Article says Crickets in Hawaii have lost the ability to make 'calls' using their wings. They are calling this evolution. The correct title is Devolution. The clever crickets have chosen an alternate way to attrack mates, so they are saying it is evolution at work. The ONLY way it could be the kind of evolution they are praying for is that the current wing weak crickets can be shown to have somehow acquired new DNA. Anything else is just plain old ordinary adaption. No different than a dog learning to walk on 3 legs after having lost one by accident.
Cheers!

hear here

you sho do be jus' 'bout right :-)

your analogy is a pretty weak in that the loss of a limb after birth is not a genetically related event...but your point is clear all the same

this same topic is on the *science* forum (forum 1 at this site) under topic title *evolution in action*

the difference between the dog learning to use three legs is that the dogs decendants will still have 4 legs and will still learn how to use them. Thats is why you dont see a lot of 3 legged dogs. You see a lot of the quiet crickets because it has become part of their dna.

there are always mutations going on. In this case likely a single cricket had the mutation, and because of it, he was able to mate where many others were not. that allowed him to have many offsprings. Those offsprings were able to mate while their noisy cousins were not, causing a large percentage of them to succeed in having more offsprings while the noisy ones had fewer make it to that point.

A three legged dog that lost his leg due to a genetic mutation would be at a disadvantage when it came to finding food, and finding mates. That would not give him much of a chance to have offspring. One that lost it due to accident would not have a gene that corrisponded to it.

This is actually more simular to the white and brown rabbits. when there was more snow during the increase in the ice age, mutations that caused the rabbits to have a white fur, gave them an advantage when it came to avoiding preditors over the the ones with brown fur. This cause the majority of the rabbits of that area to be born white furred. Later when the snow began to disappear, pure white was a disadvantage, so when a mutation occured that cause it to change from white to brown and back through the year, it had an advantage. Then when the snow disappeared in many areas, a mutation that left them with two colors gave those decendants an advantage. Now you can find some decendants of all of these in different areas.

Where is the reference for your post that claims a mutation changed the color of the rabbits fur?

To be honest it sounds like you made that part up.

Still, I have to side with the original poster. It sounds more like de-evolution to me.

trollobyte wrote:
"It sounds more like de-evolution to me."

There is no concept in science of de-evolution. Did you find this somewhere or just make it up?

CMJ:

This subject has received a lot of attention on the science forum where it was posted first.
"it is all irrelevant" sums it up.
jjw

Morg, if you don't understand de-evolutionism...then perhaps you ought to study up just a bit.

You're saying the crickets have chosen to change their wing shape and that this is the same as a dog learning to walk on 3 legs?

Wrong on both counts.

???????????

dehammer. You wrote:

"In this case likely a single cricket had the mutation, and because of it, he was able to mate where many others were not. that allowed him to have many offsprings."

At the risk of complicating matters I would point out that the cricket in which the mutation occurred is unlikely to have been the one where it first showed up. It was most likely a recessive mutation. Therefore until there had been some level of inbreeding it would not have showed up in the phenotype.

The same is true for the rabbits that change from white to brown with the seasons. New species do not arise from the expansion of small populations. Inbreeding prevents that. This is the problem that trilobyte, anyman and cmj are unable (or unwilling) to get their heads around. Populations as a whole evolve as their environment changes.

trilobyte wrote:
"Morg, if you don't understand de-evolutionism...then perhaps you ought to study up just a bit."

I admit it. I don't understand what you are trying to communicate with a made-up word that has no scientific significance.

And I would just love to study up on it. Perhaps you can point me to the ISBN number of a book I can get here at the University of Washington bookstore that discusses it.