There's a June 13 Morning edition story about evolution and how much

[lindisfarne]

energy is involved in creation of a new species. My reaction is "Huh?" There's no more energy involved in creation of a new species than in continuation of an existing species. In fact, they're just different points along a continuum - evolution involves gradual changes (creating subspecies) until the changes are large enough that we call two different subspecies "different species" = which is a fairly arbitrary point.

Link not up yet but will be here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5481037
Studying Evolution Beneath the Waves
by Steve Inskeep and Linda Wertheimer

Audio for this story will be available at approx. 10:00 a.m. ET
Morning Edition, June 13, 2006 · A team of scientists in California is studying the evolution of sea creatures.

[trotsky]

1. I find that confusing as well.

It's just DNA doing its thing! Maybe some intern mucked up the summary?

[mzteris]

2. source article

. . ."It takes more energy than all the fossil fuel people burn on the planet in a year to form one new species of plankton," said Andrew Allen, Ph.D., the study's lead researcher at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "In terms of conservation, this really highlights that biodiversity does have a price, and the price is very high."

To put a number on it, it takes about 10 to the 23rd power - that is a 1 followed by 23 zeros - of energy units called joules to generate a new species of foraminifera plankton.

"From a scientific perspective, we can now quantify biodiversity in terms of energy," Allen said. "This will help efforts to identify and model areas for protection and conservation."

By observing changes in a unicellular animal whose body temperature varies according to its surroundings, as opposed to a mammal, which regulates a constant body temperature, scientists could more precisely measure rates of speciation caused by the environment. In the end, it is individual metabolic rate - how fast an organism burns food relative to its body weight - that primarily determines evolutionary rate. And higher environmental temperatures help increase metabolism. . . "


-MORE-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060531165128.htm

[lindisfarne]

3. Thanks for that. It's not that developing new species takes more energy

than maintaining existing species, as was the emphasis of the Morning Edition piece. Although Morning Edition isn't really to blame; the PNAS article's lead author is making confusing statements: "It takes more energy than all the fossil fuel people burn on the planet in a year to form one new species of plankton," said Andrew Allen, Ph.D., the study's lead researcher at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara."

But it takes no more energy to develop the new species as it takes to maintain an existing species in the same environment.

"By observing changes in a unicellular animal whose body temperature varies according to its surroundings, as opposed to a mammal, which regulates a constant body temperature, scientists could more precisely measure rates of speciation caused by the environment. In the end, it is individual metabolic rate - how fast an organism burns food relative to its body weight - that primarily determines evolutionary rate. And higher environmental temperatures help increase metabolism. "

of course, there is a caveat: ScienceDaily is interpreting the PNAS article, and ScienceDaily has been known to misinterpret.