Long held scientific beliefs taking a beating lately!
First dark matter is brought into question... now natural selection is under scrutiny.
This is not new, I recall reading articles in the new Scientist 20 years ago about women working the arctic or antarctic while pregnant had discovered that their children even when moved back to temperate climates had a higher resistance to cold than either of their parents.
This lead to research that discovered that environmental factor trigger in the mother the release of DNA modifying enzymes that predispose the embryo to climatic resistance.
The same thing had been discovered in ant colonies thirty years ago, where a queen that had imbibed small amounts of pesticides gave birth the larva that were immune to the poison.
It therefore long been known that implanting the embryo of one species in to the womb of another species wildly changes the temperament and physicality of the fetus which rarely if ever can be carried to term.
The idea that DNA alone predetermines the outcome of the pregnancy, has long since been debunked
It is a fascinating article. That there is an enzyme that acts like a molecular Xerox, is simply astonishing.
Fascinating subject but I got lost.
Entire populations have been observed to change over wide areas almost instantaneously, much too fast for natural selection to play a role at all. This article seems to be talking about epigenetic changes through natural selection, something easier to understand.
Evolution is not fully understood.