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Did he ever try to qualify his statement that "more complex organisms such as humans definatly have longer DNA sequences." ?

Hank Rearden wrote:

It happened with my nest temperature/sex ratio post.

Sorry I haven't been in here as much as during the summer, I'm a lot busier now.

Can you explain to me why biologists who work with Tuataras are worried about global warming if it isn't an issue?

I think they might know a little more about them than painted turtles, which can ultimately migrate if the need be. There is no place to go when you are on an Island - and cooling eggs to get females is a hell of a lot more difficult than warming them to get males. Decaying matter rots and does produce some heat in the process, but how the hell does a reptile that abandons its eggs cool them to prevent all male clutches?

resedit wrote:

Can you explain to me why biologists who work with Tuataras are worried about global warming if it isn't an issue?

It's hard to go outside to study animals when it's 117° in the shade.  It also kills your tomato plants, melts the polar ice caps, and raises the sea level. 

You know, all the reasons the rest of us are worried about global warming. 



(Can you keep something quiet?  Despite what I said above they don't really worry about global warming - it's a well-kept secret that biologists who specialze in the Tuatara actually have a special pill that allows them not to worry about global warming - they take it once a month and they stay cooool.  Think Ahnuld in that Batman movie.)

resedit wrote:

Hank Rearden wrote:

It happened with my nest temperature/sex ratio post.

Sorry I haven't been in here as much as during the summer, I'm a lot busier now.

Can you explain to me why biologists who work with Tuataras are worried about global warming if it isn't an issue?

I think they might know a little more about them than painted turtles, which can ultimately migrate if the need be. There is no place to go when you are on an Island - and cooling eggs to get females is a hell of a lot more difficult than warming them to get males. Decaying matter rots and does produce some heat in the process, but how the hell does a reptile that abandons its eggs cool them to prevent all male clutches?

Females may be choosy about nest sites.  Just because it is an island doesn't mean that it doesn't have varied habitats with varied temperatures, etc.

Reference:
http://www.seaturtle.org/PDF/Nelson_200 … sSeies.pdf

Results from two nesting seasons suggest sex ratios of tuatara populations will be resilient to global warming in the short term because an equal sex ratio was predicted from a relatively warm season. However, most other islands where tuatara occur are smaller, have fewer open areas for nesting and/or shallower soils. Additionally, nesting is comparatively difficult to monitor. As nest depth influences hatching success and sex ratio through temperature, and female tuatara do not appear to dig deeper nests in warmer years, a male bias in hatchlings may be more likely from tuatara nests on other islands. In the extreme, this could lead to extinction of small populations.

Basically, on the bigger island (discussed in the paper), the reptiles seem to respond to year-on-year temperature by choosing nest sites in some manner or another (likely not random, but this is yet to be shown).  On smaller islands, there is the chance of localized extinctions.  However, over time one might hypothesize that surviving individuals on larger islands (surely, even in a YEC scenario there would be periods of unusual warm or unusual coolness) would recolonize the smaller islands.

Such climate-related extinction/recolonization events could be tested for genetically as well via decent and modification from common ancestors.  The Tuatara probably also could be (perhaps is currently being used as) a model organism for founder effects and local evolution towards envirnomental effects on various islands, in terms of nesting sites and sex ratio.

Note, also, that as I pointed out earlier, in times of a lack of males, male offspring are valuable, and vice versa.  Even on the small islands, depending on the dynamics of the sitauation (and all of the parameters could be modeled and tested) some individuals may be able, via genetic variation, to produce more females in warm years.  It is not like every single tuatara has the exact same temperature tolerances.  This variation could be selected for, and some of the populations could survive (i.e., there would not necessarily be a need to invoke recolonization, even though recolonization is not an unlikely event).

The thing is, this whole Tuatara discussion is blatantly exposing the fact that I can develop nice, testable hypotheses about Tuatara biology, genetics, and ecology based on evolutionary theory.  ID cannot do that, but instead just looks that the world in a state of continual puzzlement.

The thing is, I do believe that God is a continual agent in nature.  But that belief has absolutely no scientific value as it is the sort of thing that cannot be tested.  Thus, to test physiological, ecological, genetic, or anatomical hypotheses I NEED a workable theoretical framework.  Evolutionary theory provides that.  ID does not.

BTW, it seems that a major predator of tuatara is the Kiore, or Pacific rat (Rattus exulans).

ShnickyShnack wrote:

Maybe we should ask whether genetic mutations can affect behavior ...

Yes, e.g.:
http://www.nida.nih.gov/MeetSum/NS99/Cahillabs.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer … t=Citation
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer … query_hl=1
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer … t=Citation

Etc.

Etc.

Etc.

Hank Rearden wrote:

ShnickyShnack wrote:

Maybe we should ask whether genetic mutations can affect behavior ...

Yes, e.g.:
http://www.nida.nih.gov/MeetSum/NS99/Cahillabs.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer … t=Citation
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer … query_hl=1
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer … t=Citation

Etc.

Etc.

Etc.

Yes, I know ... it was one of the times where rezzie got slapped mighty hard (by the 'win, if I'm not mistaken) but went on regardless, like Clouseau knocking over a piano during an interrogation.

D'Eyncourt wrote:

OK, then I'll ask the question:

Were there tuatara on the Ark?

...right next to the T-Rex?

I wonder why god saved the titmouse.
It seems wierd that something with such a leud name would meet god's approval.

Logic is no defense against a good axe!

gozer wrote:

noah saved ... the blind cave fish.

I've always guessed that he didn't really need to save fish and other water-dwelling creatures. 

mo' ron wrote:

http://thepaincomics.com/Science%20vs.%20Norse.jpg

  Nice.

Maybe there noah was just one of several ark builders-- and the countless tales worldwide of floods were all true....