Baby talk: More misrepresentations of ecological adaptations

August 28, 2014 James V. Kohl Adaptations, Animals, Ecology, Model Organisms, RNA 1

Evolution’s Baby Steps

by Carl Zimmer

Excerpt 1) “When organisms find themselves in a new environment, they develop in a way that helps them cope with their new surroundings. Their descendants may acquire mutations that encode that anatomy in their genes. Eventually evolution takes them beyond where plasticity alone could take them.”

My comment: It’s time for science journalists to stop touting this nonsense (above).

Ecological variation leads from nutrient uptake in new environments to RNA-mediated amino acid substitutions. If the nutrient-dependent amino acid substitutions stabilize the DNA in organized genomes, the metabolism of nutrients leads to the controlled physiology of reproduction by species-specific pheromones.

Nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled ecological adaptations lead to biodiversity manifested in the morphological and behavioral phenotypes of species from microbes to man via conserved molecular mechanisms (“Genome Dynamics Events”).

Excerpt 2) In 2008, for example, scientists raised stickleback fish on two different diets. One group of fish ate bloodworms squirming around at the bottom of their tanks. The other fish ate shrimp scooting around in the open water. The bloodworm-eating fish had to clamp down on the blood worms to eat them, while the shrimp-eating ones just needed to sneak up on their prey and swallow them with a quick slurp.

The result of these different movements was different heads: the bloodworm-feeders had short, wide mouths, and the shrimp-feeders had long, narrow ones.

My comment: Attributing differences in morphology to “different movements” in sticklebacks fed two different diets is akin to telling people that differences in C. elegans (grazing nematodes) and P. pacificus (predatory nematodes with teeth) is due to differences in their movements.

The differences in nematodes and sticklebacks are due to nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled ecological, social, and neurogenic niche construction in all species with neuronal networks. How else would hundreds of different species of sticklebacks arise in one lake? See for review: Advances in Ecological Speciation: an integrative approach

See also: “It’s a series of adaptations that affect many aspects of the organism: the shape of the fish, its behaviour, diet and mating preferences,” says evolutionary biologist Greg Wray at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who was not involved in the study.”

About James V. Kohl 1308 Articles
James Vaughn Kohl was the first to accurately conceptualize human pheromones, and began presenting his findings to the scientific community in 1992. He continues to present to, and publish for, diverse scientific and lay audiences, while constantly monitoring the scientific presses for new information that is relevant to the development of his initial and ongoing conceptualization of human pheromones. Recently, Kohl integrated scientific evidence that pinpoints the evolved neurophysiological mechanism that links olfactory/pheromonal input to genes in hormone-secreting cells of tissue in a specific area of the brain that is primarily involved in the sensory integration of olfactory and visual input, and in the development of human sexual preferences. His award-winning 2007 article/book chapter on multisensory integration: The Mind’s Eyes: Human pheromones, neuroscience, and male sexual preferences followed an award winning 2001 publication: Human pheromones: integrating neuroendocrinology and ethology, which was coauthored by disinguished researchers from Vienna. Rarely do researchers win awards in multiple disciplines, but Kohl’s 2001 award was for neuroscience, and his 2007 “Reiss Theory” award was for social science. Kohl has worked as a medical laboratory scientist since 1974, and he has devoted more than twenty-five years to researching the relationship between the sense of smell and the development of human sexual preferences. Unlike many researchers who work with non-human subjects, medical laboratory scientists use the latest technology from many scientific disciplines to perform a variety of specialized diagnostic medical testing on people. James V. Kohl is certified with: * American Society for Clinical Pathology * American Medical Technologists James V. Kohl is a member of: * Society for Neuroscience * Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology * Association for Chemoreception Sciences * Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality * International Society for Human Ethology * American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science * Mensa, the international high IQ society