Thursday, August 12, 2004
It's officially a picnic...
Hello everyone! I just checked the site tracker, and we have 1,018 visits. Wow!
I came across a news story today that just gets my inner-scientist drooling. It seems that in Australia, they have found a super-colony of ants. The colony spans 62 miles (100 km), and is the home of mutated Argentine ants. This story has about a dozen interesting features, and I am dying to comment on them all. But I won't, because that would bore those of you who do not enjoy biology as much as I do. But there are some hard lessons to learn here...
First of all, the ants, as you may have guessed, are not native to Australia. By some twist of fate, they are not only in Australia, but have flourished in the climate. These particular ants have found a way to stabilize their population back in their home environments, but in Australia it is a different tale.
The ants have mutated, and have remained aggressive and productive, but have lost all in-group adversity. That is to say, they no longer fight amongst themselves for resources and turf. These ants have found themselves in a foreign land, and they have banded together. They have lost the instinct to fight out-group ants of similar genetic make-up. So when they are introduced to a fellow Argentine ant, they do not go into war mode. Instead of naturally desiring conflict, which helps population density from exploding through attrition, they have began to work together as one super-colony. The success has been unbelievable! A normal colony, back home in Argentina, is about 20 or 30 meters long. Just a fraction of the size of the colony now resting in the Melbourne area.
You see? Working together is a wonderful thing! A small change has taken ants that are, like any other ant, a mere pest and made them a force to be reckoned with. Now, as a unified society, they are a force that has grabbed human attentions. Their abilities to coordinate and cooperate are so astute that they are ruining Australian biodiversity. They have eliminated all types of vegetation and insect life. They can systematically render a native life form extinct by their sheer number and collective intent. This has made these little ants an enemy to Australia.
It is too easy to make object lessons out of a story like this. About teamwork, about making the most of being away from home, even the threat that can be imposed by foreign elements in an environment. But the one point that I want to elaborate on is the fact that these ants are VARIABLE. Variation is the key to understanding true evolution, and sadly it is the one item that is most misunderstood. I think having a misconception about variability leads to both feverish acceptance of evolution and feverish denial of it.
The reason these ants demonstrate variability is because of this; when they were in their so-called natural habitat, there was homeostasis. Creationists use this, and I think appropriately, to show that God has established an order... everything has its place, and things find a way to work in harmony. The ants have a population control built-in; their aggressive tendencies. These in turn spare the local flora and fauna from over harvesting. The ant, it would seem, has a place where it belongs.
But does it truly belong anywhere? It exists in Argentina, because at some point it found success there, more-so than in its previous locations. Over years and years, the society was formed. There were years of huge populations, and years of devastation from over aggressiveness. Sprinkled between were years that food was plentiful, and years when it was scarce. The hot sun was an enemy for long spells, but a cool friend in others. There were predators who feasted on the ants (who also enjoyed years of over population), but somehow the ants avoid extinction, and lived long enough to see the predation boom end.
If Australia was their first home, they would be a different ant entirely, much like the ants that are present in the super-colony. It isn't because they decided to mutate. It is because there is enough variation in offspring, both good and bad, that eventually a percentage of ants were born that could make the most of their Australian home. This percentage were very successful, and gave rise to another generation that was more or less similar. Thus you have evolution. There is no steering, no deciding, no "I'd better develop sharper claws" mentality. There is nothing but luck and chance. If you took a sample of 100 ants from the Australian super-colony, you would find a fantastic percentage of similarity in the genetic attributes... but there would be unique aspects as well. Longer legs, shorter antennae, keener eyes, different shades of abdomen color... life is unavoidably and uncontrollably variable.
As a matter of fact, this expressed variability that looks like a "plus" for the ants (the teamwork) will become its undoing. On a normal biological time-span (much longer than human "100 years=long time"), this race of ants will all but eliminate itself at its current pace. It will become too densely populated, and it will exhaust both real estate and resources. Granted, there will still be an enormous number of ants, but populations will gradually fall. Then will come famine, disease, and the possibility of variation. Ants may suddenly begin to find their aggressive nature working its way into the gene pool in a more concentrated population. Soon, the wars will re-ignite, driving the population into smaller groupings. This trend will ebb and flow until a observable homeostasis is met, or until the creature is extinct. And ants are not the only thing evolving in this manner. Maybe a rare beetle that feeds on ants will suddenly explode onto the Melbourne scene, and eliminate the ant populations. Maybe a poisoned milkweed will choke out all greenery before the ants do.
Life is complex and chaotic. And all of this happens every day, with plants in your house, insects in your garden, and the animals that roam your state parks.
The misconception of the uneducated evolutionist is that these ants are exemplifying evolution towards a new species; that they are somehow better as they are now. They are improving their species through instinctive altruistic behavior, allowing populations to reach heights never dreamed of back home in Argentina. But the true scientist knows that rarely is there a "better," only "different," and often a "worse." Genetics is fickle. Just look at the rainbow of human diseases. The success of their breeding is a tempting allusion to evolutionary fitness. But the polls are not closed yet. Check back in 10,000 years. Have they exhausted their resources and existing in small pockets, worse off than modern Argentine ants in their "native" land? Are they even present in Australia at all? Only then will we have some idea of this "new" ant is fit.
The misconception of the uneducated Creationist is that those ants belong somewhere specific, and will only find ruin elsewhere. It is hard to argue this at first, because all too often we see how introducing a foreign life-form to an ecosystem can unbalance it, and ruin many aspects of it. But what isn't seen is the long timeline that nature acts upon. Eventually, homeostasis will be found. And the Western mind may be surprised to learn that homeostasis does not equal Eden. Even if southern Australia ends up becoming a harsh desert, free of green plants and insects, it will have stabilized. To the Earth, a desert is as good as a marsh, as a city, as a tar pit, as an ocean, or as a rain forest. To the universe, the earth is as good as the moon, or Mars, or Jupiter. If you believe in mathematics and physics. you may already understand that homeostasis actually rests somewhere closer to annihilation. Its all thermodynamics. It doesn't make for a feel-good religion, but it does reflect reality. And reality is truth, and truth shouldn't scare even the most conservative Christian. None of this threatens God (until you edge ever so close to claiming an answer to the universe's causation). Evolution is not a force. It is the summation of real events that work on many levels. Not like a ladder. Not even in unison. It is an interpretation of results, and educated guessed based on those results.
It is religion that is like a ladder; forever reaching to better man's understanding of himself, his place in the universe, and his behavior. Evolution is not a religion. As I have said, it is a collection of facts and theories based on facts. Evolution is forever susceptible to being altered by new discoveries. Religion, if it is true, should always be singular. The core of Christianity today should resemble Christianity in 300 AD. Truth is unchanging, after-all. The future of these ants may alter our understanding of the sciences, but it should in no way alter our views on religion. Runaway ant populations do not discredit God, no more than runaway church attendance should discredit evolution (a lesson Kansas needs to look into).
Anyway, its all fun to think about (for me anyway). And, I was overdue for a scientific blog.
See ya!
I came across a news story today that just gets my inner-scientist drooling. It seems that in Australia, they have found a super-colony of ants. The colony spans 62 miles (100 km), and is the home of mutated Argentine ants. This story has about a dozen interesting features, and I am dying to comment on them all. But I won't, because that would bore those of you who do not enjoy biology as much as I do. But there are some hard lessons to learn here...
First of all, the ants, as you may have guessed, are not native to Australia. By some twist of fate, they are not only in Australia, but have flourished in the climate. These particular ants have found a way to stabilize their population back in their home environments, but in Australia it is a different tale.
The ants have mutated, and have remained aggressive and productive, but have lost all in-group adversity. That is to say, they no longer fight amongst themselves for resources and turf. These ants have found themselves in a foreign land, and they have banded together. They have lost the instinct to fight out-group ants of similar genetic make-up. So when they are introduced to a fellow Argentine ant, they do not go into war mode. Instead of naturally desiring conflict, which helps population density from exploding through attrition, they have began to work together as one super-colony. The success has been unbelievable! A normal colony, back home in Argentina, is about 20 or 30 meters long. Just a fraction of the size of the colony now resting in the Melbourne area.
You see? Working together is a wonderful thing! A small change has taken ants that are, like any other ant, a mere pest and made them a force to be reckoned with. Now, as a unified society, they are a force that has grabbed human attentions. Their abilities to coordinate and cooperate are so astute that they are ruining Australian biodiversity. They have eliminated all types of vegetation and insect life. They can systematically render a native life form extinct by their sheer number and collective intent. This has made these little ants an enemy to Australia.
It is too easy to make object lessons out of a story like this. About teamwork, about making the most of being away from home, even the threat that can be imposed by foreign elements in an environment. But the one point that I want to elaborate on is the fact that these ants are VARIABLE. Variation is the key to understanding true evolution, and sadly it is the one item that is most misunderstood. I think having a misconception about variability leads to both feverish acceptance of evolution and feverish denial of it.
The reason these ants demonstrate variability is because of this; when they were in their so-called natural habitat, there was homeostasis. Creationists use this, and I think appropriately, to show that God has established an order... everything has its place, and things find a way to work in harmony. The ants have a population control built-in; their aggressive tendencies. These in turn spare the local flora and fauna from over harvesting. The ant, it would seem, has a place where it belongs.
But does it truly belong anywhere? It exists in Argentina, because at some point it found success there, more-so than in its previous locations. Over years and years, the society was formed. There were years of huge populations, and years of devastation from over aggressiveness. Sprinkled between were years that food was plentiful, and years when it was scarce. The hot sun was an enemy for long spells, but a cool friend in others. There were predators who feasted on the ants (who also enjoyed years of over population), but somehow the ants avoid extinction, and lived long enough to see the predation boom end.
If Australia was their first home, they would be a different ant entirely, much like the ants that are present in the super-colony. It isn't because they decided to mutate. It is because there is enough variation in offspring, both good and bad, that eventually a percentage of ants were born that could make the most of their Australian home. This percentage were very successful, and gave rise to another generation that was more or less similar. Thus you have evolution. There is no steering, no deciding, no "I'd better develop sharper claws" mentality. There is nothing but luck and chance. If you took a sample of 100 ants from the Australian super-colony, you would find a fantastic percentage of similarity in the genetic attributes... but there would be unique aspects as well. Longer legs, shorter antennae, keener eyes, different shades of abdomen color... life is unavoidably and uncontrollably variable.
As a matter of fact, this expressed variability that looks like a "plus" for the ants (the teamwork) will become its undoing. On a normal biological time-span (much longer than human "100 years=long time"), this race of ants will all but eliminate itself at its current pace. It will become too densely populated, and it will exhaust both real estate and resources. Granted, there will still be an enormous number of ants, but populations will gradually fall. Then will come famine, disease, and the possibility of variation. Ants may suddenly begin to find their aggressive nature working its way into the gene pool in a more concentrated population. Soon, the wars will re-ignite, driving the population into smaller groupings. This trend will ebb and flow until a observable homeostasis is met, or until the creature is extinct. And ants are not the only thing evolving in this manner. Maybe a rare beetle that feeds on ants will suddenly explode onto the Melbourne scene, and eliminate the ant populations. Maybe a poisoned milkweed will choke out all greenery before the ants do.
Life is complex and chaotic. And all of this happens every day, with plants in your house, insects in your garden, and the animals that roam your state parks.
The misconception of the uneducated evolutionist is that these ants are exemplifying evolution towards a new species; that they are somehow better as they are now. They are improving their species through instinctive altruistic behavior, allowing populations to reach heights never dreamed of back home in Argentina. But the true scientist knows that rarely is there a "better," only "different," and often a "worse." Genetics is fickle. Just look at the rainbow of human diseases. The success of their breeding is a tempting allusion to evolutionary fitness. But the polls are not closed yet. Check back in 10,000 years. Have they exhausted their resources and existing in small pockets, worse off than modern Argentine ants in their "native" land? Are they even present in Australia at all? Only then will we have some idea of this "new" ant is fit.
The misconception of the uneducated Creationist is that those ants belong somewhere specific, and will only find ruin elsewhere. It is hard to argue this at first, because all too often we see how introducing a foreign life-form to an ecosystem can unbalance it, and ruin many aspects of it. But what isn't seen is the long timeline that nature acts upon. Eventually, homeostasis will be found. And the Western mind may be surprised to learn that homeostasis does not equal Eden. Even if southern Australia ends up becoming a harsh desert, free of green plants and insects, it will have stabilized. To the Earth, a desert is as good as a marsh, as a city, as a tar pit, as an ocean, or as a rain forest. To the universe, the earth is as good as the moon, or Mars, or Jupiter. If you believe in mathematics and physics. you may already understand that homeostasis actually rests somewhere closer to annihilation. Its all thermodynamics. It doesn't make for a feel-good religion, but it does reflect reality. And reality is truth, and truth shouldn't scare even the most conservative Christian. None of this threatens God (until you edge ever so close to claiming an answer to the universe's causation). Evolution is not a force. It is the summation of real events that work on many levels. Not like a ladder. Not even in unison. It is an interpretation of results, and educated guessed based on those results.
It is religion that is like a ladder; forever reaching to better man's understanding of himself, his place in the universe, and his behavior. Evolution is not a religion. As I have said, it is a collection of facts and theories based on facts. Evolution is forever susceptible to being altered by new discoveries. Religion, if it is true, should always be singular. The core of Christianity today should resemble Christianity in 300 AD. Truth is unchanging, after-all. The future of these ants may alter our understanding of the sciences, but it should in no way alter our views on religion. Runaway ant populations do not discredit God, no more than runaway church attendance should discredit evolution (a lesson Kansas needs to look into).
Anyway, its all fun to think about (for me anyway). And, I was overdue for a scientific blog.
See ya!
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