extended evolutionary synthesis (EES)

In my eyes, this is nothing more than discussing the complexity of natural selection. Some scientists want to treat the interaction of environment and genotype as an additional mechanism, but in the end I fail to see how it is any different than other selective pressures.As an hypothetical, let's say that there is a developmental gene that causes newborns to have webbed feet if their mothers were in the water a lot. Obviously, this would be selected for. However, if the same phenotype were stimulated by desert conditions, then the trait would be selected against. In the end, each is a mutation that is passed through selection.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Darwin himself spoke of the interplay between symbiotes, parasites, inter- and intraspecies cooperation, and environment. That's as old school as it gets. Which genes get passed on in a changing environment is once again up to natural selection (and neutral drift).The EES just seems to be be another way of saying, "Boy, natural selection can be really complex." I think we have known that for a long time now, and the old synthesis certainly didn't argue otherwise.

Then we are really just arguing about a difference in degree and not kind. A few quotes from Origin of Species:"The missletoe is dependent on the apple and a few other trees, but can only in a far-fetched sense be said to struggle with these trees, for if too many of these parasites grow on the same tree, it will languish and die. But several seedling missletoes, growing close together on the same branch, may more truly be said to struggle with each other. As the missletoe is disseminated by birds, its existence depends on birds; and it may metaphorically be said to struggle with other fruit-bearing plants, in order to tempt birds to devour and thus disseminate its seeds rather than those of other plants. In these several senses, which pass into each other, I use for convenience sake the general term of struggle for existence.""What a struggle between the several kinds of trees must here have gone on during long centuries, each annually scattering its seeds by the thousand; what war between insect and insect between insects, snails, and other animals with birds and beasts of prey all striving to increase, and all feeding on each other or on the trees or their seeds and seedlings, or on the other plants which first clothed the ground and thus checked the growth of the trees! Throw up a handful of feathers, and all must fall to the ground according to definite laws; but how simple is this problem compared to the action and reaction of the innumerable plants and animals which have determined, in the course of centuries, the proportional numbers and kinds of trees now growing on the old Indian ruins!"The 3rd chapter describes many examples of just how complex the interaction is between species and environment.http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter3.html That is one reason why I see the EES as completely unnecessary. We already have an understanding of the mechanisms in play. It is just a matter of unwinding the complexity of their interaction. More importantly, the EES is a bit of salesmanship on the part of people such as Wright and Shapiro. This is certainly not the first time salesmanship has been used. In fact, a bit of flash is appreciated by most scientists. However, with the EES there seems to be more flash than substance. It is almost an attempt to save the excitement that was started by the theory of adaptive mutations, which inevitably sank when random mutations were found to be the cause.

Haeckel's ideas were never widely accepted, and his drawings were really not that far off from accurate. We can empirically determine when mutations occur and where.We have examples of a child's genome being compared to the parents' genomes. We have measurements of mutations caused by polymerases in PCR. There are tons of empirical measurements of mutagenesis.