If you draw a phylogenetic tree of bats, whales, and a few other mammals based on similarities in the prestin sequence alone, the echolocating bats and whales come out together rather than with their rightful evolutionary cousins.
"We were surprised by the strength of support for convergence between these two groups of mammals and, related to this, by the sheer number of convergent changes in the coding DNA that we found," Rossiter said.
Storyteller: Stephen Rossiter of the University of London
Source: In Bats and Whales, Convergence in Echolocation Ability Runs Deep
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I have a question.
These articles - which by the way are fascinating, thank you for collecting them - make me think that the theme of this blog is "come look at all this awesome stuff that scientists are discovering". But the smug "About Me" and the quotes at the top have me thrown. Is this blog supposed to be pro- or anti-evolution?
Hi Caz
This blog is neither pro nor against evolution per se. It is also not meant to be smug but rather a light hearted look at how scientists currently try and fit the puzzles of nature into the pre-vailing neo-darwinism paradigm....More and more of us realise that this approach is neither convincing nor satisfying.
To quote the Dissent from Darwin site: "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."
love Dolly
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