Creationists like to complain that evolution cannot be observed and that this is a sign that evolution isn't real science. Unfortunately for the creationists, this claim is false: evolution can be and has been observed. Significant examples of evolution in action may not occur every day but they do occur.

Unfortunately for scientists, though, creationists tend to deny or dismiss these examples. No matter how many different ways evolution is demonstrated to occur out in nature, creationists find some excuse for not accepting what is happening right before everyone's eyes. Sometimes, they'll even go so far as to deny the standard definition of "evolution" in biology in order to avoid accepting the truth.

The research team, led by Marlene Zuk, a professor of biology, found that greater than 90 percent of male field crickets (Teleogryllus oceanicus) on Kauai shifted in less than 20 generations from having normal wings to mutated "flat wings" that inhibit the crickets from calling. The mutation occurred, the researchers conclude, to protect male crickets from a deadly parasitic fly (Ormia ochracea) that uses the cricket song to locate crickets as hosts.

Upon finding a male cricket, the fly deposits larvae onto it; these then burrow into the cricket, develop inside, and subsequently kill the cricket when they emerge from its body. Of three Hawaiian Islands (Oahu, the Big Island of Hawaii, and Kauai) where the cricket and fly co-occur, Kauai, where the rapid spread of this wing mutation in male crickets was observed, has the highest prevalence of the parasitic fly.

Source: EurekAlert

One obvious problem with all this is the fact that if a male cricket makes no noise, then how does he manage to attract any mates? The solution is as interesting as it is Machevallian: they cheat. Not every cricket is silent and those who are silent can leech the females off of those who make noise — and who end up as food for the parasites.

To test their hypothesis, the biologists performed a field experiment that demonstrated that the flatwings are using the callers as female attractors... "While we were surprised by the extraordinary speed at which the mutation spread, what is more interesting is that, ordinarily, you would expect such a change in wing morphology to quickly disappear, because males couldn't attract mates," Zuk said. "Instead, the behavior of the flatwings allows them to capitalize on the few callers that remain, and thus escape the fly and still reproduce. This is seeing evolution at work."

This is how science works: observe, create hypothesis, test, confirm, and keep moving. There are no static dogmas or doctrines which define an orthodoxy for everyone to accept. Science teaches that we don't know everything, but we can know more than we currently do if we go about things the right way. That's why science has allowed us to expand our knowledge of the world around us to such a dramatic degree.

How will creationists dismiss this? Simple: crickets didn't turn into zebras, so it's not evolution. One of the principle means by which creationists deny the reality of evolution is through denying the definition of evolution: if it isn't one species turning into some radically different species overnight, then it's not "real" evolution. The fact that no real scientists define evolution this way doesn't matter. This is, in fact, a sign that creationists' criticisms of evolution aren't really about evolution in the first place.

 

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• Evolution vs. Creationism
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