Pantry moths, evolution and natural selection

Indianmeal moth (pantry moth)

Note: update at end of post.

You knew those three things would be combined in a headline one day, didn't you? I've been thinking about this lately because my house is plagued in the summer months by pantry moths. They seem to arrive in foodstuffs, though I've never been able to pin down the exact source. In any case, they arrive in Spring and try to live with me until Autumn. (However, I have a BugZooka so the moths end up living outside after I catch and release them.)

Longish post after the jump...

Aliens, evolution and speciation

Let's call life a spark. It is that spark that somehow emerges from matter, making it move, making living creatures.

Using this definition, let's consider something. If you've studied evolution, you know that speciation occurs when a group of creatures become permanently isolated from another group of the same type of creatures. Think Darwin's finches on various islands. The conditions differ and this causes changes in the finches that live on each island. Given enough time, the two groups become more and more different until they can be said to be two different species. That's speciation, and it's the reason there are so many novel creatures on Earth.

Let's combine and stretch these two concepts (life being a spark, and distance allowing for speciation) and apply this to the universe at large. Somewhere out there, conditions are right for life to have occurred on many, many planets. And those planets now host a panorama of life as diverse as the range of life we see on Earth.

From our vantage point on Earth, we would call the resulting creatures "aliens". They would be wildly different from us. But really, if the spark of life that occurred on Earth billions of years ago was transplanted to another planet with conditions suitable for life, it would also have evolved into "alien" creatures.

The important point here is that the "life", in both instances, is the same. It is the spark, the beginning of movement and continuation and purpose. We still don't know how this occurs, but that it does is evident.

What I'm trying to say is that it's all an extended experiment in speciation. That planet is so distant from our own. And the conditions there are wildly dissimilar to those we find on Earth. Therefore the life on that planet conforms to the "alien" conditions it encounters. But really, this is just an example of speciation brought about by isolation.

If this observation is true, all life forms are our brothers. Because all life comes from the same source: the spark that is inherent in matter.

Dr. Benjamin Carson: neurosurgeon and twit

Seriously, this guy is as dumb as a stump. He's a neurosurgeon and a Seventh Day Adventist and a young-Earth creationist. The full "Duh". Today, Jerry Coyne blogs about the fact that Carson was asked to give a commencement address at a Texas university, where many attendees walked out. Good for them.

I'd like to reprint a few of Carson's answers to questions, so we can laugh at him. For instance, he was asked about the "consequences" of believing in evolution. This is his response:

By believing we are the product of random acts, we eliminate morality and the basis of ethical behavior. For if there is no such thing as moral authority, you can do anything you want. You make everything relative, and there’s no reason for any of our higher values.

I just shake my head when people talk like this. It doesn't make any sense to suggest that if an authoritarian god didn't create us, then we can't know right from wrong. Duh. There's no connection between these two concepts. None at all. And then he throws in this idea of the loss of "higher values". Like going to church? And wasting our lives thinking about a nonexistent sky god? And feeling guilty all the time? And hating gays and women? Big losses, fella. Do go on.

Dr. Carson closed the interview with this:

Can you prove evolution? No. Can you prove creation? No. Can you use the intellect God has given you to decide whether something is logical or illogical? Yes, absolutely. It all comes down to “faith”–and I don’t have enough to believe in evolution. I’m too logical!

Yes, indeed. He's just too darned logical. I can't believe anyone lets this guy operate on their brain. And he's actually invited to give commencement addresses. Jeebus! Ah well, it's Texas. They can't help themselves down there.

As always, hat tip to Jerry. I love that he brings these things to my attention. No one else covers religious lunacy as thoroughly. Gods, my ass!

This should be posted everywhere

Jerry Coyne, my favorite science blogger, has been posting excerpts from Robert G. Ingersoll's 1872 essay “The Gods“. (Yes, 1872!) Here's today's installment:

    Would an infinitely wise, good and powerful God, intending to produce man, commence with the lowest possible forms of life; with the simplest organism that can be imagined, and during immeasurable periods of time, slowly and almost imperceptibly improve upon the rude beginning, until man was evolved? Would countless ages thus be wasted in the production of awkward forms, afterwards abandoned? Can the intelligence of man discover the least wisdom in covering the earth with crawling, creeping horrors, that live only upon the agonies and pangs of others? Can we see the propriety of so constructing the earth, that only an insignificant portion of its surface is capable of producing an intelligent man? Who can appreciate the mercy of so making the world that all animals devour animals; so that every mouth is a slaughter house, and every stomach a tomb? Is it possible to discover infinite intelligence and love in universal and eternal carnage?
    What would we think of a father, who should give a farm to his children, and before giving them possession should plant upon it thousands of deadly shrubs and vines; should stock it with  ferocious beasts, and poisonous reptiles; should take pains to put a few swamps in the neighborhood to breed malaria; should so arrange matters, that the ground would occasionally open and swallow a few of his darlings, and besides all this, should establish a few volcanoes in the immediate vicinity, that might at any moment overwhelm his children with rivers of fire? Suppose that this father neglected to tell his children which of the plants were deadly; that the reptiles were poisonous; failed to say anything about the earthquakes, and kept the volcano business a profound secret; would we pronounce him angel or fiend?
    And yet this is exactly what the orthodox God has done.
    According to the theologians, God prepared this globe expressly for the habitation of his loved children, and yet he filled the forests with ferocious beasts; placed serpents in every path; stuffed the world with earthquakes, and adorned its surface with mountains of flame.
    Notwithstanding all this, we are told that the world is perfect; that it was created by a perfect being, and is therefore necessarily perfect. The next moment, these same persons will tell us that the world was cursed; covered with brambles, thistles and thorns, and that man was doomed to disease and death, simply because our poor, dear mother ate an apple contrary to the command of an arbitrary God.

Has it ever been stated more clearly? Either there's no god or he's a vicious psychopath. I'll take the former option.

NYT publishes utter nonsense

The New York Times published an idiotic essay by Nicholas Wade today, and I really don't understand their motivation. The substance of the essay is the typical brain-dead nonsense that spews from every creationist mouth at least twice daily.

Using Rubio's pandering statement about the actual age of the Earth being a "mystery", Wade suggests we offer the creationist loons a "fig leaf". And what is this fig leaf? Surprise, surprise. It's the same nonsense that creationists regurgitate every day:

By allowing that evolution is a theory, scientists would hand fundamentalists the fig leaf they need to insist, at least among themselves, that the majestic words of the first chapter of Genesis are literal, not metaphorical, truths. They in return should make no objection to the teaching of evolution in science classes as a theory, which indeed it is. 

Ah, yes. Evolution is "just a theory", as the rubes love to say. This is meant to suggest that someone was sitting on a rock by a stream one day, and suddenly came up with the idea that "maybe life evolves". Aw, maw, that cain't be true; it's just some guy's wild-eyed theory.

Of course, when the word "theory" is used in a scientific sense, it doesn't mean what the rubes think it means. I'm going to trust that my readers already understand this, but in case a reader stumbles by who doesn't grasp the difference, have a look at Wikipedia's entry for scientific theory. It ain't hay.

What I don't understand is why the New York Times, which undoubtedly grasps the distinction between the actual and the rube versions of "theory", would print such nonsense. It's irresponsible and does further harm to the fight to educate the masses. Just a theory, indeed! Disgusting.

How can anyone NOT believe in evolution?

From a science news story today:

Neurotransmitters linked to mating behavior are shared by mammals and worms.

And from another story released today:

A Swedish–Norwegian research team shows in a new study that the intestines of the peculiar Penis worm develop in the same way as those in humans, fish and starfish.

If we didn't all come from the same source, why do we share many elements and traits with the "lower" animals? There is no doubt that evolution is real. People who don't accept the truth about our origins are either blinkered by religion or too lazy to think it through. Unfortunately, this describes most Americans.

The Science Guy takes aim at American ignorance

You remember Bill Nye, the Science Guy, don't you? He's been in the news lately.

"The Earth is not 6,000 or 10,000 years old," Nye said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's not. And if that conflicts with your beliefs, I strongly feel you should question your beliefs."

Millions of Americans do hold those beliefs, according to a June Gallup poll that found 46 percent of Americans believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago.

It's hard to believe that nearly half of all Americans are ignorant twits. Sadly, they live in a religious bubble and will never see the real world. I'm appalled by their lack of diligence. They've never even tried to put their minds to work. These lackluster Americans have a name for their ignorance: faith. It's anything but admirable.

Religious twits and evolution

On his blog today, Jerry Coyne said:

"So when you hear people who accept evolution nevertheless refusing to admit that it’s unguided and purposeless, you know you’re dealing with someone who is osculating the rump of faith."

Here's the definition of osculate:

v. os·cu·lat·ed, os·cu·lat·ing, os·cu·lates. v.tr. 1. To kiss. 2. Mathematics To have three or more points coincident with. v.intr. To come together; contact.

I love Coyne. Each and every day, he whacks religious idiots over the head with a frying pan. And no one does it better.

Good article on the evolution of humans

Lucy, the mother of us all.

I just read a great article in the New York Times. It's an interview with Chris Stringer, a British paleoanthropologist, and it touches on so many interesting topics. It's about where humans came from, why we have 2.5% Neanderthal DNA, and whether we're still evolving. Good stuff. Here's a short excerpt about the pre-humans in Africa who were our forebears. He's discussing the situation just before homo sapiens appeared:

Populations in different areas would have flourished briefly, developed new ideas, and then maybe those populations could have died out, even — but not before exchanging genes, tools and behavioral strategies. This kept happening until we get to within the last 100,000 years, and then finally we start to see the modern pattern behaviorally and physically coalescing from these different regions to become what we call modern humans by about 60,000 years ago.

Apparently, we are the result of a mix of many pre-human populations. We're mutts.

Aside: The fact that humans have only been around for 60,000 years is shocking. The universe is nearly 14 billion years old. Earth is about 4.7 billion years old. And we've been here for, uh, about five minutes and have nearly managed to kill the entire planet in that short time. Makes you think (and shudder).

Go read the article. You'll be glad you did. Knowledge is good.

The problem in a nutshell

Grampa Homo Habilis.

In the comments on Greg Laden's blog, I found the following:

There was a sad statement in the one blog that read "I respect that you have a faith in a savior, that you even believe that you need a savior. But why is your faith so fragile that you are not willing to discover the actual facts of the long history of the human animal?"

I must say that this is one confused atheist/secular depressive. Humans are NOT animals. Humans are set apart from the animals. We are higher. We have a soul, animals do not., We are and will be accountable to our Creator on judgement day, animals will not. We are made lower than the angels but higher than the animal kingdon, made in God's own image.

Sadly, some people just do not get Gensis and it utmost importance. It is the ultimate history text in the universe. 

This is a snapshot of what's wrong with America today. Someone politely asks a religious lunatic the most important question -- why is it that you ignore the facts? -- and gets the bible thrown back at him. They don't even hear the question. Reality has nothing to do with a religious person's life. The only thing that's real to these people is the fairytale in their head. And that's why our country will make no progress in the coming years. These people are legion in America and they will destroy science and education and democracy itself if we don't stop them. Their reign of ignorance will only end when religion is seen as a nitwit hobby, along the lines of astrology.

You can't reach religious people, which is why I never try. I only make fun of them. People who can believe the sheer nonsense that we call "religion" haven't taken their brains out for a test drive. (Meanwhile, the baboons in the post below probably have. Just saying.)

We're animals. We evolved from primitive creatures. And as for humans being special, the truth is that life is life. It's all valuable, wonderful and perfect -- no matter the species. We are not god's creatures. We are the hairless monkeys of Earth. Get over it.

(And note that none of these people can spell. Not one. This is a hint about their mental processes. Messy, messy, messy.)
Image: Wikipedia 

Accommodating the religious

Some atheist writers try not to upset those who are religious. There seems to be this idea that religion is wrong but believers are just poor slobs who, well, believe. So we shouldn't pick on them. This is nonsense.

Mind you, if the person concerned is less than 16 years old, I say fine to this proposition. Let's leave the kiddies alone. But everyone else who believes in god is, in my book, culpable. They do wrong by believing in god. They are failed human beings.

When we were lesser beings and didn't have our current mental faculties (I'm speaking of our evolutionary ancestors here), the idea of gods must have cropped up for the first time. Sure it was fuzzy but I'll bet it was there. Pre-human primates invented god.

Once these nascent minds reached a point where they could think about the world, they undoubtedly tried to come up with explanations for the things they saw. And this line of thought brought them to the idea of gods. They made it up and then they believed it. Probably all sorts of primates were religious -- and more power to them. In their own way, they were trying to think. It's kinda cute.

Religion misses the beauty

Actual photo of god.

One of the oddest things about religion is that it insists its adherents not notice the beauty all around them. To block their flock's view of reality, religion pushes people's heads into a deep, empty chasm of meaningless rhetoric -- and forbids them to ever look outside this dusty hole again.

Which brings me to today's point. We often hear about religious people in this country who resist the idea of evolution. "Not us," they say. "We didn't come from monkeys! We're too special." Indeed you are but not in the way you think.

Dawkins, dissing Perry, speaks of evolution's beauty

Richard Dawkins

I'm sure readers are aware that Rick Perry (and every other Republican nitwit running for president, other than Huntsman) said he doesn't believe in evolution. It's amazing that anyone in the civilized world could say such a thing in 2011, but there you go. The Republican field is composed of dimwits.

In an article today on PZ Myers' blog, he quotes Richard Dawkins' response to these Republican nitwits who fail to grasp that evolution is a fact of life on Earth (and everywhere else, for that matter; evolution rules the universe). Dawkins spoke about the exquisite beauty of evolution and the ineffable sadness of human beings who fail to understand this essential theory:

[Evolution is] one of the most beautiful ideas anyone ever had as well as arguably the most powerful. To die in ignorance of its elegance, and power to explain our own existence, is a tragic loss, comparable to dying without ever having experienced great music, great literature, or a beautiful sunset.

There's a lot more at PZ's post. Go read it. It's good stuff.

Humans are pattern-seeking creatures

The offending kudzu. (Pic stolen from HuffPo).

We see funny, ridiculous stories like this all the time:

KINSTON, N.C.— Residents in an eastern North Carolina city say a patch of kudzu growing on a utility pole is more than an invasive vine. They see a likeness to Jesus Christ on the cross.

Have you ever wondered why people see jeebus everywhere? It's simple: people see patterns. It's what we do. This talent helped our ancestors to survive and that's why it persists in humans to this day. We had to see patterns, had to notice that when we traded with a particular person we always got the raw end of the deal. It was a pattern. Seeing patterns helps us to survive into the future.

It's a wildly useful talent. Early humans saw patterns all around them. They noticed that Winter comes once a year and that the seasons occur in a regular order. By keeping track of these patterns they were able to plan and survive -- and they invented science: the investigation of patterns.

Unfortunately, this human talent is active even when it's not needed and this produces useless perceptions like the faces and animals that we (think we) see in clouds. It's a talent that is always looking for an object; it can't stop seeing patterns. So we see an old man in the curl of the tablecloth, a figure in the shadows. This inerrant pattern recognition does us no good -- but we can't turn it off. It's how brains work.

We extend this talent further when we think that the wind and storms have a personality. We see a pattern and decide it's Mother Nature. But there is no Mother Nature. It's just something we once thought we saw. This talent is what gives rise to the idea of gods, a notion meant to be the ultimate summary of all patterns.

But the cloud creatures and Mother Nature and the gods are random products of aimless pattern-seeking, a talent gone mad. And those who fall prey to the god pattern see it all around them: in toast, oils spills, wood knots -- and vines.

It's a basic human capability gone haywire. When not put to good use, pattern-seeking latches on to nonsensical things and tries very hard to see them as something real. That's its job. It's like a kid that needs a project -- it just can't settle down. But it's all just static in our brains, a game that doesn't know how to shut itself off. There is no jeebus in the vines or anywhere else.

We see these things because we're hairless monkeys. We can't help it; evolution made us this way. This talent is both our saving grace and a swift portal to irrationality.

Jason Rosenhouse outlines Dawkins' talk

I'm a big, big fan of Richard Dawkins. No one is more clear-thinking, in my estimation. At Jason Rosenhouse's blog today is a post about a talk Dawkins just gave at the University of Maryland. Here's an excerpt:

The conversation next addressed the gradualness of evolutionary change. If you imagine lining up all of your ancestors from the present to the dawn of time, you would not find two consecutive ancestors that were of different species. But because of the spans of time involved, the small, negligible variations from one generation to the next get magnified into large changes indeed. He likened this to a child growing up. There is no clear dividing point between babyhood and toddlerhood, just as there is no definitive moment when you suddenly go from being a child to being an adult (in all but the legal sense of course), but with the benefit of hindsight you can see that great changes have taken place.

No one tells it like Dawkins. Reading "The Selfish Gene" changed my life by making me understand evolution. His writing is so precise, so clear that it rings. I would love to meet him one day.

Understanding evolution

DNA image by Sunagatov Dmitry

A lot of people think they understand evolution but all they really understand are the headlines. Yes, they agree, we evolved from a long line of creatures, possibly extending all the way back to the very first life form. Well, it's great to agree that evolution happened, but does this mean you understand what evolution is? Today, I'd like to push aside a few incorrect notions that are floating around out there. I'm not a scientist, far from it, but I'll do the best I can.

Evolution is not a process whereby creatures morph into more splendid versions of themselves, in a nice straight line, over immense periods of time. That's the cute, slap-happy version of evolution. The thing people don't grasp is that evolution is equally about creatures dying because they cannot adapt to changing conditions in their local environment -- a climatic shift, the arrival of a new predator, a change in oxygen levels, an upgrading in the armament of their favorite prey, etc. Evolution is a bloody, painful story of survival and death -- lots of death.

Let's consider a specific case: primitive horse precursors that existed long ago. These creatures were happily trotting around for hundreds of thousands of years in a beneficent climate, eating food that was easy to chew and swallow -- soft, moist vegetation, in other words. But then climate change hit their world and as a result, the vegetation changed dramatically. Suddenly these horse progenitors had to rely on harsher, drier, more abrasive vegetation for sustenance. Now, here's the thing -- it's not that the horses magically developed new teeth that were perfectly suited to their new food source. They didn't morph into a happy new shape. That's not how evolution rolls.

On the contrary -- all the horses that had soft dentition died because they couldn't eat the new food. And of their young, only those few that happened to have harder chomping surfaces in their mouths, survived. They could obtain nourishment from the vegetation and were able to thrive and reproduce, passing harder dentition along to their young.

Evolution requires that massive numbers of creatures die when they cannot survive the changing environment of their world. Only those few creatures that develop a beneficial mutation (harder chomping surfaces, in this case) survive into the future. And in the case of our horse-like creatures, they survived all the way up to the current day. As a result, we see horses with nice, big, hard teeth.

Now let's take a simpler, more visual example. Consider a huge population of happy, fat, brown mice who are living far north at a time when even the Arctic is warm and inviting. This idyllic happy-brown-mouse period goes on for ages, and in that time the population doesn't change much. But then one day, climate change arrives and the north is suddenly snow-covered all year round. In this new environment, the brown mice are very easy for predators, especially avian predators, to see and catch -- so all the brown mice are eaten. And only their young that happen to be born white because of a mutation, can survive in the new, snow-covered landscape.

It's not that the mice suddenly morphed their fur from brown to white to survive -- it's that the brown mice died, and only their white or near-white descendants survived. In the end, all the mice in the area were white. If an occasional brown one was born, it would be eaten before it could reproduce. (And if conditions changed and it became warm again, the white mice would stick out and be killed --  and the group would soon be brown again.)

See how this works? Species that are ill-equipped to survive a change in their environment, die. Many times an entire species will go extinct because of environmental factors. In fact, most species do become extinct. Evolution eats up a lot of creatures. It is stunningly successful, but there's a sea of blood and suffering in its wake.

This process is what scientists mean by "selection pressure". Creatures with beneficial characteristics are selected by evolution to survive into the next generation and pass their genes on to their young. All this means is: the creatures are a good match for current conditions, so they survive while others don't. And as for the selection pressure, it's many things: competition for food, quality of air, strength of predators, climate, etc. This is the process of natural selection, which we refer to in our simple way, as "survival of the fittest." Yup, and the deaths of trillions of creatures who weren't as lucky.

Evolution isn't hard to understand but you do have to pay attention. It's not grasped in a minute. You have to actually look into it, read about it and then think about it. Most people don't do this and never come to understand how evolution works. It's not a morphing contest; it's not quick; and there is a ton of death and suffering that goes into it. (Which also tells us there is no god; if there was, and he allowed this bloody process to be the way life proceeds within "his" creation, he would have to be a sadistic monster, not a god.)

This post barely touches on the topic of evolution. It's a fascinating field. If you pick up a book on evolution, I don't think you'll be sorry. And it's a principle that, once learned, deepens your understanding of the universe. It's not just critters that evolve -- but that's a post for another day.

Cool stuff on physorg this weekend

The weekend is usually dull over at physorg. Not this time.

First up, "A Fizzy Ocean on Enceladus". It seems there may be life on Saturn's moon, right in our own local neighborhood. And you know what this means with respect to life elsewhere in the universe -- if it's on Earth and on Enceladus, a much different world, then life is common throughout the universe.

Next, "Researchers Find Smoking Gun of World's Biggest Extinction". I always believed the late Permian extinction was caused by volcanic eruptions. Now we know it was. This event wiped out 90% of life on Earth. There have been numerous mass extinctions of life on our planet -- and we're heading into another one now as a result of human activities.

There's also a great physics story that I don't even pretend to understand. But I love it anyway -- Time-like entanglement!

And finally, a depressing note from an article entitled, "High School Biology Teachers Reluctant to Endorse Evolution in Class". Here's a quote from it:

". . . only about 28 percent of [biology] teachers consistently implement National Research Council recommendations calling for introduction of evidence that evolution occurred . . ."

People have to stand up for truth, especially in these mindless times, yet it seems even biology teachers won't say it loud and clear: evolution created us and all the living things on our planet. Why am I not surprised? It's just the American decline again. I see it as a skull grinning madly back at us and hoping for the time when darkness will engulf everything for all eternity. This is what religion also seeks, and that is no coincidence. Knowledge is the mortal enemy of these people.

Anyway, check out the great sci-stories and mourn the facts revealed in the last one. And rest assured: no matter how many people try to stop it, science will always march forward.