例3
Speciation by Distance in a Ring Species
Science 307: 414-416
ヤナギムシクイの輪状種。
輪状種とは、いくつかの集団を含んでいて、
隣り合った集団同士は交配できるけども、端っこのヤツ同士は生殖的に隔離されている、
という集団構造のこと。
すなわち、端っこのヤツ同士は生物学的種概念では別種。
ただし、間にある中間的な集団によって遺伝子流動が媒介されているので、
これは、いわゆる別種と同種の中間段階ってヤツの例です。
＞Scientists discover first fossil of a leaf insect
訳：科学者は、コノハムシの最初の化石を見つけた。
＃化石の写真も出てます。
これまでコノハムシの古い化石は見つかっていなかったけど、それが見つかった、という記事。
日付に注目。
＞One of the most striking parts of the discovery is that
＞the sediment deposit where the scientists found the fossil
＞was radiometrically dated at 47 million years old
＞(the Eocene epic in the Cenozoic era spans 56-44 mya).
※引用者が適宜改行
訳：注目すべき点は、科学者がその化石を発見した場所の堆積物は
放射線年代推定から4700万年前のものだとされたことだ
（新生代 第三紀 始新世が5600万年前〜4400万年前）
＃ちなみに恐竜の絶滅は6500万年前前後
＞Because leafy angiosperm plants mimicked by phasmids arose
＞in the middle of the Cretaceous
＞(125-90 mya, not too long before the final days of the dinosaurs),
＞this date range places a maximum age limit on leaf insects.
＞But scientists still aren’t sure whether leaf insects appeared earlier,
＞in the Cretaceous, and took a while to evolve
＞their unique camouflage morphology and behavior,
＞or whether they appeared later, in the Eocene, and evolved rapidly.
※引用者が適宜改行
元ネタの論文も載ってました。
論文タイトル：The first fossil leaf insect: 47 million years of specialized cryptic morphology and behavior.
雑誌：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. January 9, 2007. Vol. 104. no. 2. 565-569.
その引用は、
パターソン博士から創造論者 ルーサー・D・サンダーランド（Luther D. Sunderland）へ
1979年4月10日付けで宛てられた個人的な手紙からのものであり、
パターソン博士の著書"Evolution" (1978, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.)に言及したものです。
まずは創造論者に使われる引用部分、原文で
＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊（以下引用1）＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊
I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualize such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader? I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin's authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a paleontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least "show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived." I will lay it on the line, There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument.
＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊（以下引用1）＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊
＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊（以下引用2）＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊
... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test.
＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊（以上引用2）＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊
＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊（以下引用3）＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊
I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.
＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊（以上引用3）＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊
さて、前の投稿(>>100)で少し触れた「横道」の話です。
創造論者によるコリン・パターソン博士の引用は「中間型など存在しない」の他にもあるようです。 >>100-102、>>82で紹介したライオネル・タニッセンの文章のタイトルには“Two Cites”と出てきますね。
Talk Origins Archive
「Patterson Misquoted - A Tale of Two 'Cites'」
ttp://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html
とりあえず、ライオネル・タニッセンへの手紙の中の文章を読んでみましょう。
＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊（以下引用1）＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊
That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.
I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.
＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊（以上引用1）＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊
＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊（以下和訳1）＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊
サンダーランド（私はそれ以前に彼のことを一度も聞いたことがないが）との小競り合いは、私にとって初めての創造論者との体験だった。[※訳者注：ここで「一方で」と入れるのが正しい？]1981年にAmerican Museum of Natural Historyで催された有名な“keynote adress”は、決してそのようなものではなかった。それは博物館の、（極めて）非公式なグループである“Systematics Discussion Group”へ向けたトークだった。私は彼らに向けて、“進化論と創造論 ”に関して話をするよう頼まれていた；ちょうどその前の週のサイエンス誌に掲載されたエルンスト・マイヤーによる論文によって憤激[※白熱？]していた。私はかなりざっくばらんなトークを行い、その中で、進化論は生物学的体系学（分類）に対して、利益よりも害をもたらしたことを指摘した。私は知らなかったが、その聴衆にはテープレコーダーを隠し持った創造論者がいた。私にとってはますます悪いことだ。しかし私のトークは他の何者にでもなく、プロの体系学者や関連する体系学に向けられたものだったのだ。
私も今では隠れたあるいは公然の創造論者を相手にする場合はもっと慎重であるべきだと学べた、と思いたい。しかし、私は今でも、いかに多くの嘲笑に晒されようとも、懐疑論は科学者の義務であるという立場を維持してる。
＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊（以上和訳1）＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊
