How do you define the word Evolution?

Yes you did, all in the immune system, which is very likely to be a special case for some reason, especially since other examples were scarce. And I still say that scattering the effects of the immune system through the population, which is what mutations do, can't be a good thing.Perhaps we are at a point in the deterioration of all living things that mutations have overtaken built in alleles.

What? In order to get a whole population of black (or white) mice, which is the way the situation is always described, they certainly do have to replace the other colors.Somebody, Dr. A I think, said one of the colors is dominant, I forget which, but that means it's always going to show up among mice of the other color(s), which means, IIRC, it pretty much always has to be a mutation that shows up right on time for the switch because otherwise it will be picked off by predators.In any case, again, you can't get a whole population of a color without losing the other colors.

So you keep changing the goal posts. Now we've got brown mice as well as black and white, and lots and lots of brown desert. That's a new version of the story.But the principle still holds true that if you have a WHOLE population of black or white mice, that populate an all black or all white environment, the other colors have to be eliminated or somehow suppressed.

...Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This is not the story that has been told about these mice before this. If there is no intense selection pressure then of course you're not going to lose the alleles for the other colors. That happens with intense selection pressure.

In earlier discussions they were described as black and white or black and light.In any case it is still true that to get one color means losing the other colors.

In the population that must be black for the sake of survival it does mean either losing or severely reducing other colors.

But for the black fur to characterize the whole population in the black environment you have to get rid of the alleles for the other colors. I don't get why this isn't obvious. If they keep popping up they'll be eaten by predators until all that's left is the black mice. Why isn't this obvious?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Then you misread me or I wasn't clear. I mean and always mean that A WHOLE POPULATION of a particular phenotype is produced by selection, not the black fur itself. I've said over and over that it doesn't matter how the genetic diversity is produced, whether by mutation or built in alleles, when you have evolution, meaning the production of a population of new phenotypes, it can only happen by the reduction of genetic diversity. If the mutation for black fur is selected then you have to lose the alleles for light fur.

I don't know what to think of the mutation theory. It may be a mutation, but it doesn't matter. Again, it's the selection that reduces the genetic diversity, and it's the selection that creates the new population, or in some cases "species." In the new population there is only the one phenotype.

No no no no no. Loss of genetic diversity is necessary to evolution, to the formation of new phenotypes, new species etc. It does NOT matter what the source of the genetic diversity is from which the new gene frequencies form, you still have to reduce or get rid of the genetic material that is not part of the new phenotype/species.

Heritable traits like fur color will never lead to macroevolution. And reduction of genetic diversity is ALWAYS necessary to get a new species, can't happen any other way. Drift also loses genetic diversity to produce its new phenotypes.Mutations are not needed to produce new varieties, but even if mutation was the cause of a particular change, the same processes have to occur in order to make a species out of it. What has to happen is that an existing or mutated allele or set of alleles for larger size be selected and become characteristic of a new population. And for the larger size to become characteristic, the genetic material for the smaller size will be reduced or lost. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

All the division into separate reproductively isolated populations does is create a variety or race, evolution within the Kind, not macroevolution. You get a population of blue wildebeests that split off from the black population; you get a new pattern of colors on the new population of salamanders, new plumage on the new population of green warblers and so on. You do not get macroevolution.You don't need mutation for adaptations either, just new combinations of existing alleles.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Polyploidy isn't any different really from any mutation, it doesn't make anything new, in fact it doesn't even make anything as new as a mutation can supposedly make if it codes for a new protein.

A lot of semantic stuff, RAZD, you can define anything to prove anything it seems. Macroevolution would be any change beyond the boundary of the Kind,--- abe: no not ANY change, I mean a new population -- but it can't happen, you run out of genetic diversity at that point. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.