Carl Zimmer – the web’s answer to Stephen Jay Gould? – has a two-part post on the eye and evolution. The first part, “Opening Up the Russian Doll“, looks at the evolution of sight. It’s a topic that attracts evolutionists, like Richard Dawkins, because at first glance it would appear to be a hard one to explain with the standard gradualist approach: what use is half an eye? Zimmer looks at some modern research and adds something fresh to the debate.
But it’s the second part, “Fleas, Fish, and the Careful Art of Deconstruction“, which is the more surprising, with the focus on organisms that lose their sight, like cave fish or fleas. It turns out to be more interesting than you’d think.
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