Central America is the site of contending crustal plates–notably the Cocos Plate in the Pacific Ocean which is being subducted beneath the Caribbean Plate right off the western coast of central america at a rate of 72-81 mm/yr.  It’s this area where the Central America Volcanic Arc exists which forms the volcanoes of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.  To the north there is the North America Plate which is moving to the west at about 20 mm per year resultng in further seismic turmoil.  Then to the east the North American plates dives beneath the Caribbean plate as does the South American plate to the south.

     Once the link between North and South America was established there was a great influx of North American fauna into South America and vice versa to  a lesser extent.  The great marsupial fauna of South America died off mostly as did other less successful groups.  Some of the South American biota moved into North America.  Central America remains today one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world.

    Costa Rica and the rest of the isthmus has acted as a filter bridge in this great migratory process that really picked up steam only three million years ago when the connection was complete between North and South America.  The diverse topography of Costa Rica has resulted in refugia where species could still live after dying out in other areas.  This combined with the species from the north and from the south has resulted in a tremendous amount of biotic diversity in this small area.

    It is estimated that in this small country there are 500,000 to 1,000,000 species of plants and animals with most remaining unknown.  Insects by themselves make up about half of this diversity, whereas 850 species of birds can be found–about ten percent of all known species of birds.  North America has about half that number.  Others estimate about 160 species of amphibians, 220 species of reptiles and about 10% of all known butterflies.

   And all this in the second smallest Central American Nation (El Salvador is the smallest).  Only 119 km across at the narrowest point in the south and 280 km wide at its broadest point, it is quite easy to drive across the country in about five hours.  Solely in the tropical latitudes it still exhibits a broad range of distinct climate zones (12). 

The eastern Caribbean side is the wetest whereas the western pacific slopes are the driest.  Most areas have a rainy season, or “green season,”  (May-November) and a dry season (December-April) with the rainfall almost everywhere following a predictable schedule.  Usually the highland ridges are wet with the windward sides being the wettest.

“Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny” a quote ascribed to Ernest Haeckel basically means that Ontogeny, the development of the individual from the fertilized egg to maturity, recapitulates the phylogeny or evolutionary history of the species.

     The strict interpretation of this statement that embryos go back through every stage of their evolutionary past is rejected today, but there is no doubt that the embryos of closely related groups DO show great similarities in their development and is another piece of evidence to support the idea that we all share a common ancestry.

     The fact that modern biology has rejected the strict interpretation of this statement has been ignored by Creationists who continue to ridicule the entire idea of evolution, gleefully going on and on about the evolutionists who continue, they say, to promulgate an outmoded idea.  A typical example:

“Repeatedly, over the past 150 years, evolutionists have sought to use fraud, ignorance, sensationalism, ridicule, and hoaxes to convince the public that evolutionary theory is true. Lacking any scientific evidence for their conjectures, they recognize this is the only avenue open to them. *Ernest Haekel’s fraudulent charts are just part of a line of frauds. The truth is that evolutionary theory is a myth. God created everything; the evidence clearly points to it. Nothing else can explain the mountain of evidence. This is science vs. evolution—a Creation-Evolution Encyclopedia, brought to you by Creation Science Facts.”

    Apparently Haeckel DID doctor his charts comparing the embryos of various vertebrates, and various publishers continued to print these erroneous charts.  However, if you examine modern textbooks and references they don’t use Haeckel’s drawings but they do use more accurate illustrations.  Do these illustrations show that there are no striking similarities between the groups?  Of course not, the similarities are striking and show that the best interpretation of such similarities of embryos is that they share a common ancestor.  However, the below sites ignore current interpretation of this idea and continue to harp on Haeckel’s doctoring of his illustrations.

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Here is one site that claims that because the drawings were doctored, the entire idea of evolution is fallacious.

“In Haeckel’s fabricated drawings, the embryos of various living things were placed side by side in the attempt to give the impression that there was a similarity among them. In order to show the similarity between the embryo of a human being and that of a fish, Haeckel made a few additions to some parts and removed other parts. As in all other evolutionist falsifications, the goal here was to provide false evidence for evolution. But actual photographs of these embryos clearly revealed Haeckel’s falsifications. These fabrications are just one proof that the theory of evolution is a deceit founded on falsehood.”

Campbell, 1996

“The theory of recapitulation is an overstatement. What recapitulation does occur is a replay of embryonic stages, not a sequence of adult like stages of ever more advanced vertebrates. …Nevertheless, ontogeny does provide clues to phylogeny… Comparative embryology can often establish homology among structures, such as gill pouches, that become so altered in later development that their common origin would not be apparent by comparing their fully developed forms.”

This is taken from a site which lists and answers Creationist arguments against Evolution:

ONTOGENY RECAPITULATES PHYLOGENY

A law first discovered by Ernst Haeckel which if pronounced correctly and with conviction, impresses laymen and students of science in the elementary grades. Simply stated, and thus less convincingly, it means that the embryos of all animals bother to provide a historical review of many stages of their evolution during their embryological development. Although this type of reminiscing is touching and is taught in almost every general science and biology text book, it is no longer accepted by scientists or even evolutionists.

It was shown to be wrong about 5 years after Haeckel proposed it.  His idea was that the embryos go through the adult stage of earlier forms. Too bad that embryos actually do resemble each other early on – humans have pharyngeal arches and tails, for example.

NOTE CHECK THIS: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/archive/index.php/t-38241.html

          I just saw a very instructive two hour program by NOVA.  It had to do with the recent events (2004) in a town in Dover, PA where a couple of individuals on the school board pushed through a requirement that Intelligent Design be taught in biology classrooms as a viable alternative to the modern theory of evolution.  They also required that a notice be read to the class which said that there was significant problems in the theory.  When the teachers refused to read the notice in the class room, the assistant principal walked into the classroom and read it himself.

     The program dealt with the subsequent trial that resulted when some parents and teachers brought suit against the school board.  They had a reinactment of parts of the testimony dealing with the evidence presented by each side.   Read the account of the event here.

I personally believe that this universe was created by God.  I base this belief upon the basic physical “laws” by which this universe operates and other more subjective beliefs.  I think that given these particular physical principles, it is inevitable that matter evolved from Hydrogen gas into intelligent, self-aware life forms.  I think that life, and intelligent life has evolved numerous times throughout this universe. I do not believe that further “meddling” in this evolution was necessary by such a Creator.

       I do believe though that this Creator is not just some distant creator, but is a personal God that can take an active part in our lives.  However, there is a difference between faith or personal beliefs and what should be viewed as scientific fact.

  Given these beliefs, do I think that “Intelligent Design” or the idea that an intelligent creator made and directed the development of the universe should be taught in science classes as some advocate?  Absolutely NOT!  I absolutely do NOT believe that these ideas should be taught in science classes along with other ideas.  Why?  Simply put  there is no conclusive scientific evidence for such beliefs.  Personally, I think that there is sufficient evidence (basic physical laws) to propose an hypothesis for such a creator, but to this date there is insufficient data to accept the hypothesis in a scientific manner.

    Science should remain as objective as possible without the introduction of beliefs that can’t be proven.  I think that if  Biology or other science teachers are required to teach the idea of Intelligent Design in classrooms, it would be a gross travesty. I would REFUSE to teach such an idea on the same level as other scientific laws.  The idea is simply not science and has no place in a science classroom except as a background discussion.   I see no problem in it being discussed in other classes such as Civics, Philosophy, or any other class dealing with ideas or current events, but not on the same level as the theory of evolution.

The infamous Kansas Board of Education also approved new science standards that allows the teaching of Intelligent Design in Biology classrooms (9Nov205). Among other things the Board:

1.  Rewrote the definition of science so that is no longer limited to the search of natural explanations of phenomena.

2.  They said that that the basic Darwinian theory that all life has a common origin and that natural processes created the building blocks of life has been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence.

3. As one supporter said: “It gets rid of a lot of dogma that’s being taught in the classroom today.”

Personally I would like to know the new fossil evidence that throws the theory into doubt.  I am gratified also that the board appears to be composed of competent paleontologists.  Fortunately this has been overturned recently.  See here for a discussion of the teaching of Creationism and Evolution in science classrooms.

          Plutarch tells a story, perhaps apocryphal,  about Julius Caesar and his party as they passed through a small Alpine village.  His friends jokingly asked whether even in such an isolated and poor setting men still strived and scrabbled for power and office.  Caesar very seriously declared that he would rather be the foremost man in a place like that, than the second man in Rome.

      Everybody is familiar with how people strive in various ways to achieve status.  This status can be expressed in many ways.  It can be in politics, business, sports, the arts…actually it is found in almost every human endeavor.  Any where there is a group of people there will be striving for some sort of status.

          This sort of behavior can be seen especially in social animals of all sorts.  In various primate societies, for example, there is almost always a hierarchial system of status…the number one dominant male, number two position, etc.  In extreme cases it is these one or two dominant males that get to reproduce with most of the females of the group.  As the theory goes, this type of behavior favors those males who are best able to achieve and keep these dominant positions–the most fit, strongest, etc.   In this way the most fit males are passing on the most genes to the descendants of the group.

          In a small social group this type of behavior could conceivably result in rapid evolutionary change.   Variations of this hierarchial status system exist in many forms in many species.  Take for example the lek behavior of prairie chickens and the Uganda Kob whose males set up “breeding arenas” in an area and physically defend it against other males.  The most central arenas are the most desirable, held by only the strongest males, and the females will usually pass right by the outer arenas to breed with the two or three most central males.

          In the human species this type of behavior has achieved a subtlety that might tend to hide its evolutionary roots, but the primary motivation for the behavior is still there…the unconscious desire to perpetuate one’s genes–that old biological imperative that affects so much of our behavior despite our tendency to deny the existence of innate behavior in our psyches.

      Caesar, despite his undeniable status in Rome, only had one known child, a daughter, although some have speculated that Brutus was his son by his lifelong love, Servilla.  Caesar, however, was famous for his affairs with the wives of most of the leading men of Rome.    Today of course there are many would-be Caesars whose original biological imperatives toward reproduction has been subsumed into status seeking…the means, achieving status, has become the end in itself.

       There are many examples of behavior in animals where the original behavior has been changed, almost ritualized, into other avenues.

       It is interesting to note that reproductive success does not only go to the largest and strongest males…sometimes it goes to the males with the sneakiest strategies.  For example in the Australian Cuttlefish (Cephalopoda) there is a vying of the large males for the smaller females with the larger males often having the greatest reproductive success.  However there is a second type of male which is smaller and which mimics the female in its behavior and color displays.  This smaller male will often insinuate itself into a group of larger males which are fighting over a female.   Apparently the larger males mistake it for a female and don’t attack it.  As the larger males fight over the female, the smaller male then mates with the female and then slips away.  

               Genetic studies have also revealed that “getting a little on the side” also exists even in some monogamous species.  The females often will mate with males other than their mates.  This type of behavior also occurs in such social systems as baboon troops where low caste males sometimes “get lucky” when the dominant males are looking the other way.

                     What counts is reproductive success, no matter how it is achieved.