I’m sorry, Percy, as I’ve gone through this post I’ve only ended up having to say over and over that you are misrepresenting me, despite the fact that I tried to relegate that sort of answer to an Appendix. You don’t want to hear that, it drives you crazy, it’s what you mean by being Faith’d since to your mind I’m simply being wrong over and over again and refusing to learn. Sorry, it turns out that I couldn’t avoid the same sort of answer to the rest of the post either, so perhaps there’s no point in your reading my answer at all. But I’m going to post it anyway.
Hi Faith,
I'll attempt to explain once again
OK. I’ve put my answers to your first comments in this post about my various supposed misunderstandings in an Appendix where you can ignore them if you like.*
==============================
Now, before you get up on your high horse again just accept for now that maybe you don't know everything you need to know yet and listen this time for once, because that's the only way you'll ever learn anything.
So we have parent and daughter populations. The original parent population had 26 genes A through Z and four alleles per gene 1 through 4. The daughter population has over time lost some alleles and only has two alleles per gene 3 through 4. Here are the chromosomes for Organism P from the parent population and organism D from the daughter population (I'm refining the example slightly):
Organism P:
-------------------------------------------------
| A1 | B3 | C2 | ... | X4 | Y2 | Z4 |
-------------------------------------------------
Organism D:
-------------------------------------------------
| A3 | B4 | C4 | ... | X3 | Y4 | Z3 |
-------------------------------------------------
Organism D does not have a single allele that an organism from the parent population couldn't have. It doesn't have any allele combinations that an organism from the parent population couldn't have. That's what it means to be genetically the same species.
Right away I have to object. You aren’t saying anything here. I’ve never claimed they aren’t the same species. I don’t even use the term speciation as the definition of my argument, but only as the logical end result of the processes I’m describing, and I try to use it in the sense that evolutionists use it, simply to describe the point at which a new variety no longer can interbreed with former populations.
It’s a rather artificial definition but I use it in the attempt to avoid misunderstanding of what I’m referring to. As PaulK says, speciation is regarded as macroevolution already, but if evolution can’t proceed much or at all beyond that point the term is academic at best. To my mind all you have at that point is a non-interbreeding variety of the same species, but since speciation is used to designate it I also use that term.
ALL varieties are the same species. Great Danes and Pekinese are breeds of dogs, the same species as each other. They have the same genes and some of the alleles in common with each other and yet they are separate varieties or breeds. Your attempt to show that you can’t get a new variety with the same alleles as the mother population makes no sense. Even in a couple of generations you can have a start to a new breed from just a few individuals. They aren’t going to develop a breeding barrier without being isolated and maybe won’t ever develop a GENETIC breeding barrier, but they’ll still be a new variety or breed or even possible species by the evolutionist definition.
Now, if you don't believe me then go ahead and play with the alleles in the chromosome for organism D and try to come up with allele combinations that could not occur in the parent population.
I have no reason to do this as I don’t make any such claim. All the alleles in the dog breeds of course occur in the overall population of dogs although in each breed they occur in reduced numbers and new, possibly unique combinations.
It's not possible, because the daughter only has alleles that the parent population already has.
I have not said otherwise.
If a parent sperm or egg combined with a daughter sperm or egg then the combination would be viable. Parent and daughter populations are mutually interfertile and still the same species.
Yes, at first they are mutually interfertile and you aren’t going to maintain separate populations at all if gene flow is not prevented or at least restricted. I already answered all this in the other post and I really don’t see why you don’t accept the answer. IF the daughter population is 1) appreciably smaller and/or 2) is reproductively isolated either by geographic or behavioral barrier, 3) has been inbreeding within itself for some generations, and 4) has undergone drift and selection within itself, then you may very well have a true new variety and MAYBE even a new species in the sense that it cannot interbreed with the parent population.
Now let's change the example a little. Let's say that time goes by and the parent population loses all alleles 3 through 4 and now only has alleles 1 through 2. Now the parent and daughter populations have not a single allele in common. The parent population only has alleles 1 through 2, and the daughter population only has alleles 3 through 4. There is not a single allele in the parent population that the daughter population has, and conversely there is not a single allele in the daughter population that the parent population has. What would happen if you brought together sperm and egg from the two populations, say just for example these two:
Organism P:
-------------------------------------------------
| A1 | B2 | C2 | ... | X1 | Y2 | Z1 |
-------------------------------------------------
Organism D:
-------------------------------------------------
| A3 | B4 | C4 | ... | X3 | Y4 | Z3 |
-------------------------------------------------
Would they be viable?
Very possibly not if there has been a lot of change between the two brought about by the separate shufflings of the alleles within the separate populations. Isolation alone is enough to bring about speciation according to population geneticists. I’ll try to link some of that below. At least you have to have isolation to prevent their interbreeding in the first place and then time to allow the differences to develop that make a new variety. It’s only after time has elapsed and inbreeding, selection and drift have had time to work on the two populations independently that you can get a new variety and in some cases a real problem with interbreeding may emerge and you have what is officially known as speciation.
Of course, because two organisms from the original parent population could easily have had these allele combinations and would have been able to mate. So two organisms from different populations but with only genes and alleles that the original parent population had will also be able to mate.
Which is exactly why I’ve made sure to specify that isolation must be maintained and time must pass for the differences to emerge.
Now I claimed that you were looking at things at the phenotype level, while you maintain that you
*are* looking at things genetically, but you really aren't. Here's the relevant portion of your reply:
If it’s really MY scenario you have in mind, the populations with the individuals with those alleles you have designated are now isolated from one another by distance or geographic barrier or whatnot, and each organism is now breeding exclusively with the others in its own population. Generations are passing as inbreeding is pretty thoroughly mixing up the alleles allotted to the population as a whole, time is passing, drift is occurring, selection may be occurring, and each population is developing a new look from the new phenotypes emerging as the fewer alleles are combining in new proportions, a new look that distinguishes them from one another. At this point they are a new variety and reproductive isolation may also be reinforced behaviorly as well as geographically.
We can clearly see that you are claiming that new phenotypes emerge through allele reduction that are sufficiently significant to cause speciation,
Yes I still claim this, and how this isn’t dealing with the genetics I can’t fathom. It’s the reduced numbers of alleles now occurring in new combinations that is bringing about the new phenotypes.
But again I also have to mention that I didn’t use the term speciation in that paragraph and speciation is only the extreme of the processes I’m describing, it doesn’t always happen and it’s the processes that are important. I’m describing what brings about varieties, and speciation may be the ultimate end of a chain of such events.
And yes, I still claim that allele reduction alone is significant enough to bring about new varieties. Again, population geneticists frequently describe change even to the level of speciation merely from isolation and the genetic processes within the separated population alone.
Recombination alone is enough to fuel evolution without mutations [see Appendix below**] and allele reduction alone is enough to make new varieties from the new combinations.
and you're ignoring the plainly true fact that genetically both populations must still be genetically compatible because both parent and daughter populations have all the genes of the original parent population, and they only have alleles from the original parent population.
You're also forgetting about selection.
I’ve never ignored the genetic compatibility between parent and daughter populations particularly at the beginning of the separation period, insisting that isolation is necessary to bring about the change that leads to new varieties and species, and I specifically refer to selection in the above quoted paragraph.
The polyploid genes that you claim are there but not expressed and that emerge from their polyploid hiding place through some unknown process will only be selected for if they are beneficial.
Now this is really getting out in left field. I’ve claimed nothing whatever about polyploid genes for this current argument. That idea was strictly in the context of the ark scenario and does not apply in the present. And I have NO idea where you are getting this there but not expressed notion about these polyploid genes I don’t even include in this argument about genetic reduction.
This is the same problem you claim mutations have, but there is an unending supply of mutations since reproduction is never perfect, and every copying error is another mutation. The supply of polyploid genes is necessarily limited.
I have no idea what you are talking about or why, sorry.
But even worse for your scenario is that what you claim is the most common method of speciation, this polyploid storage of extra alleles, has no evidence in the genome of any species so far as the evidence we have in our possession at this time.
You keep mixing up this polyploidy example which applies only to the ark with the present argument which is only about how selection processes reduce genetic diversity. The evidence for the polyploidy is in its very absence as I don’t expect it to be there in the present.
============
Next post, Percy’s
Message 556
Faith writes:
And if you want evidence that I'd considered it before...
There you go again, arguing that your arguments did too make sense. If you really made much sense you wouldn't have to keep arguing about how much sense you make.
Either that or I really am being misunderstood.
As if the problems I've mentioned aren't already fatal, another significant problem with your polyploid chromosome ideas is realized when one considers that some genes have a great many different alleles in the population. A single diploid (sexual) individual can have at most two alleles for each gene, one from each of its paired chromosomes. You're postulating that the additional alleles were there at creation stored away in polyploid chromosomes with the same genes but with different alleles of those genes.
The human blood type gene (called ABO) resides on chromosome 9 and has 70 different alleles that produce the familiar blood types. Many of the alleles produce identical results, but they all differ in their nucleotide sequence and so must have a unique origin.
Where did these 70 ABO alleles come from, Faith? The first two people could have at most four alleles between their two chromosome number 9's. Were there 35 additional chromosome pairs, more than doubling our chromosome pair complement from 23 to 58? And what of the 22 other chromosomes? We can safely assume that with the couple thousand genes on each chromosome that some will have at least as many alleles as the ABO gene, requiring at least an additional 35 chromosome pairs to store those alleles, and bringing the total to 828 chromosomes pairs. How would these 828 chromosome pairs fit in the nucleus, Faith?
828 chromosome pairs is 1656 chromosomes, and if you look at
List of organisms by chromosome count you'll see that the organism with the greatest number of chromosomes is a fern with 1200. Animals tend to have much smaller numbers of chromosomes, with the common carp having the record at 104. Does it really seem possible to you that humans at one time had 1656 chromosomes, far more than any known animal today?
If today’s ferns can have 1200 and today’s carp 104, I don’t see why not, the genetic situation having to have been much different back before the Flood in ways we can only guess at now, and the animals would have had many more as well, today’s allotment not being the standard for what was going on then but much reduced from the originals.
And where did those polyploid chromosomes go, Faith. You need those polyploid chromosomes to store all the extra alleles at creation that Adam and Eve had to have somewhere in their genomes since a single chromosome pair each can only represent at most four alleles. Where did the 805 polyploid chromosomes go, Faith? We've sequenced the entire human genome and they're not there. Did the last one disappear just before humans invented gene sequencing? My, how convenient! And the same is true for all other animals we've studied genetically, not a single polyploid chromosome left anywhere? They all disappeared before our scientific talents grew to the point where we could study them.
Have you looked in the junk DNA?
But also, whole chromosomes can disappear from a genome can they not? Do I have to go look up where that was said also? Actually I believe it was said in the You Tube lectures by the population geneticist at Yale, probably in lecture 7.
Under the influence of the Fall there should have been much loss of genetic material since the Flood. Why is that such a problem? Apparently ferns and carp and definitely bacteria lost less than other animals and human beings, but the sinners should have lost the most — except the poor animals were subjected to the curse on account of us too, and only a few seem to have held onto a fair complement of genetic variability in spite of that.
Again, I can’t judge the accuracy of your numbers, Percy, and there’s no point in making an issue of them because I’m not even addressing the creation or flood scenarios here except in passing as a side issue because others keep bringing it up.
Whatever else WK said, he did affirm that polyploidy does allow for more alleles to be carried by a single individual than the normal 2 per gene (4 per couple, 12 maximum for Noah’s sons and their wives), and that’s why it makes a good hypothesis for the very different genetic situation needed for the YEC understanding of the ark scenario, along with a packed genome with little or no junk DNA.
Again, the ark scenario is not part of my argument here and I haven’t thought through the whole idea of polyploidy so there’s no point in arguing with me about it. It remains a reasonable hypothesis to include as part of an entirely other argument which I may spend time on later.
And if other animals used these extra alleles to speciate then why didn't humans speciate, too?
Perhaps because they started out with a lot more variability — six individuals as compared to two for the animals -- and still have a lot more variability. That would be my guess. But of course people did separate into races, many races, which are on the continuum to speciation, or a less drastic version of speciation, the equivalent of breeds or varieties in animals and plants, and whenever we get into smallish isolated populations and inbreed we become vulnerable over time to genetic diseases (Amish) just as animals do -- due to the loss of genetic diversity. All part of the same genetic picture I’m emphasizing in the argument about reduced genetic diversity in the production of new varieties. Even in humans it’s possible that speciation could ultimately occur, it just hasn’t yet. All events along the same continuum I’m talking about, the trend of genetic reduction that brings about new races or breeds.
There's also the problem of expression. Going back to the ABO blood type gene again, if the first humans had 35 extra chromosomes with those extra ABO alleles, what would keep them from being expressed? A polyploid chromosome is just a copy of a chromosome. It is equal in status to all other chromosomes and would be expressed. Only half those alleles could be relatively recessive, right, and would have to be expressed.
Why would I object to their being expressed? The whole point of postulating their occurrence on the ark is to account for the expression of so many genetic possibilities in the many species that have developed since that time.
The reality is that new alleles are generated by mutation all the time.
As Bluejay explained in the other thread, on average each new human being possesses one new allele through mutation, and as I explained, millions of babies born every year means millions of new alleles every year, year after year for generation after generation. Mutations are the origin of variation.
See Appendix below.** Even evolutionists recognize that variation actually can occur without mutations, and the Yale professor said that evolution can go on for a thousand generations without mutations, simply on the basis of recombination.
===================================
APPENDIX
A separate place for answering some of your misunderstandings about what I’m saying since you object to my doing this so much.
The first topic is, however, relevant to much we have been discussing, but I put it in the Appendix anyway because it’s an answer to your claim that I misinterpreted the Wikipedia article about speciation.
**
Your misinterpretation of that passage in Wikipedia as meaning that mutations weren't a factor in speciation is another example of your lack of understanding.
I didn’t say they weren’t a factor or even that the writers didn’t think they were a factor, in fact I said that naturally, being evolutionists, they include mutation, but that their leaving it off the list does imply that they believe evolution CAN proceed without mutations to at least some extent.
And I have further evidence that evolutionists believe this: In segment 7 of the You Tube lecture by the Yale professor,
The Origin and Maintenance of Genetic Variation, around 20 on the slider, you will find him saying that recombination alone is enough to keep evolution going for a thousand generations without mutations.
This makes two points: 1) there’s enough variability in some populations for this to occur, 2) and, contrary to your insistence that without mutations the fact that alleles match up from population to population would prevent evolution, the normal process that replicates genes is enough to bring about evolution.
This agrees with my mention in
Message 78 and
Message 453 of recombination alone as a sufficient source of variation, even though he’s saying it will only last for a thousand generations. That’s good enough for my purposes anyway.
Then in the article
Genetic Variation in Wikipedia, after listing mutations as the ultimate source of variation, they have:
Genetic variation can also be produced by the recombination of chromosomes that occurs during sexual reproduction, called independent assortment.
The crossing over that occurs during meiosis can result in the production of new alleles or new combinations of alleles.
Then the Wikipedia article
Genetic Recombination has:
The shuffling of genes brought about by genetic recombination is thought to have many advantages, as it is a major engine of genetic variation and
====================================
*
but it would be much easier to explain things to you if you could admit to yourself that you don't really understand these things very well yet.
I haven’t claimed to understand them except in the most limited sense, and I’ve spent most of my time only on the elements that pertain to my argument. You go on to mention ideas I’m now applying to the ark situation but the ark isn’t part of my argument and I haven’t studied the points that have come up about it. I only recently learned of those things and of course used them to apply to the ark situation as they came up because they are very helpful there. But again, genetics on the ark is not my argument on this thread.
For example, in this message you say that genes are preserved:
Faith writes:
I'm aware that every gene matches in my scenarios, Percy. Genes aren't lost, only alleles.
Then a little later in
Message 530 in answer to my question about where all the extra genes of polyploid chromosomes went since most life has no polyploid chromosomes, you say the opposite, that genes are lost:
Why not? Destroying genetic material appears to be what mutations do. The remnants are possibly to be found among the junk DNA. Or just gone I guess since our genome is very empty compared to that of bacteria. 95% of our genome junk DNA? Lot of dead genetic material there.
So genes aren't lost in your scenario, unless of course you need to get rid of the polyploid chromosomes that you made up, in which case then of course genes are lost in your scenario.
You are making up a contradiction that doesn’t exist. I was answering a question you’d asked about my scenario when I said that every gene matches in my scenario. It does, it’s a fact, I’ve only been juggling alleles and not genes, and didn’t know if genes were known to be lost or not.
If, however, genes also can be lost there’s no reason my argument should have any problem with that fact although alleles would still be my examples.
Then when I found out that genes have been observed to be lost it became a way to understand the ark situation. So was polyploidy also a way to understand it, once I understood that it really is a source of alleles, thanks to WK. Same with finding out that bacteria have almost no DNA and their genome is called packed. All these things are good ways to understand the ark situation so of course I used them in that context. But the ark situation is not my topic here. I don’t need to change genes or posit polyploidy or a packed genome in the context of my genetic reduction argument and I have not done so.
I have learned these things during this discussion. What’s the problem with that?
=====================
Your misinterpretation of people in this thread as saying that mutations do not change "the character of a species" is yet another example of your lack of understanding.
Since you don’t quote anything to show you even get what I’m referring to in order to see if there’s anything to my claim or not, I’m left having to find the quote myself and it’s not easy to do. At least one writer on this or the other thread, and I think more than one, said something I understood to mean this, and said it as an answer to my claim that if you add mutations after you have speciation you destroy the species. The answer was something along the lines of saying that this wouldn’t happen because the new alleles should fit right into it and not change it.
===============================
SOME MISCELLANEOUS POINTS:
Then, it is also commonly said that isolation alone is what brings about speciation.
From the
Cal Berkeley site:
Scientists think that geographic isolation is a common way for the process of speciation to begin: rivers change course, mountains rise, continents drift, organisms migrate, and what was once a continuous population is divided into two or more smaller populations.
It doesn’t even need to be a physical barrier like a river that separates two or more groups of organismsit might just be unfavorable habitat between the two populations that keeps them from mating with one another.
And even without a total cessation of gene flow they think it can happen:
However, speciation might also happen in a population with no specific extrinsic barrier to gene flow.
And from
Science Daily online:
There are three main ideas concerning the emergence of new species (Modes of Speciation), each based on the degree to which populations undergoing this process are geographically isolated from one another (allopatric speciation, sympatric speciation, parapatric speciation)..
Genetic reduction is also brought about by population reduction:
Genetic consequences of population reduction and geographic isolation in the critically endangered frog, Rana sevosa Results indicated a severe, negative genetic consequence of recent population reduction and geographic isolation via lack of gene flow, enhanced effects of drift, and inbreeding.
On the one hand you have speciation described in terms of isolation, and on the other you have the same processes described as sometimes leading to endangered species. This is indirect evidence for my argument about genetic reduction.
All these effects may be mild or drastic. They are necessary to speciation but can have negative consequences on survivability of a population if drastic. Bottleneck isn’t really something different from the normal processes of variation or breeding or speciation, could even be the product of selection if only a few individuals possess a desperately needed adaptation in a particular situation. It’s one of the many ways population splitting and isolation occur, but since it is drastic it can have strongly negative consequences. And yet some bottlenecked populations do just fine, such as the always relevant cheetah and the elephant seal population.
Ernst Mayr | Genetics | Oxford Academic
One of the obvious effects of the sudden reduction of population size in the founder population will be a strong increase in the frequency of homozygotes. As a consequence, homozygotes will be much more exposed to selection and those genes will be favored which are specially viable in the homozygous condition. Thus, the "soloist" is now the favorite rather than the "good mixer."
We come thus to the important conclusion that the mere change of the genetic environment may change the selective value of a gene very considerably. Isolating a few individuals (the "founders") from a variable population which is situated in the midst of the stream of genes which flows ceaselessly through every widespread species will produce a sudden change of the genetic environment of most loci. This change, in fact, is the most drastic genetic change (except for polyploidy and hybridization) which may occur in a natural population, since it may affect all loci at once. Indeed, it may have the character of a veritable "genetic revolution." Furthermore, this "genetic revolution," released by the isolation of the founder population, may well have the character of a chain reaction. Changes in any locus will in turn affect the selective values at many other loci, until finally the system has reached a new state of equilibrium (MAYR 1954, pp. 169—170).
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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