Lack of random environments

No. The moggy is foggy. All mutations are random in their formation. All mutations are beneficial, neutral or detrimental in respect to fitness.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

This is a major part of your problem. You don't think about these things before you spout off some incredulous nonsense. ... or 5 minutes ago out in the front yard? Who says it hasn't? Can you know? Nothing in evolution prohibits such a thing. I personally have confidence that in fact it has happened and continues to happen.Two other concepts for you to wrap your pebble brain around if it can stretch that far without breaking.In case you haven't noticed (you really need to get out more) there is life everywhere. There is not a nook or cranny, crack or crevice on this planet that does not have some living critters in it.The second may frighten you a bit, but that's OK. Everything organic on this world, everything, is food.Let these two facts rattle around in your near hollow gourd for a bit and see if you can come up with an answer to your own question.Edited by AZPaul3, : cuz

Which is not all that often. How many species have failed?Did you know that almost half of all human conceptus are spontaneously aborted due to genetic mutation? Another 10% never come to term for the same reason. 60% of all humans ever created never get to live.That's just humans. Multiply by every species that ever lived and every would-have-been species that never made it.Very few mutations are neutral and even fewer are beneficial.But the ones that are beneficial make all the populations. If a species does not have the necessary fitness in some environment it does not last and is usually replaced by something that will. The result is the appearance that mutations have come on the scene in just the right places at just the right times. All the failures are never seen and never considered.

Lots of questions, and good ones. You can have some pretty complex creatures on a relatively small genome and some simpler ones on larger genomes. Human vs amoeba as an example. Obviously the larger the genome the more chance for mutation. I'm not sure how much of the Polychaos dubium 670 billion base pairs represent active coding allels, but I would think it could take on many more mutations than a human (2.9 billion bp) that are in non-coding portions thus
neutral.So, no, complexity does not necessarily increase the genome nor increase the chance of a random beneficial hit. We're pretty good at hitting the moon with anything we throw at it. Given the lack of atmosphere, exposed to the solar winds, I don't think anything organic from this planet could survive up there. I assume you mean where a mutation would be beneficial.No. I can imagine there are mutations in "highly conserved" genes that are fatal in just about every environment. And "mutation for every environment" indicates that the environment causes specific mutations? No. That Lamarckian stuff went out many decades ago. Not at all, unless, I suppose, we're talking an infinity of time in which case everything will happen. No, there is no foretelling any features or mutations. I like this. Neat analogy. Unfortunately there is a huge number of digits and symbols on the dial and the length of the combination is unknown. And when you hit on a combination and open the door you often find another lock, so you have to open that one before the one you just opened closes you out. Seems hopeless until you remember there are billions upon billions of trials. Something is bound to hit, but there is no way of knowing what it will do.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.Edited by AZPaul3, : usualEdited by AZPaul3, : I am never going to get this right.

And so it is. I stand corrected.

The genetic make up of the child is already set in this case. The environment during development, drugs alcohol, disrupt the developmental processes the genome is trying to accomplish.The environment can change the genome in that it can destroy what was there and what would have been developed. Think thalidomide. But if the child survives these effects are not passed on. Usually.Lamarckism is more a blacksmith passing on his developed arm strength acquired from his work to his children. There is no mechanism for the traits acquired during life (strong arms, callused feet, tattoos) to in any way change the genome in your somatic cells. You were born with a set genome and, assuming you don't get your balls too close to a hunk of uranium, portions of that is what will be passed on ... intact, just the way you received them. Usually. Make allowances for cosmic rays and things like copy errors in the somatic cells. One could say that in the grand set of all possible combinations of phenotypic features using infrared may be advantageous in some environments. So some combination of mutations over time might be found to accomplish this feature. Whether or not it actually develops is a whole other matter. Just because a phenotype (and the mutation stream to make it happen) can be imagined does not make that capability available to this world. It's just a "well maybe if everything worked out just right" kind of thing ... which seldom actually happens. Conceivable? Probably. Viable? Probably not.Genetics works with what is there, not with what might be. Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.