Amazing Fish Adaptive Design | The Institute for Creation Research

Amazing Fish Adaptive Design

The same basic kind of fish, called the stickleback, inhabits salt or fresh water and lakes or streams. Strikingly, however, those living in salt water are much larger and have different colors and different scale armor than their freshwater counterparts with whom they can interbreed. One generation of the marine variety can give rise to a generation of freshwater versions, and vice versa. Are these fish evolving, or were they created to make these kinds of body changes within their kind?

Researchers scoured DNA from 22 representative stickleback fishes for any sequence differences that might be linked to saltwater versus freshwater environments. Their research should help answer questions about how fishes adapt to their surroundings and how closely those processes match standard ideas about evolution.

According to the Nature study, the team gathered interesting results, including specific sites of DNA differences that were directly linked to the fish's environment. They found the different sequences interspersed throughout all the fish's chromosomes. Also, fewer of those sequences were genes than those that were sequences that regulated genes. Both the genes and regulatory sequences were very similar between all the fishes studied, showing that they have been resistant to mutational changes. The authors wrote that since the different environment-linked DNA sites "do not cause protein-coding changes, they also probably contribute to adaptive divergence by regulatory alterations."1

Many of the DNA differences between the two populations involved differences in genes or regulatory regions that affect the fish's internal signaling mechanisms. For example, they discovered that a chromosomal inversion, where cell systems remove a section of DNA then splice it back in reverse, provided two different potassium channel genes. One version of the gene is found in the saltwater stickleback, and the other version in the freshwater fish relatives.

The fact that fish DNA coding sequences are precisely adjusted between generations to impact the way they interact with their environments clearly shows nonrandom, designed creation.

The Nature study authors first credited "natural selection" for the differences. According to this idea, the salt water produced certain fishes, and the fresh water produced other varieties from among the fishes. But they did not mention natural selection when they described the actual mechanisms behind the biological changes:

Changes in these biological processes, and in the individual genes defined by parallel divergence analysis [their DNA search], probably underlie recurrent differences in morphology [body size and shape], physiology [body biochemistry], and behaviour previously described in marine and freshwater sticklebacks.

So was it the different waters or the "biological processes" like chromosomal inversions and precise adjustments to relevant signaling mechanisms that altered the fishes to fit different niches?

These underlying biological processes of adaptation clearly show that ingenious biological design, not natural selection, is the most powerful explanation for the rapid and precise adaptability of sticklebacks. "'Nature selects for…' is the opposite of reality" for these fish that have all the hallmarks of expertly created mechanisms enabling them to fit different watery niches as they fill the earth.2

References

  1. Jones, F.C. et al. 2012. The genomic basis of adaptive evolution in threespine sticklebacks. Nature. 484 (7392): 55-61.
  2. Guliuzza, R. 2011. Darwin's Sacred Imposter: The Illusion That Natural Selection Operates on Organisms. Acts & Facts. 40 (9): 12-15.

Image credit: Ron Offermans

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Article posted on May 18, 2012.

The Latest
CREATION.LIVE PODCAST
Searching for Truth Across the Globe | Creation.Live Podcast:...
How can we bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the truth of creation to others outside our small spheres of influence?   Host...

NEWS
Marine Mammals: Designed for Deep Diving
While you’re reading this, hold your breath. What is now happening is your blood is delivering the last of oxygenated blood cells to your tissues...

CREATION PODCAST
Humanity's Demise at the Hands of Genetic Entropy | The Creation...
Welcome to the fourth episode in a series called “The Failures of Old Earth Creationism.” Many Christians attempt to fit old earth...

NEWS
''Inside-Out'' Fossil is Amazingly Preserved
It is widely known that vast numbers of fossils—vertebrate and invertebrate—have been discovered incredibly well-preserved.1,2...

NEWS
The Resurrection and the Origin of Life
At Easter time we focus on the cardinal Christian doctrine of the Resurrection. Without the Resurrection, Christianity is a sham. The truth that Jesus...

NEWS
Is an Ancient Extinct Tree-Dweller Our Relative?
Human evolution has always been hazy with seemingly as many attempted explanations for how we evolved from animals as there are paleoanthropologists. Evolutionists...

NEWS
The Return of the Dire Wolf?
There’s been much recent excitement about the birth of three dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus) puppies by a Dallas-based biotech company: Colossal Bioscience....

CREATION PODCAST
Cracks in the Layers: Lake Suigetsu and the Old Earth Illusion...
Welcome to the third episode in a series called “The Failures of Old Earth Creationism.” Many Christians attempt to fit old earth...

NEWS
Fish Fossil Vomit
A rather unsavory news story recently appeared regarding fossilized vomit. Although it’s hardly dinner table conversation, it nonetheless supports...

NEWS
Dino Footprints Down Under
Dinosaur trackways1 are once again making the news. Australia is the setting of a remarkable series of dinosaur tracks attributed to ornithischian...