The document discusses linear and compartmentalized views of evolution. It provides examples questioning whether every behavior must have an evolutionary benefit for survival. One example questions if children playing hopscotch is truly preparing survival skills. It also critiques a researcher's explanation that women evolved to prefer pink colors to identify ripe red fruits, finding flaws in this logic. The document advocates looking at traits holistically rather than isolating and defining each trait. It provides examples of biological systems demonstrating conservation of resources through multifunctional molecules like ATP. It discusses the second law of thermodynamics and how localized reactions allow for increases in order on small scales within living systems.

1. Dust Bunny Evolution
Sweeping Away Linear and Compartmentalized Views of Evolution
Nyles Bauer
Nyles314@hotmail.com
Through evolution and development, we have acquired the ability to observe,
interact, and survive in our world. But these abilities, though allowing for survival, are by
their nature subjective and egocentric.
I’m a fan of nature programming, and it seems that nearly every show on animal
behavior must contain some minor variation of the following line, often repeated for
those that missed it the first few times:
“In what appears to be play, we see the tiger cubs honing their skills, preparing for the
day that they will have to hunt and kill independently of their mother in order to survive
in the harsh and unforgiving realities of the wild.”
Is life really so optimized that every action need be explained purely as a function
of survival? The television shows, and many biologists, would certainly have us believe
so. But if this is the case, why does the following sound so strange?
“Here we see some children playing hopscotch, readying themselves for the day that
they, like their parents, will become accountants for a major corporation.”
Either we have evolved socially to such a level that the skills learned solely
through hopscotch, though once required, are no longer essential, or perhaps life is not so
optimized. Maybe play is sometimes just that—play. Much like Sigmund Freud’s famous
quote, when questioned about his smoking: “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Of
course, it could also be that we humans believe ourselves the sole bearers of that one
privileged, top rung on the evolutionary ladder that allows us, and only us, to be exempt
from the developmental necessities that all nonhuman animals seem to require—at least
according to most programming on the National Geographic Channel.

2. It seems that every behavior and every physical trait must be explained by
biologists in terms of its benefit to the species that possesses the trait. This seems to infer
that all species are somehow optimized and every trait, however small, must have an
evolutionary benefit. This simply cannot be true. A much better approach would be to
look at a given gene, or set of genes, and look downstream at the sum of their effects on
the organism, and holistically ask yourself: overall does this gene and all its associated
manifestations benefit the organism, or the species, in the long run? Although even this
compartmentalized look at a gene, or set of genes, does a disservice to the integrated
functioning of the entire genome, it is likely the best we can do for the foreseeable future.
To force fit an evolutionary benefit for every physical or behavioral observation is
simply poor science and assumes that every organism is optimized and is presently under
minimal evolutionary pressure.
I don’t mean to select just one researcher, since this view is widely held in
academia, but I am forced to pick an example for the sake of this paper.
Here is that example:
“As a professor of visual neuroscience at Newcastle University in England,
Hurlbert was able to create a scientifically sound study to determine whether girls really
do prefer pink. The answer, as outlined in a report in the Aug. 21 issue of the journal
Current Biology, is ‘yes.’ Females do have a preference for pinkish colors that males
don’t.”
This would seem like an interesting tidbit of biological information. It then goes
on.
“The female tilt toward pink, she speculated, arose from evolutionary influences
millions of years ago. ‘Females were the ones who gathered red fruit against a green
background,’ she said. ‘Red is healthy in faces and in fruits.’ ”

3. Is this researcher really suggesting that the evolutionary process weeded out the
ancestral forerunners of women who would not have preferred pink as their favorite
color, because they could not have figured out how to distinguish and select ripe fruit
growing on trees with green leaves?
Did some, perhaps a race of ancestral women, starve to death, and thus not
reproduce, because they were harvesting leaves or perhaps unripe fruit, while their pink-
loving counterparts were the only ones able to distinguish edible fruits? This logic leaves
something to be desired, especially coming from a professor of visual neuroscience at a
university.
The first problem with the conclusion is that there are a whole host of animals that
are nocturnal, and they do just fine choosing and eating ripe fruits from trees without the
ability to see colors at all (as far as we can tell). Others have a very limited color range,
even in daylight, and yet they are able to discriminate ripe fruit from leaves and unripe
fruit. This includes our closest living relatives, the primates; the owl monkey has only
one type of color photoreceptor in their eyes, whereas the typical human has three. The
owl monkey includes both leaves and fruit in its diet, but not always from the same tree.
If Hurlbert’s theory is true, the owl monkey would also appear to require a
heightened sensory ability to discriminate the color pink, yet it appears to have only
rudimentary color discrimination, and it is further limited by its nocturnal lifestyle.
Further weakening the argument, an evolutionary biologist has pointed out to me that
most fruit “does not ripen to a shade of red or pink.” There is little doubt that in many
fruit-eating animals, odor perception and tactile information—such as the softening of
ripe fruit—plays a part in locating ripe fruit, but this is certainly not true in all fruit-eating
animals and in no way excludes our ancestors from using these same sensory abilities.
A more likely hypothesis is that many female primates, such as our nearest living
relative, the chimpanzee, display pinkish or reddish colors in their genital region when
they are sexually receptive. Human sexual organs also generally have a pinkish tone,
especially when sexually excited. Could it be that women prefer pink, because it
advertises their sexuality, even if this is not apparent to them?

4. In the Western world, we see pink cosmetics and clothing on young women of
reproductive age; seldom do we see it on the elderly. For further “evidence,” ponder
Hustler Magazine’s motto—“Think Pink”—or of the gay community’s uniting symbol, a
pink triangle. Pink is a sexual color, and it is well accepted that it is an evolutionary
advantage that sexual behavior select for traits that increase offspring, thus amplifying an
individual’s genetic traits within a population.
The second part of Hurlbert’s theory, that “red is healthy in faces,” I will certainly
agree with; this has a lot to do with the Major Histocompatability Complexes (MHCs), as
well as reflecting the general health of potential mates.
So researchers are just real people with impressive titles, some you would trust
with your only child, and others you wouldn’t trust to water your cactus over the
weekend.
It seems that even the smallest of biological traits most be explained by some
biologist somewhere. The trait is isolated and defined by the researcher, and then in
hindsight explained by some evolutionary need. But this is not in line with our present
view of biological systems. Molecules within a biological system are conserved.
Here is an example:
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is commonly referred to as the currency of life
because it is produced as an energy source for most metabolic processes required for life.
Without ATP an organism or cell would quickly die. Energy is extracted from ATP by
cleaving off one phosphate group, leaving a molecule of adenosine diphosphate (ADP)
behind and a good amount of energy to work with. Amazingly the average human uses
approximately their weight in ATP every single day. This is accomplished primarily by
recycling ADP back into ATP instead of resynthesizing the molecule from scratch.
ATP and AMP (adenosine monophosphate, which is ADP minus one phosphate
group) are very much related to molecular structures within the main building blocks of
DNA and RNA, and the energy for DNA and RNA transcription is supplied by ATP
molecules through the conversion of ATP to ADP.
Now that’s conservation of resources!

5. But wait, there’s more.
Inside the cell, ATP is crucial as a source of phosphate groups in the important
enzymatic kinase enzymatic signaling system which, again, is essential to life. ATP is
also used outside the cell as a signaling molecule for the purinergic receptors in both the
central and peripheral nervous system along with ADP and AMP.
ADP, aside from getting recycled back into ATP, is stored in blood platelets and
binds to ADP receptors, which further activate platelets and facilitates blood clotting,
while ADP found circulating just outside the platelets in the blood is converted to
adenosine, binding to the adenosine receptors on the platelets, which leads to the
inhibition of blood clotting. Adenosine receptors in the brain, and likely elsewhere, are
also intimately linked to sleep. Most of us can relate to this, because caffeine is an
adenosine receptor blocking agent. In fact, one theory for the need for sleep in the first
place is to clear the accumulated adenosine generated in the brain as a byproduct of the
brain’s enormous energy needs during the day. This is certainly not the entire picture, but
it’s a start.
AMP, as noted above, fits purinergic receptors and it is known to be a bitterness
suppressor, making most foods taste sweeter by fitting into certain taste receptors. Look
for AMP in the diet-food section of your supermarket soon.
The last important player in this immediate family is cyclic AMP (cAMP), which
molecularly is very much like AMP but with an additional atomic bond creating an extra
“loop” in the molecule. It is synthesized directly from ATP and is involved with the
kinase system like ATP. It would likely bore you to hear all the known functions of
cAMP; they are numerous and all important. For example, epinephrine (adrenaline)
would not be biologically active without cAMP, because epinephrine cannot pass through
cell membranes. When epinephrine is present outside the cell, it binds to external cellular
receptors. By enzymatic action ATP is then converted to cAMP, which signals the inside
of the cell that epinephrine is present outside the cell, a process called the second
messenger system.
Too much?
Just remember that you wouldn’t be able to get a suntan without ATP, ADP, and
cAMP all working together.

6. If that doesn’t stick with you, just remember the take home message: similar
configurations of related molecules, more often than not, result in very diverse biological
functions, and that even two of the same exact molecules can elicit nearly opposite
effects on a cell or organism, if it is participating in a different biochemical reaction, or
often simply because of its location. In other words, we see conservation; diverse
biological functions kept within identical or a very few slightly modified molecules. This
is more a rule than an exception.
The final point of this little biochemistry lesson is that whether you are talking
about the universe or your own body, nature conserves resources. It reuses and modifies
what it already has accessible to it. I know of no case where a totally new biological
molecule was synthesized for just one specific task and no other. It’s also worth noting
that by utilizing this concept, the body has no need to fight an uphill battle against one
very ominous law of physics as aggressively as it might have it if it did use a more
diverse array of functional molecules as we’ll see now.
The second law of thermodynamics states:
“There is no process that, operating in a cycle, produces no other effect than the
subtraction of a positive amount of heat from a reservoir and the production of an equal
amount of work.”
Put much more simply, entropy—in this case synonymous with disorder and randomness
—will increase overall in the universe.
However, in a system such as a living being, if the individual thermal reactions
are fast and each reaction small and localized, we can use the organism as a whole to
represent the universe so long as we remain on a small time scale.
More often than not, this law is misinterpreted, especially in non-technical
publications. I have seen it used to “prove” that evolution could not have occurred, that
creationism is the only way that life came to be, and that significant life extension beyond
120 years of age was impossible. I’m sure that there are decent arguments for both of
these views, but the second law of thermodynamics is not one of them.

7. One major question that does seem to go unanswered by science is why there
appears to be a general evolutionary drive towards more complex organisms, or at least
the maintenance of the current complexity within the many families of higher organisms?
Why don’t complex animals evolve into simpler ones? Though unanswered, it is not
prohibited by any law of thermodynamics, but one might imagine that there would be
some thermodynamic pressure against this complexity. What then are the others factors
that we aren’t aware of at this time that keep parts of the evolutionary process moving in
this direction? Though I believe a physical answer will be found, this is certainly a better
place to argue for the hand of God.
I think the first thing to realize about the second law is that it’s really not a
physical law at all, but an incredibly strong suggestion. On a microscopic scale, it is
possible to actually see an increase in order and a decrease in entropy apparently in total
opposition to the second law. This is because the second law is actually probabilistic in
nature, and as long as it is an issue of probability on a small scale, there are reasonable
odds that through random motion of atoms and molecules you will have times when more
order actually occurs. As we move to larger or more complex systems, the odds of order
occurring spontaneously becomes infinitesimally small.
Let me present a biological example of the second law at work:
Two guys walk into a bar. They sit down at a table together and start drinking
bottles of beer, in fact too much beer. An argument starts and one guy picks up an empty
bottle, gets up, and hits the other guy over the head with the bottle so hard that the bottle
shatters and the other guy falls to the floor bloody and badly cut.
The man on the floor is rushed to the hospital, while the bartender is forced to
clean up the broken glass. At the hospital, the bruised and cut patron is told to go home to
recover and to stay out of bar fights in the future. The waitress is so impressed with the
one guy’s ability to wield a beer bottle that they go on to date, marry, and have lots of
kids.
Now that is the second law of thermodynamics at work.

8. Why?
The beer bottle was a well-ordered system in the shape of, well, a beer bottle.
When it was slammed over the patron’s head it broke, decreasing its order and thus
increasing entropy. You’ll note that the bartender had to clean up the shards of class. The
beer bottle did not spontaneously reassemble itself and thereby increase order—that
would go against the second law.
The man who was sent to the hospital was cut and bruised; this is also increasing
entropy of his well-organized head. The cuts are evidence of increasing disorder in the
same way the broken bottle is; the bruising represents disorder because of the physical
mangling of his well-organized tissues and cells.
Now here is where most people go wrong with this law of thermodynamics:
The physically traumatized man is told to go home to recover, which he does. The
healing process is in fact the body’s removal of the damaged and disorganized tissue to
effect a repair with new organized tissue formation, a substantial decrease in entropy and
an increase in order.
His attacker has married and produced many children. The fetal development of
each child is also a substantial decrease in entropy and an increase in order; after all, a
highly structured life form is organized and formed from far simpler molecules and
atoms. After the children are born, they further grow and develop, again increasing order.
The key to what may otherwise appear contradictory is that overall, the entropy
still increases despite the healing of wounds, the development and growth of children,
which are all clearly illustrate an increase in order, in apparent opposition to the second
law of thermodynamics. However, to heal a wound, for a fetus to develop to term, for
children to grow, food must be eaten and digested. This digestion is a process of breaking
molecular bonds, which is a dramatic increase in entropy. The digested materials that are
not eliminated through normal bodily processes—urination, defecation, and respiration—
may be directed toward tissue repair and generation for healing, fetal development, or the
growth of children. But there are far more materials being digested and broken down thus
increasing entropy than what goes to the increasing order associated with tissue repair

9. and growth, so overall entropy does indeed increase, and the second law of
thermodynamics holds true. Look at the simplified definition above once more; it is the
overall entropy of a system that must increase. There can certainly be incidents of
increasing order within such a system.
If this doesn’t quite seem right to you, perhaps because of the biological nature of
the example above, then think of it this way: The Russians are very good at making
highly ordered synthetic diamonds from amorphous, disordered, carbon. This would
appear to run contrary to the second law, because diamonds are extremely well-ordered
crystals, but the carbon starting material is not. Tremendous pressures are essential to
produce these diamonds, pressures that require energy to produce. The energy released by
the production of these diamonds produces far more entropy in the universe than what is
reduced by the formation of a small, though highly ordered, diamond.
So even thermodynamically biological conservation makes evolutionary sense,
and there would be intense pressure to take the path of least resistance and utilize this
principle of physics in evolutionary adaptation over time. This is one major reason for the
recurring theme of conservation. But there is a downside to all this biological
conservation: metabolic disease states don’t come alone. In other words, since molecules
are conserved and reused for many diverse functions, if these molecules are not
synthesized by the body correctly—if they are nonfunctioning, partially functioning, or
are overproduced or underproduced—they never appear to affect one organ system alone,
but affect multiple systems. Granted, this is a generalization, but I’ve never heard of an
exception.
Now it is also likely that many systems downstream of this problem are also
negatively impacted, and it would be very difficult to state with certainty that this
problem was solely due to a defective molecule and not a molecule dependent on the
defective one. However, it is a near certainty that the principle of biological conservation
only amplifies metabolic disease states.
I had interned at National Institutes of Health and had been speaking to a research
dermatologist when he happened to look down at the palm of my hand—he asked if I had
asthma or bronchitis. I had as a child, and I asked him how he knew. He pointed out that

10. people with such conditions often have very small creases in addition to the normal
creases that the average individual would have on their palms. Why would this be?
As a man, I’ve never had a woman check the palms of my hand for small creases,
so it’s highly unlikely to be an issue of natural selection. It’s likely to be collateral
damage caused molecularly by my asthma and subject to the biological principle of
conservation, or damage downstream by one of the molecular mechanisms intrinsic to my
asthma. Since the time the researcher pointed the creases out to me, I’ve noticed that
some people have a crease on the inside of one or both of their forearms near where the
elbow bends. It usually shows up clearly if you bend your arm at about a 90 degree angle.
I’ve noticed a genetic component to this crease and have often wondered what this
apparently benign crease may be associated with that may have a more significant effect
on survival or reproduction. Again, this crease would be very difficult to account for by
the process of natural selection, because it seems to go unnoticed.
To keep reinventing new genes, for instance, would be to keep creating extreme
order from entropy, which is not impossible, but fighting the second law of
thermodynamics is no small feat. Horizontal transfer of genetic information, even
between kingdoms by viral transfer—a claim that not too long ago would have been met
with total dismissal—maintains and duplicates order but not from scratch every time.
Certainly this is energetically favorable, and far more in line with the second law when
compared to restarting the biological design process at a less organized stage. We see this
clearly in the ATP-ADP-AMP-cAMP example above.
My cumulative final argument for conservation as a universal principle is that no
matter where you look, or what you look at, you see the same forces and processes in
play for the same application. In biology this concept is seen in the reuse of identical and
similar molecules for multiple and diverse functional applications. But this observation is
certainly not limited to biology, but is applicable to the cosmos. Just to be clear, I am not
claiming that a planet on this side of the universe and a planet on the other side of the
universe are both using gravity to maintain their orbits and to keep “stuff” on their
surface from floating away into space because of the laws of thermodynamics. What I am
claiming is this: For whatever reason, conservation is a recurring theme in the universe—

11. no matter what the scale or where you look. Nature, the universe, conserves. It simply
doesn’t reinvent many differing phenomena when one will do.
Danke Schöen for the Fruit
Newton decides it’s a nice day, so he goes outside to have his lunch. He sits in the
shade of a tree and begins to eat his meal. Very little time passes before a plum falls
from a branch and hits Newton on the head. Slightly annoyed, he gets up and sits in the
shade of another tree. A few minutes go by before he is hit on the head again, this time
by a peach. Newton moves one more time to the shade of another, safer, tree. Sure
enough, another few minutes pass when he is hit on his head by an apple falling from
its branch. This time Newton’s eyes light up. He picks up the apple, and ponders the
moment. “I have it! Never more clearly has a piece of the cosmos been revealed! A
universal truth sits here before me. There are forces at work that brought each of these
fruit from their branches to the top of my head. I will call these forces the Plum Force,
the Peach Force, and the Apple Force!”
Marfan syndrome, a genetically based illness, matches all of the clinical
indicators of zinc deficiency mentioned above but without known overt immunological
suppression. This applies to the “classical” model of this syndrome. It typically involves
cardiovascular problems and many other organ system problems, because collagen
integrity is altered in this illness, and collagen is so important to the physical construction
of the body. Rarely are all the established symptoms presented in every person suffering
with this illness. Again, this is the classical clinical presentation of Marfan syndrome, but
there are many diagnosed with what’s referred to as a Marfaniod habitus, or the general
appearance of Marfan syndrome but missing some key diagnostic criteria, usually
problems with the lenses of the eyes and with the aorta, the largest artery of the body,
where it exits the heart. Many basketball players have the general body type associated
with Marfan syndrome, and are now routinely checked for this genetically based disease.
It’s more than likely that Marfan syndrome should be looked at as a disease of varying
intensities and not as a disease with a solid yes-or-no diagnosis.

12. In one study of patients with chest wall deformities (very commonly found in
Marfan syndrome) who were undergoing thoracic surgery, the cartilage from the ribs was
biopsied and tested for zinc content. The group of 71 patients showed significantly low
zinc levels and high calcium and magnesium when compared with 43 normal patients,
and all showed substantial defects in both the collagen and collagen supporting cells of
the chest. If the zinc levels of most with defects of the chest is abnormally low, and many
collagen and collagen-related diseases are associated with chest deformities, what else
might we expect to see in collagen disorders that do not directly have adverse effects on
the central nervous system? Remembering that zinc blocks the glutamate receptors in the
hippocampus, and that glutamate binding to this receptor type is essential for memory
formation and learning, what about those that are likely deficient in zinc as judged by rib
biopsies, such as Marfan sufferers?
I looked into the IQ’s of those with various collagen-related disorders. This
information is very sparse in the literature, but I did find this information on Marfan
syndrome: The average IQ for the “normal” population is 100, and the average IQ for
someone with Marfan syndrome is 109.3. The IQ scale is not a linear scale, and 109.3 is
significantly higher than 100 conservatively placing the average Marfan sufferer in the
top 30 percent of the population with respect to measured intelligence. Why would this
be? If one of zinc’s normal functions in the hippocampus is to block, and thus moderate,
the effects of glutamate stimulation, one might reasonably speculate that a lack of zinc
would actually enhance memory and learning at the detriment of physical well being and
health. This seems to make sense, because too much zinc clearly seems to inhibit memory
formation and certain learning tasks. Though it leaves much to be desired, the
intelligence quotient (IQ) scale is the best standardized test for predicting future “success
and achievement” in Western societies, though it does seem to totally miss some other
mental issues sometimes seen in Marfan syndrome. It would be very interesting to see
how people with chest deformities, not necessarily due to Marfan syndrome, compare to
the rest of the population on a standardized IQ test.
Though zinc may or may not be a player in this IQ – collagen observation when
all the research is in, this example clearly illustrates that one defect in one gene in one

13. organism can have profound and superficially unrelated consequences. This must also
apply to beneficial alterations in the genome.
So if conservation holds in biology, and the universe in general, then it must apply
to evolution and so the better question to ask when it comes to any observed biological
characteristic is “does this acquired linked trait cause any major disadvantage, especially
when considering all the downstream manifestations of an altered biological pathway?”
rather than always asking “How does this specific trait offer an advantage to the
organism?” and trying to force a fit. We need to integrate all the organismal
manifestations of a genetic adaptation, and then ask ourselves “does the sum of all these
changes benefit or cause some sort of adaptive harm?” and only then propose a holistic
reasoning for the need for an evolutionary change.
The next time you are cleaning under your sofa and seep out a robust Dust Bunny,
admire and ponder it before throwing it in the trash. There is no doubt that all the
evolutionary trees that you have seen in school, in books and on television are wrong,
plan and simply with no qualifying statements needed. Evolution may have started at one
point and branched out, but the branching is far more like a Dust Bunny than a tree.