SPECIES, SPECIATION AND THE GENESIS KIND

By David N. Menton

St.Louis, MO 1987

In his "table talks", Martin Luther spoke of the Greek scholar Cicero's

proof of the existence of God:

"The best argument that there is a God - and it often moved me deeply - is

this one that he proves from generation of species; a cow always bears a

cow, a horse always bears a horse, etc. No cow gives birth to a horse,

no horse gives birth to a cow, no goldfinch produces a siskin. Therefore

it is necessary to conclude that there is something that directs

everything thus." (Luthers Works, No.5440, Fortress Press, Philadelphia)

As obvious as this principle of "like begets like" is in terms of human

experience, a central tenet of darwinism is that in the course of time, things

are very different.

Evolutionism seeks to account for the origin of ALL species,

past and present, from some single hypothetical primordial life form

by means of random change and natural selection. Many think that Darwin solved

the problem of the origin of new species with the publication of his book

'Origin of Species,' in fact, Darwin didn't even deal with the subject, much

less explain it.

This failure to address what was seemingly the central

question of his study stemmed from the fact that Darwin, like many of the other

English "transformation|ists" of his time, did not really recognize the species

as a discrete and real category of organisms. Rather, he extrapolated the

continuous, but limited, variation he saw among pigeons, finches, dogs etc. to

a vast and seamless continuum without limits among all organisms. Thus Darwin

could say in the first edition of his Origin of Species:

"I see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural

selection, more and more aquatic in their habitats, with larger and larger

mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."

Wisely, this outrageous statement was deleted from all subsequent editions of

his book.

 

THE CONCEPT OF SPECIES AND THE GROWTH OF EVOLUTIONISM:

There were essentially two schools of biology in the 19th century which

we might call the "typological" or German school, and the "populational" or

British school. Most of the great German (and French) biologists of this time

viewed the species as a true type in nature and thus considered the

classification of living organisms to be hierarchal. Many of the British

biologists, on the other hand, focused on the variation among individuals

within a species and viewed the species as nothing more than a statistical

average of the population.

This in turn led many to conclude that the entire system

of classification of organisms was merely an arbitrary pattern imposed

on what was in reality a continuum. It is not surprising then that the concept

of the evolution of all living organisms, one from another, by continuous

gradual change and natural selection flowed from the British School, while

German and French naturalists were among Darwin's strongest critics.

WHAT IS A SPECIES:

The first problem, in discussing the origin of species is to define just

what a species is. Complicating the definition of a species is the use in

scientific literature of terms such as: neospecies, sibling species, incipient

species, subspecies and semispecies. Until nearly the later half of this

century, a species was considered to be any systematic unit classified as a

species by a competent systematist.

More often than not, morphology rather than ability

to interbreed, was considered the primary determinant of a

species. As a result of this approach, 10 potentially interbreeding varieties

of Red Foxes were divided into ten separate "species" on the basis of color and

geographical distribution. The Red Foxes are now considered to represent one

species, Vulpes fulva, comprising 12 "subspecies." Subspecies then is simply

another name for varieties that may have morphological differences as a result

of their geographical separation, but still can interbreed. Species showing

great morphological variation, thus having many subspecies, are said to be

polytypic.

Small rodents are among the most polytypic mammals; the southern

pocket gopher, Thomomys umbrinus, for example, has 214 subspecies! Homo

sapiens, on the other hand, is considered to be a monotypic species as there is

great reluctance, for obvious social reasons, to consider the various races of

men to be subspecies (unless they are extinct and can't fight back like Homo

sapiens, neanderthalensis).

The modern definition of a species proper tends to ignore morphological

differences or similarities and focus almost entirely on whether or not a

population interbreeds.

The evolutionist Francisco Ayala has defined a species

as "groups of interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively

isolated from other such groups." By this widely accepted definition, two

organisms could be morphologically and physiologically indistinguishable, and

even capable of being cross bred in the laboratory producing fertile offspring,

and yet be considered two different "species" by reason of their failure to

interbreed in nature.

Such populations are referred to as "sibling species."

By this definition of species there are over 6000 species of fruit flies

(Drosophila) in Hawaii alone! Many of these fruit flies are morphologically

indistinguishable and many do interbreed in the laboratory to produce offspring

of varying degrees of fertility.

Regrettably, the term species is not always used consistently today. The

nearly 150 varieties of strikingly distinctive dog breeds recognized by the

American Kennel Club are all considered to be members of the same species Canis

familiaris because they all can cross breed, yet the grey wolf (Canis lupus)

and the coyote (Canis latrans), themselves polytypic species, are considered to

be different species though they are known to interbreed with dogs.

Creationists have long felt a need for a classification that would include in

one consistent category all organisms that interbreed under any conditions as

well as obviously related animals that are currently reproductively isolated.

 

SPECIES AND THE BIBLICAL "KIND":

The Old Testament of the Bible employs the Hebrew word min 21 times to

speak of the "kinds" of animals.

In Genesis the created min were said to reproduce

each after its own kind thus suggesting strict reproductive limits.

It is not clear exactly where in our present system of classification we would

draw the line for a min.

All birds (the class Aves) are clearly not one min,

because in the 14th chapter of Deuteronomy we find min applied respectively to

the raven, the ostrich, the nighthawk, the sea gull, the hawk, the little owl,

the great owl, the water hen, the pelican, the vulture, the cormorant, the

stork, and the heron.

On the other hand, the species classification as used

today is perhaps generally more limited than the Old Testament min. It would

seem appropriate to include all dogs, wolves, coyotes, jackals and dingos as a

single kind or min, for example, though this group includes several different

species.

In like manner, all true cattle of the genus Bos would represent one

kind since they can interbreed. This would combine seven species of cattle: B.

taurus (Texas longhorns, Herefords, and shorthorns), B. indicus (the zebu), B.

grunniens (the yak and grunting ox), B. Gaurus (the gaur), B. frontalis (the

gayal), B. banteng (the banteng) and B. sauveli (the kouprey) as all are known

to hybridize. B. taurus and B. indicus, for example, have been crossed to

produce the breed Santa Gertrudis, but is this a new species or an example of

evolution in action?

Even the African buffalo Syncerus caffer, the American

bison (Bison bison) and the European bison (Bison bonasus) can be crossed with

one another, and with true cattle, suggesting that all of these animals, though

representing different genus and species, could be considered to be of the

cattle kind or min. All varieties of horses, asses and zebras can cross breed

and in like manner could be considered a horse kind.

 

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EVOLUTION, NATURAL SELECTION AND SPECIATION:

Many evolutionists sight subspecies and sibling species as examples of

"microevolution" implying that macro-evolution, like the presumed origin of

birds from reptiles, is merely "micro-evolution" writ large, though there is no

known evidence for this.

It remains a fact that no one has ever observed a

species evolve into another distinctively different organism of a higher

taxanomic group.

It is true, however, that new "species" have been produced in

the life time of human observers, if by species we mean only hybridization,

reproductive isolation or limited fecundity. In 1881, for example, Judge J.L.

Logan of California crossed a raspberry, Rubus idaeus, with a blackberry, R.

allegheniensis, to produce the loganberry, R. loganobaccus.

The loganberry breeds true with no

tendency to revert back to either parent and is one of many

examples of a true modern hybrid in plants. Hybridization among animals is

much more restricted than in plants in part because of their more specialized

mode of sexual reproduction.

Outrageous animal hybrid rumors are popular, such

as the scruffy dog "George" which appeared on the front page of the Denver

Post, and whose owners claimed was a cross between a Pekingese dog and an

Angora cat! Needless to say, this was never confirmed. It has been said that

it is possible to cross almost any boney fish (teleost) with another but this

is in reality only parthenogenesis, where an egg is induced to divide and

produce a haploid organism (one set of chromosomes) without the sperm

contributing anything to the offspring.

In classical darwinism it was speculated that new organisms would evolve

by a process of random change and "survival of the fittest," but this was a

circular argument which merely stated that those organisms which survive are

fit and that fitness is defined as the ability to survive.

This unsatisfactory

tautology was replaced by the neodarwinian view which proposed that it was not

merely survival but differential reproduction that makes natural selection and

thus evolution work. It seems hopeless, however, to even attempt to explain

the origin or every individual protein, structure and trait of an organism's

phenotype or behavior in terms of differential reproduction.

Indeed, in recent

years, some have proposed that evolution occurs by a purely random process in

which natural selection plays no key role at all! This has resulted from the

observation that most of the genetic divergence between species observable at

the molecular level appears to be nonselective and thus nondarwinian. Modern

molecular biology has shown that only a small fraction of the total DNA of any

organism consists of unique sequences or genes, the rest is repetitive

sequences (repeated tens of thousands to millions of times).

In addition, it

has been found that the DNA and messenger RNA of many genes is interrupted with

"spacer" sequences called introns, which have no known function. These introns

must be cut out and the RNA molecule spliced before it is transcribed into

useful proteins. The connective tissue molecule collagen, the single most

abundant protein in nature, is known to have 50 such introns! The emerging

complexity of molecular biology and the architecture of the chromosome has not

really begun to be assimilated into evolutionary thought.

It has long been hoped that genetics would provide an understanding of the

actual genetic substrate on which evolution works but this has not been the

case. Attempts to explain evolution by "macromutations" have failed as have

the attempts to equate evolution with mere changes in the gene frequencies in

populations (population genetics). The evolutionist and population geneticist,

Richard Lewontin stated in his book 'The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary

Change' (1974), that:

"It is an irony of evolutionary genetics that, although it is a fusion of

Mendelism and Darwinism, it has made no direct contribution to what Darwin

obviously saw as the fundamental problem: the origin of species>" (p. 159)

The influential evolutionist, Ernst Mayer, seems to agree with this assessment.

In reviewing M.J.D. White's book 'Modes of Speciation,' Mayer commented:

"One of White's rather startling, but I think legitimate findings is how

little population genetics has contributed to our understanding of

speciation." (Syst. Zool. 27:478, 1978)

 

POSTULATED MECHANISMS OF SPECIATION:

Speciation is defined as the production of new, reproductively isolated

individuals or populations but even in this very limited sense, there is no

agreement on what the mechanism of speciation is. Some have even suggested

that there may be as many different mechanisms for speciation as there are

species!

The reason for this is simple; although evolutionists are dead

certain that speciation has occurred and is now occurring, they can not

actually observe it in an unambiguous way. Ernst Mayer has pointed out that

this failure to observe speciation has led to limitless speculation:

"Speciation, except for polyploidy and some other chromosomal processes is

too slow to be observed directly. Therefore, the method of speciation

research must consist of an attempt to reconstruct the historical

precedents, derive from this reconstruction certain deductive

generalizations, and test their validity by proper comparative methods."

"There are nearly always several possible scenarios, and it is not

surprising that different authors may differ in the choice of their

explanations. Owing to the slowness of the speciation process, it is not

possible to study the same individual or population 'just before' and

'just after' speciation. By necessity there is some arbitrariness in the

sequence of events one postulates to have occurred." (in: Mechanisms of

Speciation, pp 1-19)

Ernst Mayer has proposed the widely accepted view that speciation must involve

the geographic isolation of a small "founder" population which for some reason

might show greater variability than its larger parent population. The bird

Tanysiptera galathea, for example, shows little geographical variation on the

mainland of New Guinea, but populations on the small islands off the coast are

so different they were considered separate species. Other evolutionists are

equally certain that speciation can occur without isolation from the main

population.

Speciation has been classically attributed to natural selection among the

multiple alleles of a species, but this does not really produce anything new as

nothing can be selected that does not already exist in the gene pool of the

species. Other possible candidates for speciation are major chromosome

rearrangements such as translocations, fusions, deletions, inversions and gene

duplications. The problem is there is perhaps no way of knowing what genetic

events have played a role in initiating a new species.The geneticist and

speciation expert M.J.D. White has pointed out that:

"Speciation can only be detected post factum, when subsequent genetic

changes that have had nothing to do with the original dichotomy may have

accumulated. Moreover, to a considerable extent we do not know what we

are looking for." (in Mechanisms of Speciation pp 75-103)

The population biologist Alan Templeton makes the same point:

"It is virtually impossible to sort out which differences are actually

associated with the process of speciation and which are consequences of

evolution subsequent to the speciation process. Hybridization experiments

have shown this to be a real problem: Many species differences -

morphological, karyotypic, isozyme, etc.- contribute little or nothing to

reproductive isolation." (in; Mechanism of Speciation pp 105-121)

With the development of enzyme electrophoresis, a technique that can

simultaneously map out several proteins of an organism, it was hoped that we

might actually observe the genetic changes which are the basis of speciation.

Unfortunately, there appears to be little if any direct involvement of the

enzyme genes in speciation. Some species that are almost indistinguishable may

have quite different proteins (isoenzymes) and very different species may have

very similar proteins.Some sibling species of fruit flies can differ at over

half of all of their gene loci while the proteins of man and the Rhesus monkey

are 99% identical!

Even substantial differences in the arrangement and number

of chromosomes may occur among animals of the same species! For example, the

mole rat Spalax ehrenbergi, comprises four morphologically indistinguishable

populations which differ in chromosome number (52, 54, 58, and 60 chromosomes).

They prefer mating with individuals with the same chromosome number but they

are still all the same species and there are only 2 allelic substitutions per

100 gene loci.

 

THE FOSSIL RECORD AND SPECIATION:

It is now a generally accepted fact that species appear suddenly in the

fossil record without known ancestors and often disappear just as suddenly from

the record.

The fossil record lends no support to the idea that speciation has

had anything whatever to do with evolution. Most known fossil species appear

to be highly stable entities that remain unchanged, by evolutionary

assumptions, for tens of millions of years. Nearly half of the marine bivalve

mollusk species in the well represented fossils of the Cenozoic Era are

identical in structure to living forms.

Of those not having living

representatives, most are believed by evolutionists to have become extinct

rather than having evolved into some other species. The following fossil

species comprise at least 50% living species: marine gastropods younger than

3.5 million years old (myo), benthic foraminifera younger than 15 myo,

plaktonic foraminifera younger than 10 myo, fresh water fish and terrestrial

mammals younger than 7 myo and nearly ALL species of beetles younger than 2

myo.

For plants, fossil species which comprise at least 50% living species

include: seed bearing vascular plants younger than 4 myo, marine diatoms

younger than 12 myo, bryophytes younger than 10 myo and nearly ALL Miocene and

Pliocene species are alive today! These data suggest that for all species of

plants and animals, there has been little measurable change in nearly ten

billion generations! We may conclude that evolution by "speciation" occurs

only in a semantic sense and tells us nothing whatever about how we have come

to have lions and horses and chickens and cows and giraffes and dinosaurs etc.

etc.

 

SUGGESTED READING:

Lewontin, R.C., The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1974, Columbia

University Press.

Mechanisms of Speciation, Progress in Clinical and Biological Research, 1982,

Alan R. Liss, Inc. New York.

Marsh, Frank L., Variation and Fixity in Nature, 1976, Pacific Press Publishing

Association, Moutain View, CA.

Lester, Lane P. and Bohlin, Raymond G., The Natural limits to Biological

Change, 1984, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, MI