Quick Questions, Short Answers - No Debate

Hi, Doku "Activity Monitor," I think: it tells how active the topic has been recently, by frequency of posts or something like that.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

This is mostly for Wounded King, though anybody else is welcome to answer.In Cedre's topic about Abiogenesis, a side topic about mutations came up, and Wounded King said the following: Is this figure (~100/generation) a generally-accepted mutation rate?

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.

Hi, BMG.Forgive me for drawing this out, but I felt I had some additional insight to help answer the question.The classification of organisms used to be categorical, such that animals could be placed into different groups based on whether or not they had a requisite array of defining characteristics. The system works just fine if your intent is just to group things by appearance. However, there is always the question of why you would want to group them that way.But, modern biology uses evolution as the guide for classifying animals, such that true ancestry and relatedness are more important than morphological features. So, modern taxonomists will group everything that evolves from a reptile as a reptile, and will only distinguish two reptiles from one another by means of subgroups placed within the group "reptiles." Thus, birds would appropriately be considered a subgroup of reptiles, for instance.This system works well because evolution is considered central to modern biology, and it provides a clearer picture of the history of life, so we are better able to see what factors shape the processes of life. Furthermore, it gives us some predictive ability: we can anticipate some of the ecological traits of some species based on what we know about closely related species, because closely related species are often affected similarly by similar environmental factors.The problems come in when you start mixing terms from the categorical system with terms from the cladistic system. The word "reptile" is essentially meaningless in terms of evolution-based classification, because it groups things in terms of something other than evolutionary ancestry, and you'll only confuse people by trying to use both classification systems at once.So, before even bothering to use a term such as "reptile," it's important to understand why you want to use it and what the term is going to convey to the person you're using it for.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Taz.Welcome back.Remember the "Did Mod cause the collapse of evcforum?" thread?I think, when Crash and Hyro reached their detente, the news got to Jar and Dreamcatcher, and the resulting talks with Percy got several former members reinstated (arachnophilia, Ringo, etc.).There may have been other things going on behind the scenes (PMs in such), but I don't know much about it.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi Paul. Glad to know I'm not the only one who does this!I pretend it's beta-testing.