Evolution Requires Reduction in Genetic Diversity

When you require tiny populations having a trait, then you have ignored the fact that drift can produce large populations having a trait within an even larger population.You can say what you will, but you are not taking drift into account.

("Populations having a trait???")The "tiny populations" in my scenarios are not all that tiny, they are simply populations that are SMALLER THAN THE PARENT POPULATION when they split off,l not necessarily "tiny." Such daughter populations rapidly increase in size in their own niche. Genetic drift can occur there too.Again, genetic drift is just another of the same methods I'm talking about, a method that selects and reproductively isolates. It would produce not just "a trait" of its own but the usual collection of traits because it too has its own set of allele frequencies.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I haven't ignored anything that contributes to evolution.

That is a post that deserves a week's suspension.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

deleted. old postEdited by Faith, : No reason given.

Nested hierarchies beyond the known genetically related groups are pure mental constructs, fantasies, arrangements on the basis of subjectively assessed morphologies. No, they have not been "observed" merely imagined.Since genetic diversity is reduced by the processes of evolution, the selection and isolation of traits, you cannot get evolution beyond the Species or Kind. An imaginative construct says my evidence from observable living things can't be true, eh? I've even many times given a laboratory test for it. If I were in a position to set it up I'd have done it some time ago. A few black mice within the white mouse population get selected, there's your smaller number of individuals. They take up residence on the lava and are able to survive and reproduce on the lava so their population grows while any white mice that are with them die off and their alleles with them; and now you have a new subspecies of black mice. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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I haven't ignored anything that contributes to evolution

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New genetic variation DOES contribute to evolution. Your argument focusses only on times when genetic variation is expected to decrease, ignoring the times when it is expected to recover.

Like twelve? Or just like breeding?That's tiny.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You do realize that any division of a population makes smaller populations than the parent population? The black mice evolved within the parent population before it split off into a smaller population -- exactly the opposite of your argument. So they invalidate your claim that "... These require limiting the numbers of individuals, you aren't going to get breeds or species unless you do that ..." rather than support it.Because of those mutations, deleterious in the parent population's sandy ecology, they were able to take advantage of the opportunity provided by the lava beds, a different ecology, where the mutation was advantageous. The parent population continued to inhabit the sandy ecology, in the same numbers as before, maintaining all the tan mice alleles, a population that did not have any black mice alleles. Remember this happened twice and with different mutations causing the black mice in two different areas separated by a large deleterious (to black mice) sandy ecology. No Faith, I mean in the world today: speciation and the formation of nested hierarchies has been observed -- your "known genetically related groups." This is what is defined in evolutionary biology as macroevolution.So you agree that "known genetically related groups" form nested hierarchies of species. And I am pointing out that this is defined as macroevolution.Now if you are using a different definition of macroevolution then you are confusing yourself again by misuse of words. And yet, curiously, different people get the same results. And the results from morphological analysis and genetic analysis agree. Why does this happen if it is subjective Faith? Speciation has occurred so either "evolution beyond the Species" has occurred or your statement is meaningless or poorly worded. Again I recommend you use the word "clade" rather than species.Descendants of any species will always be a member of the same clade/s that includes the parent species. The black mice are in the same clade as the tan mice.So each clade should have a clear and unambiguous beginning? Why don't you lay out your purported laboratory experiment rather than make mysterious allusions to it.And I note that you did not answer the question: what would convince you Faith?Enjoy.

I've explained what happens to genetic increase.

The twelve was not a typical example, I used it to get across to you what hasn't been getting across. Now you're making it my typical case. it's not.If you don't like the dog breeding kind of numbers consider cattle breeding which in the beginning was from herds taken from the larger wild herds and isolated so that they developed characteristic new traits of their own. It could have been a fairly large number of founders for some domesticated herds.

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I've explained what happens to genetic increase.

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So have I. It keeps genetic diversity "topped up" so that evolution can continue indefinitely.If you want to claim otherwise you need more than strange assertions or saying that you aren't interested. And until you do, your argument is dead. Funny how your "total commitment" stops so short of really dealing with this major problem.

If you're going to use the word "species" then you have to use it with the correct meaning. If you instead mean the word "breed" then you have to use the word "breed", because if you use the word "species" when you mean "breed" then you will be misunderstood. More about this later. Well, yes, theoretically you could get breeds that can't produce offspring if you're using a definition of species that requires natural reproduction (Great Danes don't breed naturally with chihuahuas, so using a definition of species that requires the ability to breed naturally one could argue they are different species), but not with the genetic definition of species. If the genomes of two different breeds differ only in their allele subsets then they'll always be genetically the same species. Breeding alone cannot produce genetically different species. Please stop using the word "species" when you mean "breed". I think everyone here agrees that mutations are rare and that viable mutations are even more rare, and yet the reality is that human beings average around 100 mutations each. It *is* a very slow rate of change, and that is why even after seven or so million years of separation the chimp and human genomes differ by only a few percentage points at most.The key point is that mutation increases diversity by producing new alleles, new genes and even new chromosomes. Mutation can also reduce diversity by eliminating genes and chromosomes. And they can remove traits, too, but to continue the key point, mutations increase diversity while mechanisms like drift and selection reduce diversity. When mutations increase diversity faster than other mechanisms remove it, diversity increases. When other mechanisms reduce diversity faster than mutations increase it, diversity decreases. Your claim that diversity is always reduced faster than it is increased has no supporting evidence. It's just something you're making up. I said I would come back to this earlier in this post. If you want to be understood then use the vocabulary properly. For example, when you want to claim that breeding creates new breeds then you must say "new breeds" and not "new species".I notice you had some trouble quoting items from a list, e.g.: What you really want it to look like is this: If you peek at my Message 332 or click on Peek Mode when replying to it you'll see this: This *does* require a little editing to maintain the appearance from the original post - you just need to add [list=2] at the front: --Percy

Yes I realize that any division of a population makes smaller numbers. Over my many many posts on this argument I've been clear about that too.If the black mice occurred within the white population they were still a smaller population there, and no doubt prey while they were there.You have noticed speciation and nested hierarchies but you have not noticed them beyond the Kind, that part is all imagination.Definitional arguments are just game-playing.

You don't have a case. You have yet to even lay out a scenario.Let's not dance around the issue. What we are discussing is strictly a numbers game where the variables include the initial diversity, the number of new traits that will be required before you acknowledge that evolution has happened (something closely tied to the definition of species), the time frame for mutations to act on, and the some way of estimating the rate of non-deleterious phenotype affecting mutations, and then some way to quantify the effect of natural selection. A suitable rough model might include a set of linear first order differential equations.You have not given a single number or quantification, or even a guess for any of those things. Yet you want everyone to believe that you have proven that the diversity existing in the current population of humans (let's call that the target population) could not have evolved from a reasonable sized population of reasonably diverse Homo Erectus specimens in say one million years using known human mutation rates. And you actually ar3e attempting to do that using examples covering a few decades and a couple of heads of cattle.You've been thinking about this for a decade, so show me something that is not simply based on your assertions that evolution is impossible and that non deleterious mutations are impossibly rare. I'm a mathematically oriented guy. My background is physics/chemistry/engineering not biology. Have you got anything for me?Or skip the equations and just walk me through an analysis that gives me some reason to think that you are even discussing the proper scale of the problem. Respond when we ask you to define your terms or ask for clarification with something other than the non answers you give.Because without some of that, you are just hand waving. If you read some scientific papers on evolution you'll see a completely different approach. If they have made bad assumptions or miscalculated, you will know.My personal assumption is that you've spent 10 years naval gazing. Surely you expected a skeptical audience when you posted here, but it appears to me that you really have naught point diddly-squat to show us. Prove me wrong. Demonstrate that fine scientific mind.While you ponder those matters, I want to know where you got the idea that wildebeests and Scandinavians are essentially homogenous. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.