From: Damien Broderick (thespike@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Jan 16 2003 - 21:12:34 MST
spike66 speculates:
> > The discovery calls into question one of the tenets of
> evolutionary biology:
> > that if a species loses a complex characteristic, the gene or genes that
> > express it will subsequently mutate so much that the function
> can never be recovered. [etc]
> the apparent puzzle is resolved from insights
> provided by chaos theory. Turns out, it is very difficult
> to tell what is a complex characteristic from its appearance.
> A wing certainly looks complex, but the DNA required to
> make an ordinary skin cell might be as complicated as
> an insect wing.
Or, perhaps more to the point, insights from homeoboxen. Evolution can make
a complex segmented animal by starting with a simple one and stuttering a
bit; arguably a lot of the complexity is spandrelized by the new
morphological constraints. In this case, maybe you don't need a whole bunch
of exact and specialized code, just enough in the homeobox to kickstart back
to the lost adaptation.
Damien Broderick
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