I didn't say perfectly random niches.
Well neither did I. If you aren't saying that random mutations are introducing a significant enough random factor to radically alter the environment in a random manner then what was your argument?
But there is no reason for near exact duplication of forms in placental and marsupial pairs.
So far you don't seem to have made a compelling case for the 'near exact' level of duplication.
Furthermore, they don't even have the same environment.
I agree, to the extent that they don't have identical environments, but in some cases function dictates form to some extent, i.e. the shovel shaped paws of marsupial and mammalian moles.
Once again, this is just another untested hypothesis which evos accept as true as if it needs no verification at all.
Do you just assume this? There are lab based studies on convergence in viruses (as you yourself referenced in another thread), bacteriophages (
Bull et al., 1997), and
Drosophila (
Matos et al., 2002). The Bull et al. paper is actually probably better than your SIV paper for showing genetic convergence since it details their subsequent failure to reconstruct what they
know to be the true phylogeny from the complete genome sequences of the virus.
TTFN,
WK
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