Hopeful Monsters: An Endless List of Special Cases

Textbook evolutionary theory holds that evolutionary change occurs gradually. It may speed up or slow down but change, when it occurs, takes small steps. But from the fossil record to observed adaptations in the field, biological data do not always cooperate with theory. In fact, populations do respond dramatically to environmental challenges in a time window measured in years—not millions of years—and single mutations or the management of existing genes effect such responses. A review from last week, entitled Revenge of the hopeful monster, summarized the situation as follows:

Experimental evidence has shown that individual genetic changes can have vast effects on an organism without dooming it to the evolutionary rubbish heap. Single-gene changes that confer a large adaptive value do happen: they are not rare, they are not doomed and, when competing with small-effect mutations, they tend to win. But small-effect mutations still matter—a lot. They provide essential fine-tuning and sometimes pave the way for explosive evolution to follow. As the molecular details unfold, theory badly needs to catch up.

For example, consider freshwater sticklebacks which can rapidly adjust their pelvic spine length, from generation to generation, depending on the environment. How does the fish achieve such dramatic body plan modifications?

The answer seems to be that a stretch of DNA that enhances the production of a particular protein is sometimes found to be cut out. The reduced production of the protein explains the reduction or loss of pelvic spine length.

But reduced levels of the protein should also cause all kinds of other nonsensical changes to the fish. Why aren’t they observed? The answer is that this DNA editing occurs only in the pelvis and not elsewhere. The result is a helpful design change rather than chaos. As the review explained:

With expression of [the protein] preserved in all other vital structures, freshwater sticklebacks could lose their pelvic spines without dire repercussions elsewhere.

And this design modification is observed to occur independently, in different stickleback populations.

This example illustrates the general finding of built-in adaptation capabilities in biology. In different species we find different mechanisms to effect design changes. As the review explained:

Large effect or small, evolution begins to look like an endless list of special cases, each a new challenge to Fisherian models.

Evolution as an endless list of special cases? Now we must believe evolution created finely tuned, built-in, design change levers that respond precisely to environmental shifts. And these design changes are supposed to be examples of evolution? Yes, the theory does badly need to catch up. And evolutionists, in their Darwinian Wonderland, are just the ones to fix the problem. You can’t make this stuff up.