"Artificial speciation

New species have been created by domesticated animal husbandry, but the initial dates and methods of the initiation of such species are not clear. For example, domestic sheep were created by hybridisation,[4] and no longer produce viable offspring with Ovis orientalis, one species from which they are descended.[5] Domestic cattle on the other hand, can be considered the same species as several varieties of wild ox, gaur, yak, etc., as they willingly and readily reproduce, producing fertile offspring, with several related "other" species.[citation needed]

The best-documented creations of new species in the laboratory were performed in the late 1980s. Rice and Salt bred fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster, using a maze with three different choices such as light/dark and wet/dry. Each generation was placed into the maze, and the groups of flies which came out of two of the eight exits were set apart to breed with each other in their respective groups. After thirty-five generations, the two groups and their offspring would not breed with each other even when doing so was their only opportunity to reproduce.[6]

Diane Dodd was also able to show allopatric speciation by reproductive isolation in Drosophila pseudoobscura fruit flies after only eight generations using different food types, starch and maltose.[7] Dodd's experiment has been easy for many others to replicate, including with other kinds of fruit flies and foods."


Here we have direct evidence of speciation and evolution occurring, albeit in a lab setting.

When this occurs in nature a new species is formed. Hence we have direct evidence of evolution occuring.

And I have always liked this article about humans giving rise to new species.
http://discovermagazine.com/1992/dec/nolongerhuman171


::waits for creationist to come up with the completely plausible idea that god magically poofed new flies into existence while they were going thru the maze::

Once an animal undergoes enough change that it can no longer reproduce with other similar species it is different enough to be called a new species.

Speciation falls nicely into theory of creation as well. I think it goes something like this: "Animals were created with the ability to adapt". At the moment it seems like animals were created or evolved without the ability to form a new class, order, family, genus, kingdom etc... Looking at evolution theory it does predict the formation of animals in new classes and families at least. Yet the formation of a new genus seems far away at present rates.

Hela cells, funny, there was a student who completed her BSc (Hons) with supposedly colon cancer cells, but was in actual fact Hela cells that invaded her cell cultures and completely overgrew them. Hela cells are the reason we dont re-use culture dishes anymore.
We are able to create xenografts by implanting human cells into mice and rats in order to test anticancer molecules. Yet we dont call this evolution...

There is a theory of creation?

I'm guessing its based on the scientifically proven existence of god. Or are we just basing creation theory on the bible?

And a new genus or class or order or phylum takes millions of years to develop.

Woops.. I should have said: Speciation does not refute creationism. There are a few theories hanging around, but i guess they fall in the same realm as the rest of the origin theories e.g. abiogenesis.

The stock standard answer for unobservable science. Inferring that speciation will result in the formation of new classes, orders etc. is a fairytale.

Evolution is NOT a theory, we've had direct evidence of evolution for some time now. The THEORY part is that we can not observe a past event. So even though there is much evidence for past evolution, and we can observe present evolution in the wild and in a lab, we can NEVER elevate past evolution past the status of theory becuase we can not observe the past. Yet.




the missing piece to your logic is that you fail to consider that multiple species evolve simultaneously.


I'm pretty sure that is incorrect. I dont' have time to research sources right now, though. Perhaps someone else can point out where we have observed a new species?



Evolution is common, but there are two ideas on how it happens. One is that changes happen infrequently, but quickly. Another is that they happen at a steady rate. Both may be correct. We have observed microevolution quite often during the tiny amount of time we have had microscopes.




On what are you basing this assumption? The opposite would be true. Unless there is a change in environment that coincides with a beneficial mutation, there is no reason for evolution to occur at all.

The reason that modern science has yet to observe large scale evolution, is because evolution requires environmental change. The world at the moment is very very comfortable, animals have no need to adapt to new environments (that may change soon though). A great example of small scale evolution, was during the late 19th century in industrial areas moths started to "change" colour to be darker and greyish to match the colour of buildings from coal etc.



Evolution occurs every day, in every species on the planet. However if the new species trait isn't any better than the original then it will quickly die out and not reproduce. Hence an environmental change is required to make that new trait dominant and allow for reproduction.



Ever heard of anti biotics and why their about to be useless? because the small stuff like bacteria and all those nasties that make us sick are so good at adapting to whatever we throw at them. As i've previously stated, environment is the most important thing not size of the life form.

It doesn't work like that. That figure is the total number of species present on earth at this moment. There were doubtless a comparable number of species on Earth at least since the invasion of land, and in the fossil record an individual identifiable species seldom lasts longer than a few million years. Therefore speciation is happening at a rather fast rate, actually.

But you see, it isn't a SUDDEN event. These things take time. Reproductive isolation in the wild can take longer than it does in the lab - the whole fruitfly reproductive isolation experiments separate the populations with a much higher fidelity than most standard environmental cues can. In addition, species is a rather arbitrary term - closely related groups can often still interbreed successfully some percentage of the time and sometimes their offspring are sterile, sometimes not... its not a hard and fast grouping, there are just organisms that are more and less similar to each other.

Examples of speciation: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html The majority of these examples are either in lab/domestication experiments, or in plants in the wild simply because the amount of selective pressure that can be brought to bear in a lab on organisms that reproduce quickly means that you can complete a speciation event quickly, and because plants can survive events that animals cannot usually which can bring about speciation.