Researching Creation

Rapid Adaptation in Podarcis sicula

JB

I have been planning on writing on this very exciting paper, but Jean Lightner beat me to it :)

In 36 years, a group of lizards which were separated onto a different island from the rest of their species had:

  • Changed their head size
  • Changed their diet to be much more plant-heavy
  • Developed a new (not present in the parent population) organ - the cecal valve - to help digest the more plant-heavy diet
  • Developed new symbiotic relationships
  • Changed their behavior

In case you didn't notice the bolding, it was the development of the new organ that I found most interesting.  Now, when I say "new", that just means new to them.  The cecal valve is present in a number of species.  However, it was not present in the population which the island was seeded with. 

This gives a lot of creedence to the front-loaded "toolbox" concept of Intelligent Design.  That is, species have an available set of rapidly-deployable changes which can be induced as needed.  Many parts of this toolbox are shared by many related and non-related organisms.

The fact that in only 36 years all of these changes happened indicate that it was part of a built-in process.