Seagrass 'tens of thousands of years old'.

The reporter couldn't possibly realize that, because she wasn't doing that. Article you meant to link to. Paper

It is. Yes. But she's talking about the age of cloning genotypes within a species that reproduces both sexually and asexually. And: I saw no signs of confusion, nor of Pressie's suggestion that she was parodying creationists. The paper's interesting, but there's nothing particularly special or controversial about it at all. It merely suggests that clonal genotypes in plants like the sea grasses may well last much longer than was previously thought, and that this might be to do with phenotypic plasticity in the successful clones (which seems to makes sense).So, it's an interesting piece of research, but I see nothing particularly special about it, and no particular relation to creationism, unless you want to use the research to show YECs that there are cloning genotypes of grass in the Med that are older than this planet.

She would agree. I think the article's misleading, as the Muller's ratchet angle isn't central to the paper at all. It's only mentioned in passing, and she thinks that strong conservative selection on the successful cloning genotypes deals with it.She thinks that the clonal strains can do well for such a long time spread over different micro-environments because "general purpose genotypes" with "large phenotypic plasticity" have been selected for, despite the Red Queen disadvantage.The article doesn't give a very good idea of the paper at all (as is often the case).For example, here's a sentence from the journalist, followed by a quote from her:

quote:

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The researcher added that the plants' extreme longevity also indicated that the species displayed an ability to adapt in order to survive over such a length of time.

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"The estimated age of Posidonia oceanica clones imply these have been surviving under a broad range of environmental conditions, including much lower sea-water temperatures than those recorded nowadays, showing therefore extraordinary adaptive capacities."

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He incorrectly uses the word "species" when she's talking about the clones within a species. She's talking about how the same genotype is adapting through phenotypic plasticity, and he doesn't even mention that phrase in the article.I have a suspicion that she'd probably like to strangle him for leaving out almost all of the important things she probably explained to him.

There's that, and also the bit I quoted further on that should have a mention of phenotypic plasticity to explain what she means by the clones adapting.But look at the whole section with the quote you mention:

quote:

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Dr Arnaud-Haond added that there was a theory that even asexual reproduction could not continue indefinitely because tiny "copy errors" accumulated in the genes over time.

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"Most of [these errors] are expected to have a negative impact; through generations [the organism] will degenerate and eventually disappear," she said.

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"The age of clonal organisms should therefore be limited as well."

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The journalist has probably missed out key phrases like "under certain population parameters" which she uses in the paper, and probably said to him on the phone. Including that might have prevented Pressie from thinking she was referring to some kind of YEC version of Muller's ratchet.We on this board might be hypersensitive to anything that seems to smack of creationism. French scientists sitting in one of the least religious cultures of the world probably hardly ever think about it, and would fall about laughing if informed that 40% of Americans think the world is less than ten thousand years old.I do think it's shoddy journalism, but that's common. The reason I titled my first reply "end of topic" was because I'd read the paper which has none of these problems.

Confusingly, it's about specific genotypes lasting for a very long time through cloning, rather than single individual organisms. So that some of the modern grasses are (virtually) genetically identical twins to ones that would have been there thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of years ago, because they're the result of unbroken lineages of asexual reproduction.The Muller's ratchet theory could prevent this in certain models of growth with certain population parameters but does not inevitably do so. (It is true that creationists do sometimes misinterpret Muller's ratchet).I can see why the presentation in the article confused you. I'm glad you brought it up, though, because I found the actual paper interesting. So, thanks back to you!