A test for claimed knowledge of how macroevolution occurs

Where have I said mutations "don't exist?" I'm certainly aware that they exist but as mistakes and neutral or useless changes. What I doubt is that they make useful alleles.

Faith writes: The problem is that the explanations aren't convincing.

These are facts we're discussing not just explanations. It's a fact that the black moths with the mutation survived and those without declined. That's how the ToE says things happen and there are the facts of it. If you have a better explanation you have to show it.

Why aren't YOU skeptical of the timing?

Because the timing is a fact.

Not that it could be something other than a mutation but it doesn't fit the usual idea of a mutation and yet you are all just accepting it anyway.

It fits exactly what a mutation is. That's why it's called a mutation by those that study mutations.

Faith writes: Where have I said mutations "don't exist?" I'm certainly aware that they exist but as mistakes and neutral or useless changes. What I doubt is that they make useful alleles.

So now you have seen bomb proof evidence of one, what are you going to do with it?

The variant wouldn't have been there if the mutation had not happened. No black moths were seen in the 1811 observations or before. By mid-1800s the population was riddled with them and by the end of the century it was the norm in the population.

I suspect PaulK is correct. Such melanin mutations are not rare and could have come and gone several times in a large population over many centuries. So you are correct. This one crept up just in time (+-40 years)

Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

PaulK writes: I’m not convinced it was “just in time” and I don’t think you have a good idea of the time available either. Besides your extreme bias against mutations has been demonstrated here quite sufficiently.

I don't know who originated the idea that the mutation popped up "just in time," but the peppered moth was never under any threat of survival that needed a mutation to pop up "just in time" to save it (there were many places in Great Britain that were not soot covered), and in any case the mutation occurred before the Industrial Revolution, though how much before cannot be known.

The first specimen of dark peppered moth was recorded in 1811, nearly a half century before coal burning soot caused some parts of Great Britain to become more favorable to the darker type (Wikipedia ref).

--Percy

AZPaul3 writes: So you maybe think the genome knew back in 1811...

I know I just said this, but since you mention it again, the first reporting of a dark specimen of peppered moth occurred in 1811, but we can't know how much before 1811 the mutation actually occurred. The dark variety could have been around for centuries unnoticed, or it might have occurred right in 1811 and been discovered immediately, or it might have arisen sometime in between.

--Percy

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But then I'm back to thinking no mutation was needed at all, just the usual built in variant.

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The dark colour is a dominant trait (which contributed to it’s rapid spread). So it wasn’t hiding as a recessive.

And it just happens to be associated with a mutation in a region relevant to wing colour (and a transposition - not a point mutation - too).

Saying it appeared earlier does nothing to show that it isn’t a mutation. It simply undermines your “just in time” claim.

Seems to me if the mutation came along in time to save the population from extinction and start a new population to replace it, that's "showing up when needed" ...

It didn't. The light colored moths were not in danger of extinction, as there were areas they inhabited that were not darkened by coal soot.

The mutation happened, then it proved beneficial and spread, allowing the dark moths to exist in the sooty areas. So the dark moths flourished in the sooty areas while the light moths stayed in the non-sooty areas.

... and that's too great a coincidence for me.

Turning it into a coincidence is your way to ignore what happened. You need to really think about it -- as you keep telling us to think about your comments.

Message 240: I was kind of wondering if that was going to come up. A mutation that occurred so much earlier than it was needed raises the question how it could have survived the years when the other color characterized the entire population.

The same way the light colored moths existed during the sooty times, by inhabiting darker shadier environments (like deep woods).

We saw this same change in habitat behavior with the pocket mice when they evolved a dark version.

But then I'm back to thinking no mutation was needed at all, just the usual built in variant.

Of course you are, it is your favorite dodge to avoid what really happened.

You need to think about this some more. At some point "the usual built in variant" evolved ...

Enjoy.

Seems to me both the peppered moths and the pocket mice used to be described in more drastic terms: it threatens their very existence if they don't get the other color to save them. But if I suggested that other color had to be a normally occurring "built in" genetic variant then I was told it couldn't be because it would just get picked off by the predator. So it had to be a mutation, which prevented that scenario though I can't understand why now that I think of it.

Anyway, the way both situations are being described now there never was really any controversy. So I guess I got it wrong. Both colors were always available and the protective color proliferated when the background made it necessary since the predators would pick off the contrasting color. No controversy after all, nothing interesting really.

Nope

Scientists have identified the mutation that affected the peppered moth coloration. Fact. Your story doesn't account for it.

Oh yes, I've accepted this from all the reports of it.

But remind me again: how do they recognize it as a mutation? I mean what about the DNA sequence makes it a mutation?

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Where do you think the "built in genetic variants" come from? In other words, where do you think different eye color or hair color "variations" come from?

There seems to be some conflicting information between Nature and Wikipedia. The Nature summary you cited, Dark satanic wings, says this about when the mutation first appeared:

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There is a further, satisfying twist to the tale. Although it is possible that melanic mutants existed undetected at a very low level in the peppered-moth population for centuries, the specific mutation behind their coloration is relatively recent, appearing around 1819 — in plenty of time for it to be noted down in Manchester a couple of decades later.

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(The full article you cited at The gene cortex controls mimicry and crypsis in butterflies and moths is probably not the right article because it doesn't mention the year 1819.)

But Wikipedia says the dark variation was first spotted in 1811:

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The first black specimen (of unknown origin) was kept in the University of Oxford in 1811.

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The article How a Moth went to the Dark Side also gives the year of origin of the mutation as 1819, but it provides more detail:

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To be sure the jumping gene was responsible for the black wings seen during the Industrial Revolution, Saccheri and his coworkers figured out how old the mutation was. The researchers used historical measurements of how common the black wing was throughout history. With that, they calculated that the jumping gene first landed in the cortex intron in about 1819. That timing gave the mutation about 20 to 30 moth generations to spread through the population before people first reported sightings of the black moths in 1848.

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They didn't put any error bars on that 1819 year, so it's not possible to know whether this includes the first sighting in 1811 mentioned in Wikipedia. And why do they say the first reported sightings of the black variant was in 1848 when Wikipedia puts it in 1811?

But it goes on to say that there are other unknown mutations that cause the dark coloration:

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Saccheri and his colleagues found this transposable element in 105 of 110 wild-caught carbonaria moths. It was in none of the 283 typica moths tested. The other five moths, they now conclude, are black due to some other, unknown, genetic variation.

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But nowhere does it explain how they knew whether the historical observations were of the cortex gene version or one of these unknown versions. For instance, if they don't think the 1811 specimen mentioned in Wikipedia was a cortext gene variant, how would they know? Did they test its DNA?

There doesn't seem enough information in these two articles to figure this out.

--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Typo.

Where do you think the "built in genetic variants" come from? In other words, where do you think different eye color or hair color "variations" come from?

Genes that are present in the DNA from the Creation. Certainly mutations have occurred that affect the DNA but I believe it was all originally designed to do what it does, varying I suppoe with each generation, and the mutations are kind of a side trip or just a mistake that interferes.

Somethig messed up my post and I'm not up to repeating it.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.