5 Responses to “Rules Channel Evolution”

1. edarrell Says:
   May 11th, 2006 at 10:14 pm

   It appears to be a simple algorithm, from the news article: Two nights of falling temperatures, go south.

   One more case of what appears to be complex behavior governed instead by simple rules that don't require intervention of an outside, intelligent designer, no?

Comment by edarrell — May 11, 2006 @ 10:14 pm

2. bFast Says:
   May 12th, 2006 at 1:17 am

   Hmmm, why not 1 night or 3? Why would both birds and butterflies settle on 2 days? Maybe they just had the same programmer program in their migration algorithm.

Comment by bFast — May 12, 2006 @ 1:17 am

3. Aagcobb Says:
   May 12th, 2006 at 10:55 am

   Hi bFast,

   Its quite a leap to jump to the conclusion that a programmer for whose existence we have no evidence of is at work, when there are likely much simpler explanations, as edarrell suggested. Its possible that two nights of falling temperatures provide just the right amount of data to trigger migration, thus natural selection would favor both dragonflies and birds which migrated after 2 nights, as opposed to dragonflies or birds which moved after just one night or waited for a third night. While I certainly don't know that this is true, at least its a hypothesis which could conceivably be tested, unlike your hypohtetical programmer.

Comment by Aagcobb — May 12, 2006 @ 10:55 am

4. chunkdz Says:
   May 12th, 2006 at 12:21 pm

   Hi cobb,

   Its possible that two nights of falling temperatures provide just the right amount of data to trigger migration

   I don't think that the input (two nights) or the output (migration) are in question. The question is the source of the algorithm. Can RM + NS account for such an algorithm being genetically preserved in such disparate genetic lines? (Especially now that the algorithm can be traced to the late paleozoic?)

Comment by chunkdz — May 12, 2006 @ 12:21 pm

5. Nick Says:
   May 12th, 2006 at 3:02 pm

   Chunkdz:

   Can RM + NS account for such an algorithm being genetically preserved in such disparate genetic lines? (Especially now that the algorithm can be traced to the late paleozoic?)

   Actually, we don't know that the algorithm can be traced to the paleozoic. Wikelsi simply says that it makes him wonder how old the behavior is. We also don't know that birds and dragonflies use the same algorithm, assuming algorithm to mean the genetic and behavioral process for getting from stimulus (cold nights) to output (migrate). There may be many different ways of obtaining the same response from the same input.

   All we know is that (some) birds and (some) dragonflies migrate in response to the same stimulus. It may be that migrating after two consecutive nights of falling temperature minimizes both the risk of migrating prematurely due to a single cool night in the summer and the risk of waiting too long. Both of those errors would probably affect reproductive success and thus be affected by natural selection. If that is the case, then it would hardly be surprising if similar behaviors evolved independently in different migratory organisms.

   However, assume for a moment that the behavior and its genetic basis has been conserved since the paleolithic (a claim which isn't actually in the Biol. Lett. paper). So? Does anyone claim that natural selection cannot conserve an existing trait? I thought IDers claimed that was the ONLY thing NS could do.

   Either way, ID doesn't seem to add much at this point, and that brings us back to Aagcobb's comment:

   Its quite a leap to jump to the conclusion that a programmer for whose existence we have no evidence of is at work, when there are likely much simpler explanations

   At this point, if the three possibilities are:

   1. conservation of the genetic pathways controlling migration since the paleozoic

   2. Common design by an undefined designer at an undefined time for undefined purposes

   3. Independent evolution of similar traits due to similar environmental and behavioral constraints

   Then my money is on #3.

Comment by Nick — May 12, 2006 @ 3:02 pm

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