the phylogeographic challenge to creationism

I haven't assumed it, I have discussed it and made the case for it, and have not ignored that there are a few ways it can be regained -- two to be exact, and it's "regained" not gained in the case of recombination. Those are the only two. There are no others. Mutation as I said hasn't been shown to be able to counteract this effect. Recombination adds nothing new, it merely reverses the bottlenecking/isolating/natural-selecting/genepool-reducing trend and reunites a previously split off part of the population with another part or with the ancestral population. Diversity is recovered this way but it is only one of the many "evolutionary processes" and the others do as I said they do, reduce genetic diversity, and you can't count on "the absence of new bottlenecks" either. The point is that the TENDENCY, the TREND, the OVERALL DIRECTION of all the "evolutionary processes" over time, is toward reduced genetic diversity. I simply refuse to use species in this way as it obscures the point I am trying to make. This is why I said I want to use the terms variation or breed instead. The great differences in phenotype that occur under the majority of the Evolutionary Processes do indeed correspond with a reduction in genetic diversity and I've made this case quite well in earlier posts.

I do not wish to discuss this with you. Mick gets it, you don't.

The word is Variation as an alternative term for Species, OK? The establishment of a new Variation or new phenotypic expression involves the reduction of genetic diversity. This is merely a semantic problem that you could easily have resolved with a little thought as Mick did in dealing with my first post.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-27-2005 10:51 PM

You are confusing genetic diversity with phenotypic variation. What I am suggesting is that an increase in the second corresponds to a reduction in the first in most of the Evolutionary Processes. If I have time I may get back to the rest of your post tomorrow, but when the discussion gets bogged down with too many posters who are making this kind of mistake instead of making an honest effort to respect and understand what I'm saying I may not be up to it.

We get it from SELECTION or ISOLATION or MIGRATION or BOTTLENECK or etc etc etc which is the whole thing I have been saying from the very beginning. Some genes go with the migrant or bottlenecked or selected population, and others are eliminated from the new population in this process. Usually, not always but usually. The overall result is a reduction in genetic diversity, in the very process of "speciation" or the development of new phenotypic expressions.Mick had no problem with this very simple statement. See his Message 29I have no idea why you and crashfrog have a problem with it, but it gets to the point that it is not worth trying to discuss it with you.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-28-2005 02:23 AM

See above post to DBlevins and Mick's Message 29This message has been edited by Faith, 11-28-2005 02:09 AM

But its uniqueness does not exceed the genetic complement of the "species." And if it is a highly adapted (or genetically structured?) "species" (or breed/variety of the Kind) it most likely has a very limited gene pool. If a species/variety/breed is highly adapted to a particular niche, aren't we talking about a pretty hardwired genetic situation anyway? (what IS the term for the genetic situation of the cheetah -- I keep forgetting -- is it that it is homozygous? at some large number of gene loci, with NO alternate alleles -- I'm sorry if my language is klutzy, I have read about this stuff but the terminology isn't always accessible -- I picture it more easily than I label it) That is, you have this reduced genetic diversity situation I'm talking about in highly specialized "species" to a more noticeable degree.So yes, I get it that each offspring has a unique genetic makeup, but the more specialized the species it belongs to the less genetic diversity was available to choose from. So if we're talking about a cheetah cub, it is almost a clone of its parent, as there is just about zip genetic diversity. That is not so. What happened to Mendelian genetics if so? What does dominance and recessiveness mean if not something built into the population? It can't be something conferred willynilly by mutation. What does it mean to speak of numbers of alleles in a population? There are great numbers for some genes in some populations, small to even only one allele in others, and this has something to do with the built-in genetic picture as it gets worked on by the various Evolutionary Processes, not with random mutations. This whole process can be understood without reference to mutation at all, but only to normal built-in Mendelian genetics, to dominance and recessiveness and others I havenh't learned well enough, that is, to genetic potentials built into the genome that are reduced with each process of reproductive isolation. Mick did not mention mutation in his OP and did not mention it in answer to my discussion of the process either in his Message 29. Yes, and this is because of the greatly reduced genetic diversity which severely limits or absolutely prevents the emergence of adaptive traits. Again, the more specialization, the more "speciation" in other words, the less genetic diversity, the less adaptability, the less capacity to "evolve." I'm sorry I even tried to answer that question Mick asked phenotypically as it just created a useless rabbit trail. I am convinced that macroevolution cannot occur, meaning that there are indeed fixed "Kinds" that can only vary -- and vary quite widely in many cases to remarkable differences in phenotypic expression -- but are always GENETICALLY definable as that Kind and no other. I do not know how to define it but I am sure it will eventually be defined. I continue to believe that the "mechanism" that "prevents" macroevolution is the very processes called Evolutionary Processes we are discussing because with the majority of them (except for recombination and mutation) every new phenotype corresponds with a reduction in genetic diversity which is inconsistent with evolutionary requirements. If these processes are drastic or continue there is an absolute limit IN ALL DIRECTIONS of phenotypic change beyond which no further genetic change is possible -- without mutation of course. At that point recombination is usually not possible anyway. Mick is the only one who seems to be able to think about these processes in terms of ordinary genetics without the addition of mutation. It is puzzling to me that you and crashfrog talk as if mutation were the ONLY mechanism that confers diversity, as if you have no notion whatever of a built-in genetic complement which on its own accounts for the great majority of all phenotypic changes. How could mutation possibly be THE mechanism? Its randomness would prevent the predictable Mendelian combos and the coherent structures that appear in nature just for one point. A change in allele frequency in the population is produced by the Evolutionary Processes that I have been discussing throughout. All fecundity could possibly contribute is a speeded-up process of same. There is absolutely NO way to get a handle on this picture of random wild mutation as THE mechanism for all change in populations. Unique genotypes occur NATURALLY without mutations. They are produced by the selection of, say, recessive genes instead of dominant ones by migration or some other process. This exclusive mutation explanation is false on the face of it, as it denies the normal Mendelian ooperations, and something has to give here. What is Mick talking about in his Message 29 then, since he is not talking about mutations?This message has been edited by Faith, 11-28-2005 04:21 AM

I'm sorry, you are going to have to reduce your post to layman's language, and if possible reduce it to the briefest most schematic possible description, if you really care about my understanding it and being able to think about it.I believe I did acknowledge that there are situations which increase genetic diversity, but that the preponderance of the reduction of genetic diversity through the usual Evolutionary Processes seems hardly to be met let alone counteracted by such situations.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-28-2005 04:32 AM

Yes I understand how Mendelian genetics work, and about alleles in the population and that should have been clear from many things I've said. you do not have to explain that. The difference is that now it is believed that there is no built-in coherent genetic picture that is segregated by hereditary transmission, it's all just tossed together by mutations and THAT's what's now considered to be segregated by hereditary transmission.I'm not sure it makes much difference when we are talking about the chipmunks in the OP. However you think the genetic picture was established, it WAS established, and when a portion of the population migrated what I'm saying happened happened. New phenotypes emerge as a result of the reproductive isolation and there is a corresponding reduction in genetic diversity in that new "species"/variety/breed.Please read what Mick wrote in Message 29 as he didn't find it hard to agree with how I described this process. In fact he continues to explain it all to jar in terms that agree with me in subsequent posts. You may have a problem with my layman's language but he didn't. The concepts are clear enough I think, and I'm not reaching beyond the little I understand either.It has not been proved that mutation does all this, that there is no built-in genetic complement. It has not been proved how much mutation is beneficial and how much disease, it has not been proved that the rate of beneficial mutation could possibly explain the segregation by hereditary transmission of genes, into many geographically separated coherent subspecies of anything over a relatively short period of time.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-28-2005 02:23 PM

Just make an effort. Stop nitpicking. If you know what I mean then incorporate your correction in your answer. Making a huge production out of it is simply derailing the conversation. I'm no scientist and you know that, but I'm not stupid. Make an effort. The phenotype is the expressed traits of the creature as opposed to the genotype. In new "species" that are created by reproductive isolation as described in the OP, you have a NEW phenotype that characterizes the new variety/breed/"species", but you have reduced DIVERSITY of phenotypes just as you have reduced genetic diversity. In one scenario, in the parent population the new type was potential but recessive. That phenotype may never have occurred at all. It could only be expressed when the dominant genes were eliminated by reproductive isolation. So this is a NEW phenotype in the new population, that characterizes it, that makes it a "new species," but in order for it to occur genes that suppressed it in the ancestral population had to be eliminated. That reduces the overall NUMBER of genetic possibilities in the new population which reduces the genetic DIVERSITY in the new population adn also reduces the phonotypic diversity even though it has produced a new phenotype that characterizes the new species.If that isn't expressed exactly right, please reword it.The process of speciation DOES correspond to a reduction in genetic diversity and Mick had no problem recognizing this.

There are too many people on this thread. The only ones I want to deal with are Mick, Modulous and maybe Mammuthus but I haven't read through his posts yet.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-28-2005 03:50 PM

That is asking too much.

Hi Mick,
I'm glad you returned. I wonder how far this can go. WHY should any of them represent macroevolution? Doesn't descent have to be proved for that purpose?The differing names themselves suggest a difference beyond the mere surface impression of similarity too, I would say. (You could probably breed a dog or cat to look amazingly like a rabbit but it would still behave like a dog or cat rather than a rabbit. Still wag its tail, bark at strangers, bare its teeth when threatened, slobber on its owner, need to be walked, sniff the ground and other dogs, mark its territory doggie style, fetch, in the wild run in packs; or catwise meow/roar, sharpen its claws on the furniture or tree trunks, use a litter box, mark its territory cat style, sit on a window sill for hours on end, like to hang out in high places, lay its ears back when displeased, stalk its prey, play with birds and mice before killing them. And yes I know that temperament and behavior are also breedable, but I suspect these behaviors would be just about impossible to erase. If you could breed all the typical behaviors out of a dog or cat and breed in the habits of a rabbit or chipmunk, THAT might impress me macroevolution-wise).If I knew enough about chipmunk behavior I would have used that example to argue that it will never act like a rabbit.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-28-2005 10:51 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 11-28-2005 10:53 PM

Mick understood what I meant by "suppressed" in terms of dominance and recession and didn't treat it as an invalid point. "Low frequency" is fine. Point is that when they are selected and reproductively isolated they generate a new race or breed or what evolutionists now call a species, and the very process of selection is the reduction of genetic diversity available to them.If the scientists insist on being scientifically exact I will give up or take the discussion to the religion side of the board. Snowing nonscientists under with scientific technicalities, burying the forest in the trees, and berating them for their failure to use scientific concepts as scientists do IS belittling them.Many times it has been recognized, even on this board, and Mick did so early in the thread, that the [AbE: majority of the] processes of speciation do in fact reduce genetic diversity. That's what natural selection does, and bottleneck, and so on, MOST OF the processes that isolate portions of a gene pool (I have carefully avoided saying ALL), these being the processes that I keep finding labeled Evolutionary Processes. THEREFORE, the very same processes that supposedly lead to evolution do it by reducing genetic diversity. Some sites actually address this as a problem, especially in domestic breeding. So why I can't get this one simple fact established here is a puzzle to say the least. The ideas that this process IS the process that generates all genetic material, or that it necessarily produces anything evolutionarily useful at all, still seem conjectural to me. I have been trying to be careful to avoid saying ALL and to acknowledge that there are some exceptions, saying only that the majority of the processes that select and isolate populations, that are labeled Evolutionary Processes, do have the effect of reducing genetic diversity. Who said it did? The point is the TREND. ANY reduction at all is a reduction. I have carefully acknowledged that. Nevertheless the majority of them do have this effect -- natural selection, founder effect, bottleneck, migration etc. ONLY mutation and recombination (reintroducing populations to each other that are capable of interbreeding?) appear not to. And you say something else is going on with the cichlids but I can't follow it so until you translate it I don't know what the situation is there. What I can grasp of it -- it appears to be a discussion about separate clearly related populations that do not interbreed -- doesn't suggest anything in favor of macroevolution or any different kind of mechanism than we are discussing -- but since it is technically over my head you will have to break it down for me. I didn't state it in the caricatured way you are doing. It is one thing that does occur and Mick didn't have a problem recognizing it. See his discussion with jar earlier in the thread, that starts with jar's Message 31. I wasn't talking about individuals but about genetic potentials. Again Mick appeared to know what I was saying. 1/100 expression is as good as suppression as I was using the term. And in the new population that 1/100 is going to become characteristic of it, and in order for that to happen the 99 other variants in the parent population have been eliminated, and THAT means there is sharply reduced genetic diversity in the new population -- in that trait anyway -- and correct me if I'm wrong, but when one trait is clearly selected by population isolation, surely many others are too.Please try to reduce technicalities in your answer to this.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-29-2005 02:39 PM

=YOu keep saying this but I have no idea how I was uncivil. I asked you to make an effort to get what I'm saying as it seems to me all you were doing was objecting and objecting and correcting and correcting and taking the topic everywhere except what I was focused on, never made the slightest concession to anything I'd said, and that gets very wearing and I finally said so. The only incivility in the whole exchange came from you.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-29-2005 05:10 PM