Insects show how DNA mistakes become evolutionary innovation October 8, 2012 by Faye Flam
Excerpt: One of the more difficult aspects of evolution for some people to swallow is the notion that random copying errors in DNA can add up to anything useful.
My comment: What’s difficult to swallow is further propagation of a theory, which now includes ingesting a toxin as one of the events that is essential to adaptive evolution.
The toxin did not kill the organism that ingested it, which is great for that individual. But how did the epigenetic effects of the toxin on intracelluar signaling and stochastic gene expression contribute to species survival if not via a species-specific change in the pheromones that control reproduction?
Adaptive evolution via speciation is nutrient chemical-dependent and pheromone-dependent in all species. In the context of ingesting a toxin, adaptive evolution requires two mistakes: 1) ingest the toxin 2) signal to conspecifics that it’s beneficial to their survival.
Is anyone willing to calculate the odds that two concurrent mistakes are made each time adaptive evolution occurs via the requirement for ecological, social, neurogenic, and socio-cognitive niche construction that led to the ability of some to suggest to others that DNA mistakes are evolutionary innovations?
At a time when “Olfaction and odor receptors provide a clear evolutionary trail that can be followed from unicellular organisms to insects to humans,” it is the inability of otherwise intelligent people to see the obvious pattern of biological design across species that is more amazing to me than their ridiculous claims of adaptive evolution via random mutations that are now associated with ingested toxins.
