A test for claimed knowledge of how macroevolution occurs

So let's hypothesize a breeding program that lasts millions of years whose only goal is to produce a new species. That means any new species, not some specific species like whales. Over millions of years many, many active mutations will arise, and so a new species seems inevitable. Over the course of millions of years just genetic drift alone should produce a new species.The reason is that genetic copying during reproduction is imperfect. Changes from the original DNA (mutations) inevitably creep in, for humans at the rate of about 100 mutations per offspring, the vast majority having no apparent effect. Given the imperfectness of genetic copying during reproduction it is impossible for genomes to remain unchanged across time. Change is unavoidable. Species are inconstant.--Percy

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

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

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.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

I'm not encouraging you or anyone to give up but do want to note that you're all facing what will probably be an unending "wash, rinse, repeat" style approach where the evidence is ignored or declared indecipherable when presented, followed later by a denial that any evidence was ever presented, forcing you to repeat the presentation of evidence which is again ignored or declared indecipherable, etc.I'm curious about this "other model." For example, which member of the cat family is the original cat from the ark that contains all the built-in DNA that gave rise to all the other cats? Should be easy to identify since it's DNA would be a combination of all the DNA of all other cats.--Percy

But you do say that God did it, many times in just this thread alone, for example: Your further claim that God's involvement ended at creation misrepresents creationist thinking. In the creationist view God reduced every "kind" (which remains undefined) to just a maximum of four alleles per gene during the flood (more for clean species). If the creationist view is correct then somehow between the flood and today a number of genes have come to possess a large number of alleles across a population, far beyond four, which would require numerous non-deleterious mutations, no matter how "kind" is defined. The ABO gene has more than 200 different alleles.--Percy

This is a formula guaranteed to maintain ignorance. All participants should read and understand the posts they respond to.--Percy

Whether any allele is needed is not something you yourself could possibly know, but we'll leave that aside since it misses the point.If there were four unique alleles per gene on the ark (two alleles per individual for a total of four, all different), and if there are more than four alleles today for some genes, then the new alleles could only have arisen through mutation.That some genes have more than 200 alleles means there have not been enough generations since the flood for them to arise.--Percy

You've been quoting nothing from me in your replies, causing you to lose the plot.Your original claim was that in creationism God's involvement insofar as genomes are concerned ended at creation. You forgot that according to creationism God got involved again during the flood, when he reduced the maximum number of alleles per gene to four (more for clean species). That was your first error.It is true that most new mutations have no effect, but this isn't about new mutations in the current generation that occur in non-active places in the genome. This is about mutations affecting active alleles that have arisen since the creationist flood and spread through entire populations. They've been around a while and been selected for, so there must be some beneficial effect. Claiming that the additional alleles beyond four have mostly no effect was your second error.By the way, not only is your claim nonsensical that alleles since the flood have mostly no effect, it's impossible for you to know that. For genes with more than four alleles it's impossible for you to know which are original and which are new since the flood - they don't come with labels. Even if you knew the precise effect of each and every allele, you still don't know which are original and which not, so it isn't possible for you to show that only original alleles have an effect. You're claiming knowledge you couldn't possibly have. That was your third error.--Percy

I didn't see any explanations for why this is wrong, so I'll add my own reply.Only an organism's descendants can have its particular random mutations. Your children will have roughly half your random mutations (the other half will come from their father). But your brothers and sisters will have none of your random mutations (assuming they're not identical twins), and hence your children's cousins (your nieces and nephews) will have none of your mutations.This distribution of random mutations through generations of descent, this pattern, is how we can determine degree of relatedness. A DNA analyst with only the DNA of your children and their cousins could determine the degree of relatedness and know who were brother and sister and who were cousins. They'd actually be using alleles to do the analysis, not recent mutations, but the principles are the same.This pattern of random mutations distributed among your family members is an example of a pattern. We can look for such patterns in the DNA of any life and determine degree of relatedness, though of course it would be through mutations that have established themselves in alleles.You might have heard about recent cases of police using online DNA databases at genealogical websites to solve old crimes. The pattern of alleles passed down through descent is what makes this possible. The same principles apply to determining the evolutionary relationships of species, which turns out to have a nested structure, just like families.--Percy

Why do you think the ToE doesn't believe populations can experience rapid change. If the selection pressures imposed by breeders can effect change over the course of a few generations, then of course selection pressures in the wild can do the same.Mutations are not thought to have played a role with the Pod Mrcaru lizards or the Danish Landrace sheep (Jutland sheep). They're still the same species. If you returned the Pod Mrcaru lizards to Pod Kopiste they'd revert to their original form in fewer generations than it took to change on Pod Mrcaru. Those are examples of selection, not of mutation plus selection which is something that breeders almost never get the opportunity to do. Ultimately all alleles are the result of mutation, and even in the creationist world only mutation can account for any gene that has more than four alleles (not counting clean animals). But you're convinced by nothing more than the echoes of false ideas in your own mind. Simple descent of people results in a nested hierarchy, and we can see it in the DNA analysis of genealogical websites every day. And the same DNA analysis of species also reveals a nested hierarchy. It's there. You can pretend it's not, but you're just playing pretend. I think you still don't understand that breeding is not an analog of evolution. Mutations play almost no role in breeding. The odds of a useful mutation occurring in a breeding population over the course of a breeder's career is tiny tiny tiny, and the odds of a mutation helpful to the breeding program is even tinier. That's why scientists use organisms with very short generation times (hours for some bacteria) for many evolutionary experiments. But how can you believe that after just citing an example of relatively rapid change in the Pod Mrcaru lizards, a lizard that was well established on Pod Kopiste but that was subjected to different selection pressures when moved to Pod Mrcaru? I think everyone has been fairly consistent in stating that beneficial mutations are rare. Mutations are common, around a hundred in every new human, but mutations in coding regions that are beneficial are rare. We've said this over and over and over again in a variety of ways. Changing allele frequencies but not the alleles or the genes or the chromosomes cannot create new species. That's why breeders never create new species. That's why it's called breeding, not speciation. Breeding produces new breeds, not new species. You haven't said anything that is true or anything that reflects an understanding of what people have been telling you for the past 18 years.--Percy

Where you have no argument and/or evidence for your position then you should remain silent. Are you thinking of Message 431 where RAZD said that anagenesis "doesn't result in nested hierarchies because there is no branching"? He meant no branching of species, and only because there has never been a division into separate populations. Of course there is all the normal nested branching of reproduction, but with anagenetic species there is never a point where you can say the old species is gone and the new species has arrived because the change is gradual over time.Explaining in a bit more detail, when a population divides into two or more separated populations then they can evolve into different species that is shown with branching: But with anagenesis a single population changes gradually into a new species. The causative factors are the same as with branching speciation, namely mutation, selection and drift. The chosen speciation points by necessity have an element of arbitrariness: That's all RAZD meant by an absence of branching, because the species change is linear rather than branching.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

Your ideas have significant and glaring errors. It's understandable that you have for years resisted modifying them in any way because the ideas are so wrong, so at odds with reality, that fixing them isn't possible. They have to be discarded.One glaring error is your idea that two populations with all the same genes and chromosomes but with different allele frequencies, or one population with reduced allele diversity, can be different species. This is dead wrong. Changing allele frequencies or removing alleles entirely from a population can never create a new species, not genetically. New breeds, sure, but new species, no. The whole idea of species creation through reductions in allele diversity was fatally flawed from the start.Another glaring error is your idea that mutation cannot cause change. Given a fixed set of chromosomes and genes, allele frequency is in control and any mutation that changes an allele can cause change. Just as normal reproduction causes change by modifying the allele distribution, a mutation in an allele also modifies the allele distribution.--Percy

Why do you say blatantly wrong things that you must know are wrong and that contradict other things you've said? If this isn't what you meant then go back and edit it, maybe to say that your talking about beneficial mutations or whatever it is you actually meant, or maybe quote what you're responding to to set the context. We know you can't actually mean that we can't show mutations exist because you're on record in post after post as acknowledging that mutations exist. You're doubting the genetic diversity of wild mice? You don't say which mouse species, and population estimates vary. The most common species is the house mouse with a population often estimated to be roughly the same as people. Their genetic diversity must be enormous. Unless the experimenters place the mice in environments that subject them to substantial selection pressures, or if the mice populations are small, reductions in genetic diversity would be unexpected. Though naturally a laboratory population could not have as much diversity as the hugely larger world-wide mouse population.--Percy

Message 424 isn't from RAZD. I looked at the couple messages from RAZD before and after that one but couldn't tell which one you meant.I'm not sure what you mean by "a species becomes a species." If you mean speciation then I don't think RAZD has ever said or implied that speciation involves homogeneity.But maybe you're not talking about speciation. Had anyone else said "a species becomes a species" I would have assumed they really meant a species becoming a *new* species, but you don't believe speciation is possible, so I can't be certain what you mean.The term homogeneous is ambiguous in this context. A better term would be diversity, or lack thereof. Homogeneous is still ambiguous in this context, but if you mean parent populations must have low diversity, either genetically or physically, then that is incorrect. Why do you think this? Homogeneous is still not a good term in this context, and phenotypes can vary in ways that do not affect appearance (like the digestive tract differences in the Pod Mrcaru lizards), but you are correct that distinctly different phenotypes can emerge over the course of some generations. Isolated populations whose allele frequencies come to vary greatly from the parent population could result in very different phenotypes, but they would remain the same species, and RAZD was likely talking about speciation.--Percy