My friend and I are debating this and I believe in a million years it is possible (evolution takes a long time). However humans only live 70 years of age therefore we will never actually witness the evolution process. Is there proof that a tree can produce another type of fruit? Please help thanks.
Posted: October 3rd 2010
bitbutter www
I think you’re right. And in contrast to other answerers, I do think it’s an interesting question.
Given enough generations of geneticists to tend for the trees, with enough resources at their disposal, I believe it’d be possible to create a descendant of an apple tree that was very similar to orange trees as we currently know them using artificial selection.
But in the question of whether a particular kind of tree can ever produce a different type of fruit, there’s a problem: How different is different enough? Who decides?
As you know, the process of evolution takes a very long time, and many generations, before it results in obvious changes. From one generation to the next, the cumulative changes tend to be very small.
Dawkins coined a phrase the tyranny of the discontinuous mind that captures the mismatch between our habit of applying discreet labels to things, and the continuous nature of processes like evolution.
Posted: October 4th 2010
Eric_PK
Evolution is not about one existing species evolving into another – it is about an existing species evolving into two separate species.
So while it is theoretically possible for apple trees to evolve into orange trees, the chance is vanishingly small enough to say that the answer to your question is “no”.
I’m not sure why the question is an interesting one.
Posted: October 4th 2010
logicel
Your kind of reverie is akin to how many angels can dance on a pin, that is, wasting time debating topics of no practical value.
There is a solid, interlocking matrix of evidence supporting macroevolution:
Paleontology, evolutionary developmental biology, comparative genomics and genomic phylostratigraphy contribute most of the evidence for the patterns and processes that can be classified as macroevolution.
I encourage you to read the above link as it is a basic introduction to what macroevolution entails as your description is a strawman version of what macroevolution is accepted to be by scientists.
If you want to query possibilities, your spring board from which your musings are sprung should not be rotten, termite-ridden, and wonky. To do otherwise is intellectually dishonest, not to mention, lazy.
Posted: October 3rd 2010
Mike the Infidel www
In the same way that currently living species of apes will not evolve into humans, even though we did evolve from apes, no current species of apple tree will evolve into what we call an orange tree. Evolution does not provide a chain of evolutionary steps through which all similar organisms will pass. Whatever the apple tree evolves into, it won’t be an orange tree.
As for observing evolution, just Google 'observed speciation.’
Posted: October 3rd 2010
brian thomson www
It is possible to witness evolution in species that are very short lived, and there is extensive scientific literature on e.g. Drosophila (fruit flies) evolving in response to conditions imposed by researchers (e.g. overcrowding, radiation). They remain fruit flies, after the experiment, but who knows what would happen if they were released and allowed to breed for hundreds or thousands of generations.
However, this idea of “one thing changing in to another” is a common source of confusion to those not familiar with evolutionary biology. You read things like “I didn’t evolve from a monkey” – which is correct, but missing the point. Both you and the monkey evolved from an earlier, genetically simpler ancestor, which was neither monkey nor human. The DNA records of both show high degrees of commonality. So, apple and orange trees can (in theory) be traced back to an earlier ancestor, which was simpler and neither apple nor orange. Unlike the human – monkey question, I don’t know whether anyone’s done much work towards finding or naming this ancestor, or its age.
Short of wholesale DNA replacement: to make an apple tree produce an orange, you’d have to unravel that-many years of evolution as recorded (imperfectly) in the DNA, then apply that-many years of orange tree evolution. Which sounds about as logical and feasible as taking some scrambled eggs, un-cooking them, re-inserting them in to an egg shell, breaking the egg again, and cooking an omelette. In other words: you’d be trying to reverse entropy. There’s an old saying that hints at the impossibility of reversing entropy – something about un-scrambling an egg …
Posted: October 3rd 2010
SmartLX www
A completely different type of fruit would be impossible in the space of a human lifetime.
However, witness the difference between wild bananas and the kind you buy at the store. Or the difference between wild mustard and its many descendents, like cabbage, cauliflower and turnips. That near-complete difference in the nature of a plant can be achieved in the space of a few thousand or even hundred years, with the assistance of a certain amount of artificial selection by humans.
Given millions or hundreds of millions of years, natural selection influenced by a plant’s native ecosystem can easily have the same effect.
Posted: October 3rd 2010