Batting clean up in the fourth spot, Evolution...

[kcplusdc@yahoo.com]

Science is king, imho there's no debating that but I do have a question or two on evolution.

#1 Is there a way to disprove it? If so how? It sometimes seems to me that what ever is found just feeds the assumption that its true. Kinda like a dragon eating it's tail.

#2 To borrow a term from my son's vernacular, where are all the op (over powered) creatures? If survival of the fittest is a key component in the advancement of life shouldn't we expect more deadly predators? Tigers with poison? Blackwidows that fly?
I guess what I'm saying is that advantages in species seem to be suppressed to a certain level. Shouldn't we see more creatures that can kill everthing?

[2ndRateMind]

Next, then:

Where are all the op (over powered) creatures?

If survival of the fittest is a key component in the advancement of life shouldn't we expect more deadly predators? Tigers with poison? Blackwidows that fly?
I guess what I'm saying is that advantages in species seem to be suppressed to a certain level. Shouldn't we see more creatures that can kill everthing?

So, if evolution is a response to the environment, then the evolutionary pressure is to be fit for that environment, and nothing more. It seems that living creatures are parsimonious with their energy, and evolutionary adaptations tend to require a lot of energy. The reason tigers are not poisonous is simply that they do not need to be poisonous in order reach a healthy adulthood and reproduce. So, why should they expend any further energy developing superfluous 'super-powers'?

It's a cost-benefit analysis thing (put in accounting terms), so the cost is calories, the benefit is reproduction, and the overriding natural, unconscious and automatic calculus from the species gene's eye view is to persist in combination if they optimise the payoff between calories spent and (successfully reproducing) progeny delivered.

Best wishes, 2RM.

[Difflugia]

Science is king, imho there's no debating that but I do have a question or two on evolution.

#1 Is there a way to disprove it? If so how? It sometimes seems to me that what ever is found just feeds the assumption that its true. Kinda like a dragon eating it's tail.

#2 To borrow a term from my son's vernacular, where are all the op (over powered) creatures? If survival of the fittest is a key component in the advancement of life shouldn't we expect more deadly predators? Tigers with poison? Blackwidows that fly?
I guess what I'm saying is that advantages in species seem to be suppressed to a certain level. Shouldn't we see more creatures that can kill everthing?

Some of the other answers were fantastic, but there are a few other ways to look at your questions.

First, remember that evolution is as much about the ways existing life forms are related to each other as it is about the specific form that any one of them takes. The biggest reason that there are no poisonous tigers is that aside from the platypus, there are no poisonous mammals at all. Poison is complex and difficult to evolve, so once it was lost in mammals, it never evolved again. If evolution was not true, however, we would expect mechanisms other than descent with modification. If mammals could somehow acquire traits from snakes or a god existed that could poof new poison glands into a tiger, we might see poisonous tigers. Similarly, there are no flying black widows because there are no flying spiders at all. Wings were difficult to evolve, but the group that evolved them did awesome. Note how the vast majority of terrestrial animal species are, in fact, insects.

Second, one of the things to think about is in terms of ecological niche. Instead of looking specifically for a flying black widow, rephrase your question as "why are there no poisonous, flying insectivores about an inch long". The answer is that there are, but they're wasps instead of spiders. Because lots of wasps already had wings and venom, both hard things to evolve, some adapted to eating insects by being a little bigger and developing a taste for bugflesh. Those things are relatively easy to evolve.

Another way to think about this is to think of single traits that are complex, but really successful. Very few separate groups will have them, but many members of the groups will have them. Feathers in birds, hair and lactation in mammals, placentas in eutherians, webs in spiders, flowers in green plants, lignin in trees.

The answer to your first question, then, would be to try to find examples that don't fit the pattern of common descent. Why are there no birds that produce milk for their young? Why are there no lizards with alveolar lungs? Why does the only group of flying mammals, which is already pretty cool, lack feathers to make them that much better at flying? If you found those, you would be well on your way to disproving evolution.

The answer to your second question is that there have been overpowered life forms in the past. They just did what overpowered life forms do and wiped out the competition, leaving huge ecological spaces for their own descendants, which are not overpowered relative to each other. Ask yourself why nearly all marsupials live in Australia. The answer is because Australia split from South America before eutherians evolved. At one time, nearly all mammals were marsupials (because they outcompeted the monotremes). After the eutherians evolved, they almost wiped out the marsupials. Now nearly all mammals in the rest of the world are eutherians because eutherians were overpowered when compared to marsupials, but not each other. Note that Australia and New Zealand currently have problems with rats, rabbits and feral cats because they're overpowered.

As an interesting (I think) and visible example of these points, download this paper, which includes a phylogenetic tree of Hymenoptera species (ants, bees and wasps). It's labeled with important evolutionary developments. You can see, for example, that stings only evolved once, but were so successful that most modern descendants of that point have stings.

[kcplusdc@yahoo.com]

Last post was very good! Thank you.