Evolution and Easter

I'm a fan of Olivia Judson's blog on the New York Times webpage:
http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/

Her latests posts have centered around explaining evolutionary principles in a "general science" sort of way. The most recent in particular is about mutation and it's relationship to evolution. The punchline is that even without mutation evolution would still occur, since evolution is essentially the change in gene frequencies over time.

Take the trout I'm working on (for example) dumped down here in New Zealand about 100 years ago, they've had all that time to adapt to their new environment. Even if the lakes here were exactly like the lakes back in California from whence they came, we're likely to see distinct differences between the New Zealand trout and California trout. If nothing else (that is without mutation or migration... or men with trucks and ships moving fish around), we'd expect genetic drift to have separated the populations - that's just different gene frequencies becoming more prevalent in different populations due to mere chance.

As to the question of whether or not the trout will have sorted themselves into different populations around the lake... that's what I'm working on now!

But this weekend the trout will get a break from my withering gaze. It's Easter holiday, which means a five-day-weekend (thanks Jesus!). It's not that folks here in NZ are particularly religious as far as I can tell. I think it's just more common in general for Easter to be a longer holiday here and in Europe. I'm looking forward to a concert and some camping up north, with all respects to the resurrection of Christ and pagan fertility celebrations.

There's always been a big emphasis on that link between spring and the resurrection, the rebirth of life and all that. Here we are launching into autumn, though, and I think the Easter holiday works on a different level in that context. Instead of the proof of the return of life to the world it's more about the promise that it'll all come back after that long cold freeze.

Or maybe it's just that any time of year is a good time for a story of sacrifice and resurrection (and some chocolate bunnies).