The sixth sense

From: "brian williams" pugturd50 at hotmail.com> on 2002.02.01 at 03:55:07(8112) OK well I know this subject can easily become a religious and scientific battle field. Hopefully it be like most arguments on here and stay in hand. One of the other things I have seen that really amazed me was a science experiment were a group of plant were in an aquarium with a speaker. One tank had hard rock playing the other had instrumental music. Apparently the volumes to both speakers were at the same tone and the plants were in all the same conditions. Now the plants in the rock and roll tank moved away from the speaker and started to die. The other plants with the orchestra music moved towards the speaker and looked very healthy. Is this proof plants can hear? Hearing is only picking up vibrations in a sense? does this prove plants have a specific taste in music?:>) I for one do not totally believe in evolution their are a lot of holes in that bucket. Of course I think it's for some the only way to answer. Try not to attack to harsh LOL! Still has anyone really studied these thing or is it all just theories? That little aquarium experiment was the only one I have heard of. It was also the last I heard about it. +More _________________________________________________________________ Join the world?s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com

From: Neil Carroll zzamia at hargray.com> on 2002.02.01 at 15:02:28(8119) I for one do not totally believe in evolution their are a lot of holes in that bucket. Of course I think it's for some the only way to answer. Try not to attack to harsh LOL! No attack here, but natural selection is a very real thing......not a theory. +More Neil

From: "Michael Pascall" mickpascall at hotmail.com> on 2002.02.01 at 21:11:50(8124) I have heard of experiments done in India with Sitar music . The plants really grew well with that sort of laid back music . Michael Pascall, WHYANBEEL ARBORETUM,F.N.Q,AUSTRALIA +More _________________________________________________________________ Join the world?s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com

From: Jonathan Ertelt jonathan.ertelt at vanderbilt.edu> on 2002.02.02 at 04:48:18(8128) >I have heard of experiments done in India with Sitar music . The plants >really grew well with that sort of laid back music . > Although I would like to believe in all sorts of levels of understanding on the part of plants (anyone familiar with the Findhorn Garden community?!), the bottom line regarding all the experiments that I've heard about, from playing music to butchering plants and taking readings on the plants right next to them, none of the experiments are repeatable with any success, leading to questioning of their reliability. Another point to make is that we are so inclined to anthropomorphize (sp?) about plants, as well as to overinterpret or to slant the interpretation in "favor" of our preconceived interpretations - the most recent experimenting I heard about involved someone setting up an audible response based on ethylene production, saying that ethylene production increased with plant stress or something to that effect. Now, the audible response sounded very much like screaming in agony kind of sound. If, as another pointed out on another list serve, the audible response had been more along the lines of "yes, Yes, oh yes Yes YES" our interpretation of the plant's "suffering" might be entirely different. Natural selection and all has been covered very nicely by others, so there's no need for me to reiterate thopse very valid points. The only aspect perhaps not strongly enough stated is how random the mutations or changes are - and then, with time, lots of time,natural selection (or unnatural selection, in the case of the helmeted crabs) goes for that which works best. The others lose out, die off, leaving only those plants, or any other organisms which "know their surroundings best" surviving to be effectively pollinated, not eaten by predators, dispersing their seed well, propagating best vegetatively or asexually, or whatever. Jonathan +More Jonathan Ertelt jonathan.ertelt@vanderbilt.edu Greenhouse Manager Vanderbilt University Biology Department Box 1812, Sta. B Nashville, TN 37235 (615) 322-4054

From: "Ron Iles" roniles at eircom.net> on 2002.02.02 at 04:48:52(8131) Just woke. Is it Happy Hour? This is wacky.. Natural Selection? How about Super-natural Selection. It's easy to guess what maybe some of you'd like me to be but +More what handsome aroid do you think you'd like to be in the next re-incarnation, Neil? Lol (just found out what that means!). Send your answer to Joe pleez.. I wonder what the lil'est morphos were in their last Lives? Himself in the awl Countree ----- Original Message ----- To: "Multiple recipients of list AROID-L" Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 3:02 PM Subject: Re: The sixth sense I for one do not totally believe in evolution their are a lot of holes in that bucket. Of course I think it's for some the only way to answer. Try not to attack to harsh LOL! No attack here, but natural selection is a very real thing......not a theory. Neil

From: "brian williams" pugturd50 at hotmail.com> on 2002.02.02 at 16:24:49(8136) I believe in survival of the fittest. But I do not believe that it brings on genetic changes. I agree plants adapt to the conditions take a certain plant and put it in the sun they will usually have smaller leafs than ones in the shade. But switch conditions and they turn back. Not genetic change just adjusting to conditions. Now these things I can take in and believe. Believing that they can turn into new species is hard to take. Besides were are all the subspecies? If you have a saber tooth tiger you must have thousands of bones of the tigers with medium size teeth. That turned into the present day tiger? The fact is they have one or the other no in-between mutations. +More Another thing is the fish Coelacanth. This was the fish thought to have grown legs and turned to lizards and dinosaurs. the species is 400 million year old and has not changed at all? As for the crabs:>) Well I do agree if you pick out a certain look. Like the shells and take all the ugly ones out you will have tons of crabs with helmet shaped shells breading giving you more of this design. BUT they are still craps! This is were it gets confusing when does one jump to a new species? Has any of them actually done it? If only certain looks gets one to reproduce and survive. We will all one day look like Mel Gibson and Pamela Anderson. Now that's food for thought _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.

From: Cgdz33a at aol.com on 2002.02.02 at 18:58:35(8140) Evolution does not bring about genetic change. Mutation does, and selection acts upon those mutations to cause evolution which is simply change in an organism over time. Anyone who doubts that evolution can work either fast or slow please explain the resistance to pesticides by insects or the resistance of microbes to antibiotics this can occur in relatively few generations (short generations). As for the coelacanth, mant succesful organisms do not change over time ie. horseshoe crabs. But "speciation" leads to other other species breaking off from a give lineage for a variety of reasons such as isolation, climate change, etc. Eric C. Morgan (studying heterochrony in the Araceae) Director +More Clark Botanic Garden

From: Neil Carroll zzamia at hargray.com> on 2002.02.02 at 19:00:24(8145) > >I believe in survival of the fittest. But I do not believe that it brings on >genetic changes. I agree plants adapt to the conditions take a certain plant +More >and put it in the sun they will usually have smaller leafs than ones in the >shade. But switch conditions and they turn back. Not genetic change just >adjusting to conditions. Brian, Survival of the fittest or natural selection does exactly that. Natural selection will 'select' what genetic characters are best suited to a certain niche in the evironment. Amorphophallus for example has many, many species which have adapted a pattern on their petioles which, in some species, looks like lichens. Lichens normally occur on woody stems of plants that persist year after year. As we know the amorphophallus petiole is herbaceous and is very soft......a tasty morsel for some herbivore. But the herbivore sees that there appear to be lichens on this particular 'stem' and they pass it by knowing that it is woody and not palitable .......the plant survives and reproduces. The brother to the above amorphophallus, through the genetic coupling of an egg (1/2 of the genetic material) and a sperm (pollen and the other 1/2 of the genetic material), got a set of genes which does not have the character which places these lichen like marks on its petiole. Along comes the herbivore which left this one's brother alone and eats it. The Amorph without the markings dies and does not get to reproduce. This is how genes are selected by nature and how genetic material changes. If a drastic enough change occurs and the population stabilizes and reproduces...Viola...a new species is born. The dividing mark between species can become very blurred in genera were there is active evolution occuring. the orchid family is a good example. Or in genera where there is a tremendous amount of hybrizing going on (naturally) such as the oaks (quercus). A natural hybrid may create a 'swarm' in its habitat and may actually stabilize and reproduce true to the parents at some point....we now have a new species. And one that does not have to have all of the inbetween steps (long teeth to short teeth and everything in between). Changes which occur in an individual due to environment (large leaves in the shade and small leaves in the sun) does not change the genetics of the individual plant in any way....BUT if the population of a species is suddenly subjected to a dramitic change in environment (such as an ice age or geologic catastrophy) then many of that population will perish. There may be an individual or two in this population that survive because of some unique genetic character that they have and the other individuals in the population did not. They may go on to change enough to be considered a new species. The inundation of the Panamanian Isthmus is an excellent example. Just about every mountain peak in Panama has unique flora. Due to isolation during higher water (making the peaks islands) each island developed its own unique flora and then when the waters subsided they maitained their positions, now on the tops of the mountains. Some species of plant and animal are of such 'perfect' design that they survive the test of time. Some designs are not very adaptable and perish. Genetic change due to natural selection is no myth it is very real. Neil

From: Alektra at aol.com on 2002.02.03 at 16:42:33(8155) I think it was discussed on this very forum, a few months ago, Dr. Frank Brown's discovery of a hybrid swarm of aglaonemas in the Philippines, where speciation was indistinct. +More I think it is hard to say to what species most domesticated Ags belong. The question almost is meaningless. Costatum? Modestum? Pictum? And there are more and more intergeneric crosses in the plant trade; for me, this is yet another indication that species are fluid, rather than crystallized entities. Most recently, I read of a melon-cucumber cross in the Park Seed catalog. Species definitely are not entities in my view. They are names we give to especially strong currents in the flow of genetic material which is life. Wolves and dogs are interfertile, and so are their offspring, but we call them different species. Moving along to issues of selection: There are on the market a number of noncorrosive drain cleaners which are suspensions of bacteria repeatedly selected to destroy the slime which narrows many drain pipes. There also are industrially available suspensions of microorganisms selected to do such tasks as eat the crude petroleum spilled around an oil well, or eat the gasoline leaked around a service station. And on a less universally-agreed-upon note, a strong case can be made that HeLa cells constitute an entirely new species of microorganism, one uniquely adapted to the man-made environment of cancer research labs, which are no longer human cells. Many cancer researchers refuse to have them in their labs because of the way that HeLa cells will invade other cell cultures, compete with them, and actually destroy them. I understand that there also has been some genetic drift from the original material taken from the patient pseudonymously known as Helen Lane. Reasonable people may disagree, but I think the evidence is good that HeLa cells can be called a species of organism which has come about in our own era, evolved from human beings but not human. [By the way, speaking of controvery, has anybody read Barry Commoner's lead article in the February issue of Harper's Magazine (not to be confused with Harper's Bazaar)?] Finally, I want to make a suggestion which I hope merits your most serious consideration: I suggest that anti-evolution sentiment has turned into a defense of the notion of species as real entities, or essences. As you can tell from what I have written above, I do not think that species are real entities; I think they are simply groups of organisms manifesting many but not all traits in common. I am not a fan of the "jump" or "sudden break" theory of evolution; I am a gradualist. What this all implies is: I personally suspect that anti-evolution beliefs are arguing against a straw man. Personally, I would like to see an antievolution case made against gradualist evolution.

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