It’s Lamarckian, too!
(From Pastis’s strip on GoComics):
h/t: Steve
James Shapiro’s theory of evolution
March 18, 2012 • 6:24 am
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I’ll bet Bob wished he was a crokoduck. Either duck, or croak.
You seem less … feline … ?
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Yes, WP was making me less feline good.
I think I have fixed that now.
Is this a refutation of epigenetics?
No. Epigenetics is on firm ground. After all, it is epigentics that makes it possible for the different cells in the body to be different despite identical genomes.
But it IS a refutation of the excesses of epigentics.
James Shapiro elevates epigentics to the role of the major cause of evolutionary change. That’s Lamarckism. In fact, epigentics is the result of “Darwinian” evolution and plays a minor role in survival through perhaps a few generations which could not possibly make it a mechanism for evolutionary change.
The tools of epigenetics, ChiP and MeDIP seq, and transcriptomes analysis to name a few, haven’t yet caught on to any appreciable extent in the phylogenetics community. Next Gen sequencing is still a novel concept for biologists outside human research. So you can’t possibly take an account of the full extent of its role. The literature isn’t sufficient to make that determination. In other words, you’re being dogmatic.
I liked the earlier strip where it was explained that newts are not reptiles. They, and all reptiles except birds are included in the informal term herptiles. Many herpetologists unashamedly study lizards, turtles, salamanders, frogs, and whatever in defiance of formal phylogenetic taxonomy.
Huh, I’m a ‘herpetologist’ but I mostly work on birds and mammals these days (day job). Call me an amniotologist (or ophiologist, currently slumming for bread).