A New Run at the End of Evolution by Genetic Processes Argument

This is exactly the sort of "rebuttal" I've answered a million times alreadyThe situation of fixed loci, only one allele, meaning a pair of them, per locus, is the dire situation of the cheetah, from which recovery is not expected by conservationists at all.The scenario I keep describing, a series of population splits one from another, can lead to a similar situation of fixed loci, but my main point is to give an example where evolution is particularly active, and where it reduces genetic diversity from population to population, even perhaps arriving at the situation of fixed loci, which is always a possibility. Mutation is too slow to keep up in such a situation, besides which it becomes subject to the same subtractive processes anyway, and certainly once the genetic diversity has been depleted to the extent of so much fixed loci it's gone way beyond the point where a conservationist or a breeder would have to act to try to replenish it.But the REALLY main point is that since evolution does reduce genetic diversity it puts the ToE in a very strange and untenable position. The standard expectation is that there is no end to evolutionary processes: "What's to stop microevolution from becoming macroevolution?" is the usual question. Well, the fact that evolution itself reduces genetic diversity is what stops it. You don't have evolution unless you have this reduction in genetic diversity. You don't get new phenotypes without getting rid of the alleles for other phenotypes. Breeders know this. Conservationists know it too, though for them it's a problem situation rather than a desirable one.Oddly, Paul seems to think that even if you get total genetic depletion evolution can continue as if nothing had happened to interrupt it. He's conceding the depletion at the same time denying that it's a major impediment to the usual expectations of a steady progress up the evolutionary ladder so commonly visualized in descriptions of how evolution supposedly works. He thinks it's a refutation to imagine a mutation coming along to let evolution continue, a very rare and unlikely event, and even if it did occur what evolution needs is robust genetic diversity, not depleted genetic diversity from which it has to be rescued. And then it gets rescued and say many more mutations build up the genetic diversity again, you still have to reduce the genetic diversity for evolution to continue because that's what evolution does.So, if reduction in genetic diversity always occurs with the development of new phenotypes, and it must, always always always, you simply do not have anything remotely like the popular idea of endless onward and upward evolution that is always pictured and presented to the public.Paul's optimistic idea that a mutation COULD rescue this dire situation is hardly what is visualized about the ease of evolution just proceeding from one variation to another species to species to species up the fossil ladder and up the Linnaean tree without a glitch from creature to creature, but beyond that his optimism is hardly warranted. What are the chances the cheetah will manage not to go extinct before this mutation comes along to rescue it? This particular mutation out of all the possible mutations too. This one that would give it new life, occur in the right place, and spread to the next generation reviving and reviving and reviving. Not good odds at all. And then it has to rebuild its former genetic diversity because you don't get evolution at all unless you have genetic diversity.It's all quite logically clear what I'm saying. You want evidence go talk to the people who are caring for the cheetahs.Oh but the cheetah isn't a proper species because species evolve more slowly or something like that? I don't know. Anything to confuse things. Obviously it's a species. But you don't need a bottleneck to produce the genetic situation of fixed loci. Overzealous breeding programs used to do that quite regularly and it was fixed loci that defined a pure breed too. But a series of population splits such as occurs in ring species should get the creature to the same condition in the last populations of the series because each population has to lose genetic diversity to bring out its own special characteristics.Anyway, what kind of evolution is it that has to wait around for a mutation to rescue a genetically depleted creature? Evolution always pictures abundant diversity, depends on it. The fact that the very processes of evolution have to reduce genetic diversity kills the whole ToE.Paul's refutation is not only no refutation, it's weird.

For the sake of discussion I sometimes accept that mutations can add alleles although I don't really believe it amounts to anything worth mentioning. The point is that even if they do add alleles, even if in fact they ARE the source of all the alleles in all species, it doesn't make a difference to the argument I'm making about evolution bringing about reduced genetic diversity.It isn't a matter of which "dominates" as you put it. Bloat your species with mutation-caused alleles, all that will do is give you a large scattering of different phenotypes within your population, right? That may be a healthy state for the population but it's not evolution as I'm trying to talk about it.You need some kind of selection from among those phenotypes to get evolution, don't you? Or do you disagree with that?I focus on the random type selection of population splits, but it could be natural selection or domestic selection, the genetic situation will be the same, that is, the increasing presence in the population of the selected phenotype or phenotypes and the decreasing presence of the unselected ones. If there is a population split and physical reproductive isolation then the new gene frequencies in the new population will bring out more phenotypes of the high frequency alleles, which may or may not be the same as those in the original population but most likely not, and fewer from the low frequency alleles, and this may be a motley collection for a while too, until after many generations of isolation the new population recombines the whole array of genotypes until a recognizable new collective phenome, if that's the right word, emerges. Or do you disagree with this as a portrait of evolution?I can't think of any other way you would get a recognizable new species / subspecies myself. If you add alleles you get new phenotypes but scattered within the population, not characteristic of the population as a species or subspecies unto itself, which won't happen until selection and isolation happen. Then when you have this selected and isolated population which is forming into a new species, it must also at the same time be losing a whole bunch of those other phenotypes mutation also brought in. If it doesn't then you don't have selection and if you don't have selection then you don't have evolution. Or do you disagree?Popular presentations of the ToE picture going from identifiable species to identifiable species so instead of a population of motley different phenotypes selection makes a new population out of those that are selected and eventually eliminates the others. By losing the others genetic diversity is being reduced. If you don't have selection you don't have evolution, you have a species with high genetic diversity and a lot of phenotypic variation. That may be a pretty common situation and a healthy situation for the species, but again I'm trying to talk about what happens when evolution is actively happening, when some individuals are selected over the rest of the population either because of their greater fittedness, or just randomly as some part of a population moves away from the main population or in some other random way gets reproductively isolated from it.All these different forms of selection produce a new population with new gene frequencies which when recombined for enough generations bring about a new breed or race or variety or species/ subspecies. Do you disagree that selection is required for this to happen? Do you disagree that selection produces a population with reduced genetic diversity?So you have your new subspecies or variety and now you want to add new mutations, new alleles and go back to the state of a motley collection of different phenotypes that isn't evolving? I thought evolution was supposed to proceed from species to species as if there was nothing to stop the formation of new varieties. Nothing in any popular presentation of the ToE ever supposes the need to add genetic fuel to keep it going.You want me to say something new. Not until the old is understood.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Nitpick: It's not a "premise," it's the conclusion. I suppose the premise might be something like Evolution isn't really happening unless you have selection ... Let's not get lost in the trees here. Keep it simple. I'm talking about observable recognizable changes in the phenotypic presentation of a species, so if it doesn't affect those changes then no it doesn't count. I'm more or less assuming you know the history of the formation of a population. If you don't know its history then I don't know how you identify the relationships between different groups. In fact ideally to understand what I'm getting at you would be creating the populations yourself and tracking them. In the species/family as a whole sounds like high diversity. But I'm not interested in what happens to the species/family as a whole. My focus is on what happens to selected subpopulations of that family because that's where you get the phenotypic changes based on the new gene frequencies, along with the reduced genetic diversity (in relation to the parent population) that brings about a new variety or subspecies. I have no way of knowing that. As I proposed with the Pod Mrcaru lizards that got the big heads in thirty years, to find out if they have more ability to evolve you'd have to select another set of pairs from that population and isolate them on another island. If they change in some recognizable way then they had genetic diversity to spare. Plants may be genetically different enough from the animals I have in mind to need a different explanation, I don't know, but if animals haven't run out of genetic diversity after beaucoup population splits into beaucoup new subspecies, it's because they started out with tons of heterozygous genes and no junk DNA. You know plant genetics and I don't and fruit flies too I guess. Sounds like they have lots more genetic possibilities than animals. Lots of stuff like polyploidy or that sort of thing? Unless the principles involved are entirely different, however, I would assume that plants too would eventually run out of genetic diversity. The number of fixed loci for the characteristic traits is the best measure I can think of. The more fixed loci the less genetic diversity. The fewer alleles per locus the less genetic diversity. But again I'm thinking of the situation where you know the history of the formation of a population. See above. I'm not interested in how they are related to each other except as you know the history of their descent one from another and then I'd predict reduced genetic diversity from population to population as new varieties are developed. Far as I know nobody has a reason to study this sort of thing. But there's no reason to think the original population from which all the subspecies diverged maintained its ancestral genetic diversity. It too would have been reduced in numbers as the daughter populations diverged from it so it too would have had new gene frequencies and lost alleles and undergone phenotypic change. So I don't know how you'd identify any group from any other. Perhaps geneticists will get to that point. But I also don't see why it matters. Certainly doesn't matter to my argument. But my argument does need you to know the history of how different subspecies formed because the prediction is that the newest, at least in a chain of populations, will be the least genetically diverse. Again you are asking questions that I don't think can be answered, but whether they can or can't it has nothing to do with the argument I'm making. See above. I really have no idea what the problem is. Just as a general statement, if one model is true and another false you'd be better off with the true one even if you've adapted to the false one, right? But all I'm interested in is what a sequence of new subspecies that require reduced genetic diversity does to the ToE. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes, but it won't have been evolving, it will be in that condition before the split of having many different phenotypes scattered through the population.I'm arguing that evolution requires selection (of some sort, random or otherwise) and selection has to select and isolate some of those phenotypes from the rest of them, which means developing the selected phenotypes from their higher frequency alleles, and suppressing or eliminating the others with their lower frequency alleles so that eventually as all the genotypes get recombined over the generations a new look to the population should emerge that is dominated by the high frequency alleles. So if and when this daughter population does begin to evolve it has to go through the same selection processes that reduce genetic diversity.If you keep adding alleles it simply isn't evolving. Which is OK of course, but it isn't evolution. Evolution requires selection requires reduced genetic diversity. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

A compliment from PaulK? Will wonders never cease? Well, thanks. As I mentioned (to HBD I think), even if we know the ancestor type of a given species there's no guarantee the living representative of that ancestor is all that much like the original, since due to the formation of so many daughter populations from that original stock, in this case the enormous variety of dogs, that population too will most likely have undergone enough of a population reduction to have also changed. I don't think we can even assume the wolves have greater genetic diversity than any random population of mutts.But nevertheless there is a valid point in your question. I usually think of it in relation to a population like the gnus or wildebeests which I think are divided into three different species or subspecies but form enormous homogeneous herds. Since they don't seem to branch off frequently my guess would be the original population has very high genetic diversity, and depending of course on how large the number of founders of the daughter populations was, even they could still have pretty high genetic diversity.All three of these different populations are very homogeneous and not characterized by that motley collection of different phenotypes yet as I say I doubt any of them is in a condition of seriously reduced genetic diversity. SOME reduction would have to be the case in a daughter population that began with a small number of founders, but we don't have to be thinking of fixed loci even there. Maybe of course, but maybe not.SO, this condition of motley phenotypes is a stage that eventually gives way to the homogeneous result of recombination over generations. This would not happen of course if mutations were springing up with the rapidity I've been imagining so far. What is more likely to be the case is that there are occasional changes in individuals that get recombined before the differences really make a difference.The main time this motley stage occurs, I surmise, is soon after a population split, in a daughter population that has big enough changes in gene frequencies to produce a whole new array of new phenotypes in the first few generations of reproductive isolation. All due to the new gene frequencies, alleles coming to expression that didn't come to expression in the original population because there they were low frequency whereas in the new population they are high enough frequency to emerge. I'm sure it's more complicated than this but still should be generally the case.SO, first stage after split all the individuals of the new population look exactly like those in the old population.After a few generations of sexual recombination, the new gene frequencies will start producing new phenotypes.This should go on for a while with new phenotypes showing up and forming the motley scattered look I was talking about.Then eventually over many generations of sexual recombination of all the different genotypes eventually a new "phenome" should emerge that characterizes the new population as a whole that is distinct from the phenome of the original population. Different body characteristics, different coloring etc etc.Even if wolves do have mutations they would maintain their homogeneity by just recombining them into the group phenome. It would take a LOT of mutations to create that motley effect, and it's only if a small subset of wolves diverges into reproductive isolation that the same phenomenon could show up in them. Could, if they do have a lot of genetic diversity to begin with.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It's exactly the same situation as having your golden retriever puppy show up mottled gray or your Freisian colt chocolate brown. They violate the breed and can't be sold.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I shouldn't start with the latest post but of course it grabbed my attention so here goes. HOpe to get back to the earlier ones. That is not the case, HBD. When I was first putting together this argument it was a conclusion I drew from the processes I had come to understand are considered to be "processes of evolution" which I got from hanging out on the UCB evolution site. That list includes mutation among the processes and it took me a while to realize it's in a separate category from the processes that actually have to do with evolving. I remember sorting through how mutation, gene flow, migration in the sense of increasing a population with formerly separated individuals etc are different categories, do different things. I also hung out on the Wikipedia Speciation page and put some things together from that source as well, from how the processes are understood to lead to speciation. I don't know the steps I took to get to the conclusion, whether partly influenced by some creationist input, which is usually cast in terms of "information" which I know I felt I understood better in terms of genetic diversity. I don't remember all the influences that came together to form this argument in my mind, it's been a long time, but it was a conclusion from many pieces of information and no premise, and it's my own in the end, my own argument, my own conclusion. This little history may mean nothing to you but it reminds me that the loss of genetic diversity through processes of evolution is definitely a conclusion I came to from my own encounters with evolutionist concepts. I didn't start out thinking any such thing. I was just trying to make sense of the concepts as presented on those and other sites and came to have a completely different idea of how all those concepts work together. No we are talking about genetic diversity though to my mind allelic diversity is synonymous with that and could be substituted if there was any reason to do so. Phenotypic presentation is what you get from the genetic substrate of course and if you aren't getting phenotypic changes then you aren't getting a new subspecies, but getting a new subspecies is of course the whole point of all this. All I was saying was that this discussion is not focused on that level of things. I'm focusing for now on what happens at the level of the daughter population.Sure we can go there, and have at times, but it's a side trip. If you want to discuss that we can, there's a lot that can be said about all that, but this post isn't the time or place. Actually it was a simple straightforward truthful statement about what the topic on the table is at the moment. I'm not focused on how much genetic diversity there is in the entire family of any creature and I don't see its relevance in this context. The only point I'm trying to keep in focus is how genetic diversity is lost at those points where new subspecies are developing. You seem to be in a mood to find things to accuse me of. Seems to me all I was doing was giving straight honest answers to your questions. It is my hypothesis, OK? that there must have been much greater genetic diversity on the ark, which I came to understand in terms of greater heterozygosity and less junk DNA. It's a hypothesis I arrived at after quite a bit of trying out ideas. So if you ask me to explain a continuing high level of genetic diversity in any creature now I go back to that way of thinking about it. You have to start with very high genetic diversity in my scenario if you are to maintain enough for everything that had to evolve from it. Really pretty simple train of thought, nothing underhanded that I can see. It does happen that by now the various parts of my scenario do fit together pretty well. Where is this accusation coming from HBD? I really have no idea why you keep thinking along these lines. You were asking me about plants and fruit flies, both of which aren't part of my argument. I suppose you could fill me in to the point that they might become part of my argument but at the moment they aren't. I have bigger animals in mind for my argument just because I do and not because I'm avoiding something else. What am I avoiding about plants and fruit flies anyway? All I was saying was that perhaps plant genetics is complicated in ways that are importantly different from dog and human genetics. It has to be different somehow for there to be that many different species. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be avoiding by these answers to your questions. Perhaps you had some ulterior motive in asking them that I failed to appreciate? I don't know. I just have this vague notion that plants are subject to that condition and that it would make for important genetic differences from the animals I usually think about. That's all, nothing underhanded. Perhaps you could educate me some about plant genetics here. I don't focus on plants. You'd have to tell me. Do they lose the ability to interbreed with others of their kind after many population splits? Are there many endangered species of plants due to genetic depletion? Do they suffer from overbreeding the way animals do? Do they suffer from fixed loci after bottlenecks? Etc. etc. Good grief you are in a suspicious mood. Simply cannot be answered by ME. I don't know the answer. Why are you making this into some kind of skulduggery on my part? I answered your questions simply and honestly, that's all I know. Sounds to me now like you intended them to catch me at something? It was a comment I should have refrained from making since of course it's obvious. And my answer was that I'm not thinking on that level at all and I have no idea how it would apply to the situations you are talking about because I'm focused elsewhere. And I see nothing wrong with that at all. I discovered some things that DO discredit the ToE. Seems important to me to make the case. How it would all work together in a model for the uses you are talking about is simply not something I'm focused on and I don't see why I should be at this point, or why you are holding this axe over my head. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Apparently I missed the "challenge." I don't get it. The whole thing hits me as a series of incomprehensible accusations of this or that fallacy or error, based on some preoccupations of HBD's own that have nothing to do with what I've been arguing.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This is correct, but irrelevant to my argument. This is also correct and irrelevant to my argument. Obviously you have no idea what my argument is. As I've said many times, high genetic diversity is a healthy condition for the species. But my argument is that the processes of evolution itself are subtractive processes that break up that genetic diversity in order to create new phenotypes out of it. Evolution IS the creation of new phenotypes and especially a new subspecies from those phenotypes, right? Well, for that to happen alleles have to be lost for other phenotypes. This is SO basic. If all you have is the high genetic diversity you don't have evolution. You may have a large stable healthy population but you don't have evolution or the creation of new phenotypes.

I think I'll repeat my answer to this. I am not "looking for" anything and have no idea why you'd expect me to. I FOUND information that DOES discredit the ToE, and like a good creationist I present it. You'd prefer me to be doing something else I guess.

This was the post I had to interrupt for the Internet Technician. I'll get the finished version up soonEdited by Faith, : No reason given.

Depends on how you are using the terms and it’s not easy to tell. The processes of evolution, which are selective subtractive processes as I’ve been using the term for this purpose, in the process of producing a new subspecies, if using new high frequency alleles, results in loss of competing alleles, which is loss of genetic diversity. This occurs from every population split, but eventually it MAY lead to the state of genetic depletion beyond which further evolution is impossible. It depends on the continuation of selections or population splits. Whether that extreme is reached or not, there should be reduced genetic diversity from population to population to one degree or another. I don’t understand your division into Premises and Conclusions. I don’t think this reflects how I organize my argument. Also, I’m not sure primary and secondary are clearer and I’m probably going to have trouble remembering, but anyway.Every population split produces a new set of gene frequencies in the daughter population and possibly also the original population depending on how large it was. Some alleles that were high frequency in the original population may not be in the secondary population, they may be slightly lower or very much lower, or possibly, yes, even higher. The bigger the change in the gene frequencies, however, the more phenotypes you should get that weren’t in the original population, and fewer of those that were, even their complete loss after a while. But of course. The odds of the frequencies being the same in both populations are very low. There could be little difference nevertheless in which case there wouldn’t be much of a change in the phenome of the secondary population. I would expect it to be a scattering of different phenotypes that both were and were not in in the original population. This situation should increase with the next few generations too, more new phenotypes turning up because of the new gene frequencies coming together in new combinations. OK, but this might not happen in any appreciable way for a number of generations, depending of course on how many individuals we’re talking about in the founding group. For the first few generations as I say above. Yes, after ALL the genotypes have been recombined together, however many generations that takes. No. There’s no reason to assume that the previously dominant alleles are necessarily low frequency in the new population, they may or may not be. If they are they shouldn’t be expressed very often in the new population though they may not completely disappear. But whatever alleles are very low frequency should completely disappear from the population eventually, according to what I’ve read about this, not according to my own theory. No. This isn’t about previously dominant allleles since we can’t assume they are pf any particular frequency in the new population. Loss of ENOUGH alleles, previously dominant or not, over enough time, which could take a number of population splits depending on the number of the founding individuals, MAY lead to reproductive incompatibility with the primary population, but I don’t hinge a lot on this occurring; it’s the TREND of reduced genetic diversity I try to keep in focus. Yes. Except you took a different path to this point than I do so it really isn’t a valid conclusion. Totally wrong. Extinction is not what ends evolution according to anything I’ve said. Of course it would but that’s completely not the point of the argument. Evolution being the development of a new subspecies through the reduction of genetic diversity, is a trend that is at odds with the usual idea of evolution that seems to assume endless supplies of genetic potentials for continuous selection leading to new variation, or in other words, evolution. But if the trend brought about by the actual processes that create new subspecies, the selection processes, what we have is a trend that is counter to the usual expectation of endless variation that can even continue beyond the genome of the species and form a new species. It is the reduction of genetic diversity itself that ends the ability for a species to continue to evolve. It doesn’t have to go extinct for this, just reach a point where there isn’t enough genetic diversity left for evolution to continue. I’ve guessed that what are considered to be new species as a result of the process of speciation, where interbreeding with former populations has been lost, may often be the result of genetic mismatch because of its state of reduced genetic diversity.g\The point I keep trying to make is that the trend of reduction of genetic diversity due to the processes of evolution, while it does indeed produce the phenotypic changes that are expected of evolution, diminishes the very fuel that is needed for evolution to happen at all. The actual processes of evolution are the complete opposite of what are assumed in popular presentations of the ToE, and in fact in themselves define the outer limits of evolution, even the outer boundary of the Kind. This occurs wherever the evolutionary processes are actively going on, usually in a daughter population which has become reproductively isolated. Although you get parts of it I think the overall answer is No. Getting parts of it suggests you’re missing the overall point of the argument.

Here's the finished version of the post I had to interrupt for the Internet Technician:========================== Well, no, RAZD, I wouldn’t say previously rare alleles WILL rise to dominate the phenome, that’s not part of my thesis, though I have said they might do that. The point is only to emphasize that new gene frequencies CAN make a dramatic difference between the phenomes of the daughter and parent populations. It wouldn't of course. That was the point of my first statement: it doesn’t make any difference whether the source of the alleles is mutation or an original built-in collection. But you are the one who makes the distinction between old and new alleles, I don’t see why it matters at all. How on earth would you know such a thing? Why should the age of the allele make a difference? Aren’t they always being renewed by replication anyway?Also, I was picturing what happens immediately. You seem to be thinking of what develops over time. Leaving aside your reason to prefer mutation over preexisting alleles, if many mutations are occurring in a population, that should create scattered new phenotypes throughout the population. Now, you say you have observed something different, so do please explain and are you thinking of the situation of mutations showing up in great numbers and taking some generations to disperse through the population (if that can happen at all, keeping in mind that very low frequency alleles tend to drop out of populations which works against the spread of mutations but anyway). For one thing I've been talking about a hypothetical great number of mutations just to emphasize that it makes no difference to my argument, whereas in reality that's not likely to happen. So just exactly what do you claim to have observed? Yes, but while a population is in that healthy state it is not actively evolving: that is, selection is not working on it to create a new subspecies at this point. It isn’t that I don’t want to discuss this, it’s that it’s not relevant to my argument, which is what happens when selection and isolation occur, which isn’t going on in this stable state. I’ve many times acknowledged this condition a population can be in, which may in fact be for the majority of the time.. But the point of my argument is what happens if and when new varieties or races are being formed from it.What I'm trying to keep in focus is about evolution as selection, as the formation of a new subspecies. If a population is just sitting there in a healthy condition it is only "evolving" because you regard it as a phase of evolution. Though in fact it may or may not occur in any given population. But it is NOT evolving in the sense of forming a new species or subspecies because that requires selection. That may be its function, which is of course according to classical ToE, but as a mechanism or a process, whether we’re talking about selection according to that definition or the random "selection" I've been referring to -- whatever divides some of the alleles from others, that's what I'm calling selection -- in your example it divides the less successful from the more successful. But whatever the reason this division creates new gene frequencies and as the new frequencies work through the population new phenotypes emerge and are eventually incorporated into an overall new "phenome.' I'm using selection as an active thing that forms a new population so that it is distinct from the earlier population. It favors some of the "mutations" or alleles over the other mutations or alleles and this is how the changes toward a new species occur. Again the reason for the selection doesn’t matter here. Your scenario is possible but I believe the much more usual thing is random splits, like the random "selection" of the lizards that became the new population on Pod Mrcaru. Since you are so insistent on classical ToE I don't HAVE to argue with you about that right now because it doesn't matter to my argument WHY a particular selection occurs. Have it your way for now. The point is that selection for any reason isolates a certain collection of alleles over others and makes a new population out of them, and this requires the loss of alleles for the unselected traits. Actually that is not the case. And nothing you've said so far contradicts anything I've said. You just prefer a more limited version of selection than I do, but it works exactly the same way. You seem to think this distinction makes a difference to my argument, but it doesn’t. It's unnecessarily limiting but it makes no difference whatever. It doesn't matter whether old or new mutations or alleles are in the new population or not, or why this or that was selected, in all cases whatever the new mix happens to be, it entails the loss of other alleles which ultimately tends to reduced genetic diversity. In your scenario this is specifically for the enhancement of the species health or survival, but in my scenario it’s just a random thing. The end result in favoring a new mix of alleles is the same. Again, that's one possible scenario, classical ToE and it doesn't change one thing in my argument, though it limits the range of possibilities as I see them.But hey, I'll argue against it anyway as a side issue. If the ecology made the selection whole species would die out before they could produce an adaptation, especially if the founding number of individuals was quite small. Also, the idea smacks of teleology, as if there must always be an adaptation that can show up for a give ecological challenge. But really it’s far more sensible to think in terms of the creature's available alleles producing a new interesting trait that fits with something different in the ecology than the original population. So that the ecology on the island of Pod Mrcaru didn't have to be so different from the original habitat as to murder or at least subject to borderline starvation all those poor lizards in order to get a strong jaw that could munch the harder food on the island. Where would the stronger jaw come from? It would have to be potential in the lizards’ genome but nobody would have guessed such an adaptation was possible until it showed up. Also, nothing is said about any unavailability of the food the original population was used to anyway. It was probably just as available on the new island and fed the first few generations of the lizards just fine until this new head and digestive system simply developed out of the genome due to the new gene frequencies among this small number of individuals.{Here is where I had to abandon this post for the internet technician who was about to disconnect me. The rest of the post was at that point all RAZD’s. But now I’ll add my comments, hoping the original version didn’t confuse everybody too much} Even if that is the cause it doesn’t change the mechanics of the situation; it’s just a different reason for the different frequencies; but once you have the different gene frequencies they have to recombine over the generations in the same way as randomly selected gene frequencies would, the higher frequency ones dominating in the population, the lowest eventually dropping out. Which is why I don’t think fitness is very often the cause of the changes in reality since species would just die out if they weren’t already adapted. Which is what leads me to think the change in the creature comes first, based only on the new gene frequencies that occur randomly, and then the appropriate food for any new capacities would be preferred by the creature. But again, in principle it doesn’t matter whether the selection was made for fitness or not, what selection as a process or mechanism does to the genome is bring out the higher frequency traits and suppress or eliminate the low frequency traits and this is what leads to the situation of reduced genetic diversity, whether those frequencies are due to selection pressure or merely random isolation of a random portion of a population. You keep insisting on this and I keep saying it makes no difference to my argument since the mechanics are the same no matter how the gene frequencies come about; although I think you are wrong that this is how it must happen. I would hope by now I’ve made it clear that it doesn’t matter to my argument whether the source of the alleles is mutation or built into the genome of the species. The stuff from which the selection is made is a completely separate issue; whatever its source it still has to be selected from to get a new subspecies and it’s the selection that brings out the new phenotypes that come eventually to characterize the new phenome, at the same time as it reduces genetic diversity, whether in a collection of mutations or a collection of builtin alleles. Without getting into an argument about how true all that may be, the point for my overall argument is that whatever the source of the alleles, whether you are right about this or the alleles are already present in the genome, they still have to be subjected to selection and isolation for a new subspecies to emerge and that entails loss of genetic diversity. Really? Never heard that before. Seems to me there can be extremely long periods when a large population remains stable and isn’t evolving, since evolving would be brought about by selection.However, my point was only that after selection occurs and the new gene frequencies are isolated and being recombined, the first stage would have to be the emergence of new phenotypes scattered through the new population. You’ve argued with this but I’m not sure why. It’s not crucial to my point so I can give it up but it just seems like what would happen in the first stage of the recombination of new gene frequencies: alleles that had been low frequency in the original population but higher frequency in the new could now start emerging here and there in individuals because of new combinations. This would be a scattering at first, and later they would more or less all blend together into the new phenome. But again there’s nothing crucial about this, it just seems like the likely thing that would happen in the first stage. You lost me. I would think it wasn’t evolving unless it was actually changing but this isn’t crucial so let’s drop it. And again I doubt this but it doesn’t matter to my argument about the mechanisms or processes that form a new species /subspecies. I don’t get this at all, RAZD. New alleles, old alleles? Makes no sense to me to make such a distinction. If a new subspecies or variety is actively forming from the recombination of a new set of gene frequencies, then genetic diversity is also being lost. I don’t see how your distinction has anything to do with this process. As for selection supposedly occurring all the time, again, depending on the creature and the size of the population there may be long periods where selection isn’t happening at all and a population is stable, usually a very large population in that case; but again the reason why selection occurs makes not one bit of difference to the argument I’m trying to get across. But new mutations are single events. They don’t change the frequencies except to add new very low-frequency alleles to the mix, and low frequency alleles are vulnerable to being eliminated from the population altogether though I suppose that would occur to recessive alleles and dominant ones get passed on. But aren’t the odds of any mutation spreading in a population pretty low? But that is what has to happen before it could really be a viable allele contributing to the phenome. In other words, it still has to be selected, whether according to your formula of fitness or just randomly, for it to become part of the phenome of a new subspecies. New mutations that don’t spread, don’t get selected, must be the most common situation, and you don’t have evolution at that point, just some new material for evolution to work on if it comes to that. I doubt this has been observed, but anyway again it doesn’t make a difference to my argument, which is about the mechanics of selection and recombination, how the allleles that get selected and recombined come about in the first place. Mutation as I understand it, certainly not beneficial mutation, does not occur frequently enough for such a situation to be observed. But again you focus on the sources of the alleles, which makes no difference to my argument. If you are getting new gene frequencies that are recombining in reproductive isolation then the mechanics are the same no matter what the source of the alleles. Not wrong at all. For one thing merely displacing old traits by new traits, which is a very odd idea, doesn’t change the dynamics of the situation. You still have a collection of different traits in a population, but you aren’t getting a new subspecies unless and until selection acts on them, separating some from the others, and then recombining them over the next generations etc. etc. etc. The additive phase creates the collection, but it isn’t evolving until selection acts on it to isolate some of them from the others. Oh absolutely NOT true. Even if mutations never occurred, the naturally occurring or built-in alleles are all that is needed for new subspecies (varieties, breeds, races etc.) to form. but isn’t evolving until some portion of the population is selected and isolated. Not according to discussions I’ve found many times online of lack of evolution duriong long periods of stasis in large populations. Not so, RAZD. And this idea of a struggle to establish the fittest is pretty old hat by now and not really a very viable option. But I didn’t want to get into that side of things in this discussion. Again, it really doesn’t matter to my argument WHY evolution occurs, the mechanics involved are all that matters, the selection, the isolating, the recombining. I DO consider them the same way I consider any kind of alleles, for the sake of discussion as I said. I don’t believe they contribute much of anything if anything at all, but it doesn’t matter, I can act as if they exist for the sake of argument. But I certainly don’t get a much clearer description of evolution by doing that. Incompatibilty could be brought about by a preponderance of homozygous traits, oh blue eyes, black fur, long tails, whatever, in one population, while the other populations have a preponderance of brown eyes, gray fur and short fluffy tails. The cheetah isn’t suffering from mutational incompatibility with others of the cat kind, just from having so many fixed loci that can’t combine with the different collection of alleles at those same loci in other cats, even whatever cat was its genetic parent. The breath in is the taking in of supplies, if one believes mutation is the source of those supplies, which I don’t but anyway that’s the idea, and then the breath out is the selection from among those supplies to be made into a new subspecies. It’s the second part I’m trying to keep in focus. It divides those supplies into smaller portions by selection for whatever, for fitness or just randomly, or in breeding for human preference. The selection acts on the supplies to isolate some of them as the basis for a new subspecies. Some, even most, of the supplies are left behind in this action. You could have increased the supplies a hundredfold but still they have to be cut down to make a new subspecies, always losing genetic diversity, always leaving the others behind.I’ve answered this a jillion times in this post alone. But also, OTHERS on the thread have brought up this idea of adding mutations after a new subspecies has been formed from selection and isolation and recombination, and I’m saying No, that would just destroy the subspecies that just formed and what is the point in that? Nature doesn’t do that, just as breeders in their right mind don’t. And it violates the very idea of how the ToE works, which presents the idea of evolution continuing from the new varieties or species, without any implication that the genetic diversity needs to be built back up after its been lost. It’s lost in order to bring about the new variety or species. If you build it back up you are going back to square one, you aren’t continuing the processes of evolution that would lead past any new species to others. Actually it is rather too much like one step after another, one forward, one back. You’ll never even preserve a new species that way, let alone evolve past it. The problem is that the theory assumes change is open-ended, assumes it without question. The focus is all on the changes. Lots of changes are of course possible in a species. What I’m trying to show is that these changes COST, there is nothing open-ended about them. To get a new phenome, new subspecies, you have to lose genetic diversity. Putting it back only defeats the purpose. The looss is necessary to evolution. You can’t just talk about endless changes as if they just go on and on and on. All that is the very stuff that led me to my argument in the first place. They make no distinction between the additive processes (mutation, gene flow or migration) and the subtractive processes (selection and genetic drift). That is the distinction I made that led me to this argument I’ve been pursuing for years. But they go on and on as if you can have changes without the loss of genetic diversity. It never even enters into the description. To get the new beetle population of predominantly brown genes entails the loss of the green genes. (That is, selection of the brown genes entails the loss of the green genes). That is what I mean by the loss of genetic diversity. It may not amount to a big loss the first time around but after generations of losing the green genes, you’ll have a population of brown genes with the complete absence of green genes. That has to happen to get the phenotypic change but the ToE seems never to have heard of it, as if you could throw out all the green genes forever, and the yellow ones and the purple ones, leaving only the brown ones, and have enough genetic diversity to come up with some completely new variety after all that. Can’t happen. Aargh. All they are doing is asserting that it happens, RAZD, as if evolution just keeps on a-goin and never stops. This is standard ToE, but this is exactly what I’m arguing against.They go on: Given enough time. The evo mantra.Here’s your two-step waltz. We get new genetic material with migration and mutation, we lose genetic material with genetic drift and selection. We add genetic diversity with migration and mutation, we chop that diversity down by selection and drift in order to get a new phenome. If this just continued endlessly no species would ever form at all, it would be destroyed by the addition of genetic diversity every time it occurred. In reality this doesn’t happen. In reality you get new species or subspecies by spending the genetic diversity, until you have, oh, perhaps a very interesting pretty bird with a new warble, that has run out of genetic diversity, or at least run low enough on genetic diversity so that any new species that could develop from it are very limited.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

OK so I didn’t get that you thought your examples were clear contradictions of my argument. Now that I get that much I can say no they aren’t, you don’t get my argument. This is just a mystifying assertion. You make it from time to time but haven’t shown me how I’m supposedly wrong at this level of your working experience. You like to SAY I am, but now I’m sure you just don’t understand the argument I’m making, which is in fact par for the course here so I should have known it before. Just another assertion so far, but as for extrapolating, if what I’ve described is what happens when the selective subtractive isolating processes are at work, it should always be what happens whenever the selective subtractive isolating processes are at work. The only point of using those examples was what they represent that validates my argument. Agreeing with those statements is meaningless in itself unless they are recognized as the basis for the pattern I’m describing. NO IT DOES NOT. You are talking about plants. As I said plant genetics must be appreciably different from the animal situations I tend to focus on, and I’m not sure exactly how or how it might make a difference to my argument, and so far you have done nothing to clarify this, but the fact of multiple speciation events not running out of diversity proves nothing against my argument. As I believe I said I have to assume that the overall genetic situation is similar enough that if I’m right then plants too will lose genetic diversity with each new population split, but if there’s no way to measure it there’s no way to know this from population to population.Clearly there must be enormously more genetic diversity in plants simply because you can point to so many thousands of (sub)species. But unless there is something really different about how plant genetics works, they too have to be losing genetic diversity if new varieties are developed from population split to population split. How would one know? Well, as you say, it is impossible to measure this in most cases. I wouldn’t expect it to be possible until you get to the extremes where there are many fixed loci or so few alleles per locus they CAN be counted, if that is possible and I don’t know.But the fact of a huge number of species/subspecies does not in any way contradict my argument in itself. It just means extremely high initial genetic diversity. The only time the trend of reduction should become apparent is at the extreme. You assert there is no reduction but if you can’t measure it how do you know? That is a statement about my personal experience, that I came to my conclusion through what I learned about evolutionist concepts. How on earth do you think you can contradict such a personal statement? I see, you feel free to redefine my own personal experience? No, I didn’t need to apply it to a broader scope because all by itself it undermines the expectations of evolution that selective subtractive processes can just go on and on forever. You seem to think evolution is something else than what I’m talking about, something broader, so that’s what needs to be discussed. Meanwhile please leave my personal experiences to me. Yes, that is to be expected. If the processes follow the pattern I’ve described they should follow it in all cases. I believe I discovered a rule about how the processes of evolution work, the selective or subtractive processes. If that is the case it should apply across the board wherever those processes are operating. Knowledge of how breeding works should be sufficient. To ask this question is to show that you don’t understand how it works at all. I use the example of breeding, and especially dog breeding, because it ought to be so well known that it can serve as an example for all other cases where new species and races are the result. I’ve described it so many times by now there should be no doubt about how it works. Breeds formed by SELECTION OF TRAITS from other breeds HAVE to lose genetic diversity. The idea that they might not is impossible. You ought to know this. It used to be that fixed loci were the mark of a pure breed, and what are fixed loci but the result of loss of alleles so that all that remain are those for the breed’s particular traits and what is that but loss of genetic diversity so that the characteristics of the breed can be formed and then preserved? I’ve explained this a million times, how have you failed to get it? In the case of dog breeding and other breeding programs I most certainly can. There is absolutely no doubt that breeding from selection of traits requires loss of genetic diversity. This is what makes domestic breeding such a good example for what must happen in all similar situations. Apparently what was incomprehensible to me was that I didn’t grasp that you intended your examples to be a challenge to my argument, which I would have thought you’d know if you’d been following my posts couldn’t possibly be a challenge to it. The number of subspecies is no challenge to it; that only demonstrates initial high genetic diversity, and there may also be relatively high genetic diversity in each of the subspecies for all I know, despite genetic loss from the previous population, but what you’d have to prove to challenge my argument is that the formation of the subspecies did not entail any loss of genetic diversity at all or the reverse or some such. As you say there is no way to measure such things so at this point the examples aren’t examples for or against my argument. I’d predict that there was some loss of genetic diversity in every single case of the formation of a subspecies or daughter population. How could we know? If plant genetics isn’t appreciably different from dog genetics I offer the comparison as evidence for my point of view.You seem to think there is as much or greater genetic diversity in your many species than in the original or something like that? If so, why do you think that? But also as I understand it there is a lot of hybridization that goes on in plant biology, and that would be a completely different situation from what I’m basing my argument on. You can get new varieties that way too rather than only by the subtractive processes. I use those as examples of how you get new species by loss of genetic diversity, they aren’t meant to represent any kind of norm and I’ve never presented them as such. I use endangered species and breeding prorams as my examples because as you say it is impossible to measure genetic diversity in most cases and I would expect these examples to make the general case about genetic diversity. I’ve proposed that species in the wild, especially in ring species, or wherever you can be pretty sure of the order of population development, be genetically tested, or that a laboratory situation be set up for that purpose. Looking for reduced number of alleles and especially more fixed loci for the salient traits in the most recently formed populations. Your straw man version of my argument certainly wouldn’t challenge it.But in all your responses that refer to your own work I get no idea of exactly what my argument would challenge in it anyway, if I were right that is. What would be different?Of course I would love it if someone did some research to test what I’m claiming. You’d have to understand what I’m claiming first of course. Do you do DNA studies on your plants for instance? In what circumstances, for what purposes? Just curious.

OR, more likely, just to get a creationist perspective into the picture, there was no evolution at all and the different structures were designed for the creature they were designed for. Since they are comparing how these structures develop in the embryo, they are assuming that embryonic development reflects evolutionary history, but in reality it means nothing more than that the body structure of both creatures was designed independently at the Creation, and the developmental sequence in the embryo is probably related to how the structure fits together, and has absolutely nothing to do with any supposed evolutionary history, which of course doesn’t exist.Actually, you know, if there was anything to this idea that one creature evolved from the earlier, meaning the one lower in the strata, there really should be more transitional continuity than there in fact is, which is what this study demonstrates. All this happy pointing to supposed transitionals makes much of superficial similarities while leaving out a wealth of differences that make the whole idea untenable.However, they must be congratulated for being willing to test the idea. They stayed in the reptiles of course.