How do you define the word Evolution?

Evolution is the process of evolving. To evolve is to gradually change.Biological evolution is a change in an allele frequency of a population.Why would you need 90 words?

understood, but it seems like it'd be like raising your hand in the classroom when you're unsure of the answer....people just don't do that. That’s just a mutation and not evolution It has to be a change in frequency because an individual cannot evolve. It is something that happens to a population. Say 50% of a population has one allele and the other 50% has another. After some time if the ratio of that allele changes to 51% and 49%, then the frequency of that allele has changed and the population is said to have evolved.ABE:If the population size is 100 individuals, in the case above, only one individual had a change in its allele. That individual did not evolve, it had a mutation and that mutation was the reason that the one allele became more frequent and the population evolved.This message has been edited by Catholic Scientist, 11-16-2005 12:49 PM

double postThis message has been edited by Catholic Scientist, 11-16-2005 12:45 PM

Well, the apparent reason would be that the green eyes are a mutation, an allele of the blue eyes. Evolution is mutation but on the size scale of an entire popualtion, on the individual scale it is mutation. Each step would be considered evolution because the frequency of the green eye allele has changed with each generation. In the real world the numbers aren't so well defined so everything is based on statistics, i.e. allele frequencies. Because that is what I was taught in a 100 level college biology course on evolution.

Yes, that definition was not complete, i mean, it was not the whole definition. Yes, I guess technically, mutation is evolution; its just on an idividual level (but individuals don't evolve). The problem is that it totally leaves out the other half of evolution, natural selection. But, if one considers genetic drift to be evolution, couldn't one consider a mutation to be genetic drift on the individual level? I'm not sure.

Conception is the point of mutation, not evolution. Multiple mutations results in variation of the population, not every individual is the same but some of them are. You can use statistics to calculate the probability that an individual will be of a certain variation. When selection causes a variation to be more or less favorable, the probability that an individual will be of that variation changes. It is this change in that probability that is defined as evolution. You can quantize the evolutionary change down to the individual level, but then that change will fall into a different definition . mutation. You gotta stop thinking of evolution on the individual level. I don’t really know, but my guess would be that mutation occurs during the anaphase of mitosis. I don’t think there’s any recombination in mitosis so I’d have to research that and don’t have the time.

I think you're confused or misusing some words.Mitosis is for asexualy reproduction. With a sperm and egg its meiosis.

Individuals don't evolve, populations do.The frequency of the red-headed alleles in that population changed, so that population evolved - but none of the individuals evolved.

Wins what?Evolution is winning the science of Biology...

It is sufficient to make the point, yes, but the point is insufficient to explain all the observations.The way breeding works is just one way, it doesn't explain how all of evolution occurs.

That point is not true though.

That would prevent growth. I've witnessed growing; the above cannot be correct.ABE:In Message 339, you wrote: That's fine, but even Last Thursdayism amounts to a coherent model that could be applied. So you're not really saying much, or anything really.Edited by New Cat's Eye, : No reason given.

Ice is a result of The Fall...Before The Fall, there was no ice. Everything was all warm and happy.

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

I think what you're getting at stems from the fact that applied biology is basically really complex chemistry and the evolution of populations is on a more macro-scale than that.The Theory of Evolution can be used in applied biology, but not all of applied biology depends on it. No, no, no... you don't get to do that. The way biologists are using the word evolution is the way it should be defined. You don't get to say that it really means something else. That's not true. The science of Biology does depend on the Theory of Evolution. It explains so much and it is very useful. Biology cannot still be 100% without it. Okay, you're talking about "all life evolved from a common ancestor". That is not the Theory of Evolution.A Last Universal Common Ancestor of all of modern life is a particular ramification of an application of the Theory of Evolution that is based on factual data, but it isn't something that has a conclusive consensus. Wait, then why are you talking about it?What other useless things do you talk about a lot? That was cute.