3 to 1, but this is pulled from a course 20 years ago, and I can't swear to that figure.) Wilson came up with an evolutionary explanation for this. Based on this explanation HE PREDICTED that if the queen was in control of the care of the young, this discrepancy would disappear. Slaver ants provide a test case, because (at least in some species) the queen does control the behavior of the slaves. In slaver ants he found, AS PREDICTED BY THEORY, that when the queen was in charge (ie there were slaves), male larvae received as much food as female larvae. But when a slaver colony had no slaves, they revert to the typical 3 to 1 ratio that is common among ants. There is no X and not-X. There is behavior when queen is in control versus behavior when workers are in control. Non-slaver ants differ from slavers in that the workers are always in control of care of the larvae. > Thus it is a prediction of evolution, regardless of the fact that you can try to explain it with selective breeding. The claim was that evolution was necessary to predict something. If said something can be predicted by other means, evolution is not necessary. Scroll back. Your demand was, "Name three things in biology that were predicted using evolution?" This is, in fact, an example that was predicted using evolution. The existence of other possible explanations does not change the fact that evolution was, in fact, used to predict this particular thing. As I've written before, I believe in evolution, but most of the arm-chair supporters offer false arguments. This is true of most topics. A lot of armchair supporters know the orthodoxy, but do not understand it and cannot defend it. People believe in all sorts of alternative theories usually have an easy time dispatching these armchair supporters because while they are wrong in a big way, they actually know more than the armchair supporters do. But I would like to believe that I know more about evolution than the average armchair supporter. After all your average armchair supporter hasn't done things like audit a graduate seminar about evolution theory. :-)

by anamax 14y ago

btilly 14y ago

Evolution tells you that a fossil of a given type cannot be older than ancestral types, and is unlikely to be younger than descendant types. That sandwiches the age fairly nicely. But if you want a prediction that applies to geology, evolution predicted - long before physical mechanisms were known for it - that specific land masses must have been connected in the distant past. And even put approximate dates on the connection. This lead to endless speculations of land bridges, etc - and also a crazy theory called continental drift. (Which was eventually proven correct.) There you have it. Relevant predictions in the field of geology which depend in critical ways upon Darwin's theory of descent with modification. As for slaver ant behavior, you asked for a prediction from evolution. The detailed study of ant behavior was undertaken exactly because evolutionary theory predicted specific behavior. Thus it is a prediction of evolution, regardless of the fact that you can try to explain it with selective breeding. But that said, the time it would take selective breeding to match the exact ratios predicted by theory is sufficiently long that you wind up with evidence of evolution. Evolution further predicts that the actual genetic mechanism by which this behavior is controlled is likely to be conserved across many ant species. I do not know whether this has been studied (it probably has, but I cannot confirm that), but there is another prediction for you.

MartinCron 14y ago
Just a nit-pick: Continental Drift is the theory that the continents were floating on the ocean and has been replaced by plate tectonics. It's not right to say that theory is correct, even though it does align with the facts about Pangea, etc.
- btilly 14y ago
  If you're going to nitpick, choose your words carefully. :-P http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift puts it, Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other by appearing to drift across the ocean bed. Note that "appearing to drift" and "floating on the ocean" are very, very different things. A trivial comparison of rocks and water demonstrates that "floating on the ocean" would be inconceivable for something natural that is as big as a continent. That said, plate tectonics is a much better theory. But I would say that it has the same relation to continental drift that Newtonian mechanics has to Special Relativity. The theory is clearly wrong, but the succeeding theory explains why the less detailed theory appears to work. Furthermore plate tectonics is itself a theory that in due course of time will be (and to some extent already has been) replaced by something more complete. For instance consider Hawaii. We have a chain of islands that is produced by the movement of the Pacific plate over a hot spot. What creates these hot spots? What role do they have in pushing plate tectonics? A theory that explains all of this will be undoubtably differ in detail from the original theory of plate tectonics, though it will have to explain why plate tectonics seemed to work.
  - MartinCron 14y ago
    OK, I stand corrected. I thought the continental drift was a more literal and less poetic theory. That's what I get for nit-picking.
anamax 14y ago
> But if you want a prediction that applies to geology, evolution predicted - long before physical mechanisms were known for it - that specific land masses must have been connected in the distant past. Evolution did no such thing. I can't tell if you're confusing fossils (same creature, same time, must have been same location) or thinking that land masses "evolve", but either way.... > The detailed study of ant behavior was undertaken exactly because evolutionary theory predicted specific behavior. Actually, it doesn't (there are non-slaver ants, so if their behavior is also evolutionary, you have evolution predicting X and not-X). > Thus it is a prediction of evolution, regardless of the fact that you can try to explain it with selective breeding. The claim was that evolution was necessary to predict something. If said something can be predicted by other means, evolution is not necessary. As I've written before, I believe in evolution, but most of the arm-chair supporters offer false arguments.
- btilly 14y ago
  Evolution did no such thing. I can't tell if you're confusing fossils (same creature, same time, must have been same location) or thinking that land masses "evolve", but either way.... Actually evolution did predict that. The earliest example is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line which was named after Alfred Russel Wallace who independently discovered the theory of evolution. This line indicates, based on the distribution of related species today, what islands were connected with Asia in the last versus which other nearby ones weren't. The line was drawn before fossil data or underwater topography could confirm or explain the past connection. Without the hypothesis that similar species are similar because they share a recent ancestor, this data on extant species would not have lead to any conclusions. Moving forward, in decades after evolution and before plate tectonics, there were many examples of scientists drawing connections between once connected masses based on related species - but not the same species in both places. For instance both India and Madagascar contain rich lemur fossils that are different but clearly related. That relation was explained by a past land mass called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemuria_(continent) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemuria_(continent). The conclusion was incorrect, but it is true that Indian and Madagascar once were connected and did exchange fauna, including lemurs. Actually, it doesn't (there are non-slaver ants, so if their behavior is also evolutionary, you have evolution predicting X and not-X). You clearly have failed to understand the example. Ants generally feed female larvae something like 3x as much as they feed male larvae. (I think the ratio is 3 to 1, but this is pulled from a course 20 years ago, and I can't swear to that figure.) Wilson came up with an evolutionary explanation for this. Based on this explanation HE PREDICTED that if the queen was in control of the care of the young, this discrepancy would disappear. Slaver ants provide a test case, because (at least in some species) the queen does control the behavior of the slaves. In slaver ants he found, AS PREDICTED BY THEORY, that when the queen was in charge (ie there were slaves), male larvae received as much food as female larvae. But when a slaver colony had no slaves, they revert to the typical 3 to 1 ratio that is common among ants. There is no X and not-X. There is behavior when queen is in control versus behavior when workers are in control. Non-slaver ants differ from slavers in that the workers are always in control of care of the larvae. > Thus it is a prediction of evolution, regardless of the fact that you can try to explain it with selective breeding. The claim was that evolution was necessary to predict something. If said something can be predicted by other means, evolution is not necessary. Scroll back. Your demand was, "Name three things in biology that were predicted using evolution?" This is, in fact, an example that was predicted using evolution. The existence of other possible explanations does not change the fact that evolution was, in fact, used to predict this particular thing. As I've written before, I believe in evolution, but most of the arm-chair supporters offer false arguments. This is true of most topics. A lot of armchair supporters know the orthodoxy, but do not understand it and cannot defend it. People believe in all sorts of alternative theories usually have an easy time dispatching these armchair supporters because while they are wrong in a big way, they actually know more than the armchair supporters do. But I would like to believe that I know more about evolution than the average armchair supporter. After all your average armchair supporter hasn't done things like audit a graduate seminar about evolution theory. :-)