one more piece of evidence supporting macro-evolution

I'm not sure when exactly, but it was after Columbus discovered the Caribeans, three european weed species were brought to America. I call them weeds, becasue that is what they are called, such as dandelions being weeds, although they do have a species name. At any rate, these three species of weed were endemic to Europe until we brought them over. Fast forward to the current day. There are now five species of that genus that the three belonged in. The original three are here in America and Europe, but the two new ones are only in America.Evolution happens when a species is placed into a new environment. According to the Hardy-Weinberg equation, for evolution to not happen five conditions must be met. No differential migration is one of them. As the weeds were brought to America, they migrated. And yes, it still counts as migration even though it wasn't willing. The perfect example is of the finches blown off course by a storm and ending up at the Galapogos Islands. Faced with a new environment, certain traits proved to be favorable over others that hadn't been in Europe, or they were new mutations that only occurred in America that proved to be more favorable over the old traits. This/These trait/s then became the dominant one/s in the population. As they had reproductive isolation from Europe, Europe did not get those traits, and reproductive isolation happened here.In the end, five where there were once three, and the two new ones are endemic to America.This message has been edited by kuresu, 03-25-2006 01:05 AM

Offhand, this seems to be a fresh angle to the argument, at least here at .As I see it, however, paragraph 1 is a rather vague anecdote.1) I think we need to have the genus and species names for the "weeds" in question.2) Some sort of relevant reference, preferably on-line, would be nice.3) We need a more topic theme specific topic title. Something along the lines of "Imported weed diversification supports macro-evolution".Also, I recomend dropping the Finches and Galapogos Islands from the second paragraph. Mentioning them is an invitation to sidetrack the topic.Changes, including changing the topic title, can be made by editing message 1.Other admins may have other suggestions.AdminnemooseusAdded by edit: If and when you do edit message 1, please also post a new message to this topic indicating the edits were done. Otherwise the various admins might not notice such.This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 03-25-2006 12:36 PM

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In the early 1900s, three plant species native to Europe were brought to america. These three belong to the goatsbeard genus, Tragopogon, and are T. dubius, T. pratensis, and T. porrifolius. These weeds are now common in urban wastelands. In the 1950s, botanists discovered something absolutely amazing. There were two new species in Idaho and eastern Washington. Keep in mind, the original three are also there. The new ones are T. miscellus and T. mirus.Those familiar with the Hardy-Weinberg equation know that it states five conditions that must be met for no evolution to occur.
1) An infinately large population
2) No preferential mating
3) No differential migration
4) No mutation
5) No natural selection
The goatsbeard is not native to America, but to Europe. It migrated here, even though it had no choice (I don't think many migrations that lead to speciation are truly by choice). Also, the weeds did not migrate back to Europe. The weeds did not have an infinately large population. Because of being placed into a new environment, new pressures would be placed on the weeds. The two new species are also not found in Europe.i don't know about you, but this looks an awful lot like speciation and macro-evolution.Reference: Biology, Sixth Edition. Campbell and Reece (Authors). Published by Benjamin Cummings. Copyright 2002.this has been edited from the originalThis message has been edited by kuresu, 03-25-2006 01:12 PM

New topic is Imported weed diversification supports macro-evolutionIn the process of spinning-off message 3, I change the topic title and also tweeked the formatting a bit by inserting a few blank lines.This PNT version is now closed.Adminnemooseus

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