A popular rendition of events has or­ganisms on the famous Galapagos Islands inspiring Darwin to develop his evolution­ary ideas. But do the organisms on this archipelago actually lead us to the idea of common descent from a primitive ances­tor? According to Dr. Todd Wood of Bryan College, Dayton, Tennessee, the answer is actually no.

Scientists of a feather gather together⤒🔗

Dr. Wood is one of a small group of scientists who met recently at a confer­ence called "A Grander View of Life." This title, a quote from Charles Darwin, was chosen with some irony in mind because, while Darwin was inspired by the idea of evolution rather than by the idea of divine creation, the scientists meeting at New Saint Andrews College (Moscow, Idaho) have quite the opposite view. In­deed the rationale for this meeting (and similar previous ones) was to develop a new view of biology that is consistent with the Biblical record.

This does not mean that these scien­tists claim to have definitive answers, at least not yet. Rather they are seeking tools that will enable Christians to deal with all aspects of biological research in a manner consistent with Biblical revelation.

Species, genus, families, order, etc←⤒🔗

The biologists at the conference ap­proach their discipline bearing in mind that God created organisms according to their "kinds" (specific body plans) during the creation week. The problem is that we do not know how large or how small the cre­ated kinds are: species, genus, families or even something else.

The natural theologians of Darwin's day supported "fixity of species," the idea that the created kinds were at the species level and that there has been no change since. Although we sometimes hear well meaning Christians defend this idea to­day, no biologist would do so since a pre­cise definition of species is not available. Thus there is no point in defending such an uncertain grouping of organisms as the created kind.

This situation means that the smallest group which might constitute a created kind would be at the genus level. With the genus Rattus for example, various rat species would all be within the rat kind. The idea is that sometime after the creation, individual species would have developed from a generalized rat body plan.

Many biologists today however sus­pect that the created kind may be larger still, at the family level. Rats, for example, along with mice, voles, hamsters, lem­mings, muskrats and gerbils are categorized into a family of organisms with a roughly similar body plan and behaviors.

The next more inclusive clustering of organisms is at the order level. The rodent order includes tremendous variation on the rodent theme such as porcupines, squir­rels, prairie dogs and marmots, beaver as well as the rats, mice and voles. Might all these creatures be descendants of one cre­ated kind? In this case it is obvious that a dramatic burst of change would have taken place at some stage since the creation.

Baramin←⤒🔗

Obviously such questions could degen­erate into useless speculation. However some biologists in Europe and in the United States have set out to test these ideas with information collected from nature. Firstly it was necessary to establish some criteria to try to recognize members of a created kind. The term baramin was established from the ancient Hebrew word bara meaning "cre­ated" and min meaning "kind," Initially hy­bridizing experiments were carried out on the premise that only members of a cre­ated kind would be able to produce off­spring together.

Eventually, since not all organisms are capable of sexual reproduction, the definition was broadened to include statistical analysis of the characteristics of organ­isms, whether biochemical, physiological, behavioral or morphological (body design).

When a study suggests that a group of organisms exhibits basic features in com­mon, this is said to be evidence of continu­ity. In this case all these organisms are provisionally assumed to represent the same apobaramins. If a conspicuous difference or discontinuity separates two groups, then each is placed in separate apobaramins or separate kinds. A holobaramin is defined both in terms of internal consistency and external gaps between it and other dusters of organisms. Thus a holobaramin is both a monobaramin and an apobaramin and perhaps a promising approximation of a created kind.

When one must compare numerous organisms which differ in numerous char­acteristics, it is evident that computer analysis is the only option. The first step in any such study is to obtain a character state matrix. For example, suppose we are dealing with plants. For each member of the group all questions on the chart need to be answered. Is the specimen a posses­sor of a woody stem? Yes or no. Are leaves arranged oppositely? Yes or no. Are leaves notched? Yes or no. Often the character ma­trix includes information on about 100 species with close to that number of char­acteristics. If all the answers for the char­acteristics were identical, obviously we have a single group and there is no point in doing the analysis.

When there is lots of variety in the ma­trix, a statistical equation can be used to plot a line which best represents a position between the first species and the average of all the species in the sample. Next a sim­ilar line is calculated by the computer which best represents a position between the second species and the average of all species. Thus the computer continues chug­ging out calculations for each species in the matrix. Species which are similarly po­sitioned relative to the average, are said to be positively correlated. Species that are far apart relative to the average, are said to be negatively correlated. It is typically as­sumed that positive correlation is evidence of continuity (membership in a monobaramin) and negative correlation sug­gests discontinuity (membership in separate apobaramins).

Obviously with computer time and a data matrix the researcher is in business. Further good news is that most scientists do not need to engage in the tedious business of collecting information for a character ma­trix. Plenty of such databases, representing a wide variety of organisms have already been published. All the researcher has to do is apply the equation of choice to the data, and see what kind of pattern is revealed. In this context, any topic is available for re­consideration, as, for example, the fabled organisms of the Galapagos islands.

Endemic←⤒🔗

The Galapagos archipelago is a collec­tion of 29 or so volcanic islands of various sizes and elevations. They range in size from a few square meters up to 4700 square kilometers for Isabela and 600 square kilo­meters for Fernandina. Thirteen of the is­lands are more than 10 square kilometers in area. The largest ones exhibit the highest elevations, up to 1700 m on Isabela. For most of the islands, the distance to the nearest island is less than 2 km, often as close as 0.6 km. In addition, almost all of them lie less than 100 km away from the central island of Santa Cruz.

The biological communities on the is­lands occur in zones matching elevation. At seaside we find organisms affected by the sea. Next we find an arid zone of pio­neer organisms trying to survive on lava. Farther inland at higher elevations, there is a transition to the upland moist tropics. While the largest islands support the high­est number of plant and animal species, it nevertheless is the case that the smaller is­lands exhibit a much higher proportion of endemic (unique) species. While large Is­abela has 347 species of which 89 are en­demics, tiny Genovesa, with only 40 species nevertheless has 19 endemics. (Johnson and Raven. 1973. Science vol. 179 pp. 893- 895). Most of the endemics are found in the arid and transition zones rather than in the tropical highlands.

The question which all biologists seek to answer is where did the endemic species come from? In view of the fact that these islands probably arose soon after the flood, the founding colonies of organisms proba­bly arrived on rafts of vegetation from South America. Even today, much of the biological community is the same as on the mainland but with many fewer species. The endemics on the other hand are similar, but not identical, to mainland species.

Mockingbirds and hawks←⤒🔗

The case of the three Galapagos mock­ingbird species particularly intrigued Dar­win. Each species is endemic to a single island. Where did they come from? One possibility is that a single population came to the archipelago. Later on separate islands the populations became adapted to different environment. This process is called natural selection.

However, other explanations are pos­sible. Three different populations may have invaded separate islands. Similar popula­tions on the mainland later died out leav­ing those on the islands as the only surviving representatives. Alternatively a sizeable group arrived together but the rep­resentatives which migrated to separate islands differed slightly in their genetic characteristics. Over time further loss of some variability in the three populations caused them to become yet more different. This process is called genetic drift. Another possibility is "mediated design." According to this idea, proposed by Dr. Wood and col­leagues, the arriving population had spe­cial genetic characteristics preprogrammed to be expressed after the flood as required for survival.

With all these possibilities in mind, Dr. Wood set out to study certain Galapa­gos endemics. Would his statistical tools shed any light on the situation? The sim­plest case is that of the Galapagos hawk. There is one endemic species which lives on nine islands. Both in appearance and in similarity of DNA sequences, this bird re­sembles Swainson's hawk which migrates between the Great Plains of North America and northeastern Argentina. The Galapagos hawk, on the other hand, is extremely sedentary. It shows no inclination to fly over water, even to islands which are close by. So did a large population invade sev­eral islands and then later lose its wander­lust? It seems probable.

Turtles and beetles←⤒🔗

The famous Galapagos tortoises are a more difficult issue. All island specimens are classified in the same species. Popula­tions occur on eleven islands and each can be distinguished on the basis of appear­ance and behavior. The tortoises definitely prefer to breed with individuals from their own island. Thus many people consider each island population to be a separate sub­species. The most conspicuous difference is in the shape of the shell (carapace). Some island populations have a domed carapace (like similar species in South America) while other local populations have a sad­dleback shape. Neither shape appears to confer an advantage over the other in any of these environments.

Dr. Wood performed baraminic dis­tance analysis on various turtle and reptile databases and he concluded that there are five created kinds within the turtles. With such large groupings presumably represent­ing turtle created kinds, the Galapagos tor­toises obviously diverged from a broader population at some stage. As far as the ori­gin of the archipelago tortoises is concerned, whether the population arriving was large bodied or small, domed or saddlebacked, this study provided few answers.

The patterns of occurrence on the Gala­pagos and the suggested explanations are diverse indeed. Among insects, beetles on the island include 222 species in 123 genera and 40 families. One of the largest beetle families there are the plant sucking wee­vils. The weevil genus Galapaganus includes fifteen species, of which ten are endemic to Galapagos. The other five species occur in Peru and Ecuador. The interesting thing about these island weevils is that they can­not fly. However, even secular experts sus­pect that there were several separate arrivals of these insects on the islands. How did they move from island to island when once pre­sent in the archipelago? Nobody knows.

In conjunction with his study of the weevils, Dr. Wood carried out baraminic distance analysis on beetles including the weevils. The computer studies failed to re­veal any discontinuities. Thus Dr. Wood wonders if the beetle order is a single cre­ated kind. If this were so, as many as 60,000 species might have diverged from the orig­inal created population. Since this scenario seems extreme, Dr. Wood leaves this topic for further work.

Finches and daisy trees←⤒🔗

And so the study continues. Among bird groups, Dr. Wood considered the gan­nets (genus Morus) and boobies (genus Sula) of which there are three booby species present. He ran his baraminic distance analysis on a database involving these two genera. The study revealed a clear discontinuity between the two genera. This he elected to ignore on the basis that such small groups would be "unprecedented in vertebrate baraminology." He further in­sisted "vertebrate baramins and basic types identified to date are larger than a single genus." Such a result obviously will con­tinue to be unprecedented if no one takes the results seriously. In any case these sta­tistical studies are mere tools, not definitive indicators of relationship.

No database exists on the archipel­ago's most famous inhabitants, the thirteen endemic finch species. Nevertheless Dr. Wood decides that the finches indeed di­verged through natural selection into sepa­rate species just as the evolutionists claim. Each species presumably developed on a separate island and then flew to other is­lands. Today as many as ten species live to­gether on the islands and no island has only one species. Amusingly in the parallel case of the daisy tree (Scalesia), eleven endemic species of which occupy separate islands, Dr. Wood concludes that they diverged probably from a mainland population through drift rather than natural selection.

It is apparent that there are few clear answers. Nevertheless the important thing is that these scientists are asking ques­tions with a Christian focus. In time we will accumulate more insights. Obviously in all areas of biology there are plenty of re­search topics available for creation based biologists. Many bright young researchers, such as the ones we heard at New Saint Andrews College, are stepping up to meet this challenge.