Take *THAT* Creationism!

[swestrup]

One of the 'hypothesis' of Creationism, if I can dignify the idea with such a term is that animals may change with time, but new species do not arise. Now, often by 'animal' they don't mean a microbe or a worm, but something like a fish, bird, mammal, reptile or what-have-you. Of course, the disingeniousness of this request is that Evolution predicts very few observable speciation events. Well, now someone has observed one:

Cichlid fish are well known to biologists for their rapid rate of evolution. While it takes many animals thousands of years to form new species, the cichlids of Africa’s Lake Malawi are estimated to have formed 1,000 new species in only 500,000 years, lightning speed in evolutionary terms.

In the 1960s a fish exporter may have unwittingly set the stage for an evolutionary explosion when he introduced individuals of the species Cynotilapia afra to Mitande Point on the lake’s Thumbi West Island.

As of 1983, the species hadn’t budged from Mitande Point. But when Streelman, then at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, and colleagues went to the island in 2001, they found the fish had evolved into two genetically distinct varieties in less than 20 years. The study appears in the August 13 edition of Molecular Ecology.

So there you have it, within 20 years, a single species has split into two. I'm sure these fishies are going to be extensvely studied now. Further info can be found here.