A test for claimed knowledge of how macroevolution occurs

Why do you say this, since you don't believe speciation is possible?Also, reducing allelic diversity cannot by itself create genetically distinct species. That would require mutation.--Percy

Why do you think this? Can you name any two species that cannot interbreed even though they have the same genes and chromosomes, the only difference being allele frequencies? But you're not talking about creating new species by losing genes and chromosomes, which are the genetic material. You're talking about keeping all the genetic material and just changing the allele frequencies. Have you ever heard of a breeder producing a new species? Traits in breeding are selected by the breeder while traits in the wild are selected by environmental selection pressures, not randomly. Why is speciation in quotes? Are you using your own made-up definition?--Percy

This isn't true. You frequently include genetics in your posts. Recent examples:

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Each generation gets different traits as it is, and then when a new population develops it gets a different set of genes/alleles which will bring out new traits.
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And there's no need to assume complete loss of any particular allele, just reduction, which probably gets more reduced as the generations pass.
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The alleles for all those characteristics are in the larger population but they don't get expressed until a new set of gene frequencies allows them to be expressed in the new population.
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It's all a matter of a new set of gene frequencies occurring with the founding of each new population/species, simply the result of a new set of individuals with their own unique set of alleles.
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Nothing new has to occur, no mutations, just recombinations of the alleles that existed in the original/parent population.
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But they don't, and there is no need to invoke mutations for any part of any of this, normally occurring alleles do just fine at making breeds and making new species.
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In the wild the development of one species from another isn't going to take much longer either: it only takes whatever time is needed to produce enough generations to blend the new gene frequencies from any founding group.
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Each individual has its own unique genome nevertheless,...
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And of course all this is microevolution, it's all the product of the same species genome losing alleles from population to population,...
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Uh, it shows no evidence of the ToE, it's nothing but normal variation within a genome/species/population, otherwise sometimes known as microevolution.
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No need for mutation, there's plenty of variation built into the genome of each species to account for all the phenomena that wrongly get attributed to mutations just because they seem to be needed by the ToE.
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The point is simply to illustrate that in only two people a huge range of variations could be contained in their genome.

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Your posts are peppered with terms like allele, gene and genome. You're constantly making claims from a "genomic perspective."--Percy

I guess I have two reactions to this. First, that saying "so what" in the face of blatant error is just so, uh, Faith.And second, it seems necessary to make the point again. You denied to HereBeDragons that you ever employed a "genomic perspective," yet I was able to quote you speaking from a "genomic perspective" a number of times. You can't avoid discussion of genetic issues by claiming that you never discussed them previously, because that is obviously untrue. There you go with the pronouns again. What does "it" refer to?You're just exhibiting the same old Faith. When you paint yourself into a corner then you incite confusion and diversion.Bottom line: You have obviously discussed things from a "genomic perspective." Please go back and answer HereBeDragons' Message 583 forthrightly, or as most us of would describe it, from an "honest perspective."--Percy

That was obvious. This is a confusion of multiple errors. There are estimated to be 1.5 million Wildebeest in Africa, and even if you postulate huge herds of 10,000 individuals, that would still mean 150 herds. That's a huge number of populations."High genetic diversity" and "homogenous population" are opposing terms. Taq speculated that you don't know what those terms mean, but it's also possible that you just haven't thought through the implications of what you're saying.Also, there are two species of wildebeest, black and blue. They can interbreed, but the offspring frequently have significant abnormalities. For creating breeds? Sure. For creating species? No. Yes, that's what you usually do after driving yourself into a blind alley.--Percy

What happened to, "Time to exit for a while"?I see you're back to all caps again, always a sign of confusion and unintelligibility. Did you just look at some pictures of wildebeest and judge them homogeneous? Would you be open to considering the possibility that closer study is required that would reveal the true variability of things like coat color and consistency, coat texture, height, length, weight, horn size and shape, etc., etc., etc. Please tell me you're not judging genetic diversity on the basis of a single trait? I think you're a victim of your own imagination. If you do a Google Image search for wildebeest you'll find that both black and blue wildebeest come in a variety of shades of black and brown. Everyone would agree that the strong (and capricious in the case of pigeons) selection of breeding can produce extreme phenotypes that would be very unlikely to occur in the wild. But breeding still just produces breeds, not species.--Percy

You talk about genetics and genomes in many of your posts in this thread. When you say "reducing genetic diversity" you are already into the "genomic stuff". It's the "genomic stuff" whose genetic diversity is getting reduced in your scenario. The is inaccurate about breeds and mostly wrong about species, but if your scenario includes losing genetic material then you're talking about genetics. And yet you brought up Mendelian squares twice in this thread, in Message 368 and Message 463. And the word codon hasn't even appeared in this thread. Actually, what everyone knows is that breeds are created by changing allele frequencies, which might possibly include elimination of some alleles from the new breed. That's the only sentence in your entire paragraph that isn't explicitly about genetics or genomes. If you don't know "what's going on with the alleles" then why do 38 of your messages in this thread mention alleles? If you're not talking about genomes then why does some form of the word genome appear in 40 of your messages (more than that, actually, but Search only lists the first 40 matching messages)?The truth testified to by your own messages is that you talk about genetics and genomes all the time. It is dishonest to refuse to answer posts about genetics by claiming you're not talking about genetics. You should go back to HereBeDragons Message 583 and answer it forthrightly.--Percy

I don't know if this will be helpful to Faith, but it is likely that two different things regarding alleles are occurring simultaneously as a result of the strong selection of breeding. In the new breed, for some genes alleles not normally present in the same individual might be brought together. For other genes alleles normally present in the same individual might be absent.That is, it's more than just a case of bringing together novel allele combinations. It also involves removing common allele combinations.--Percy

Nobody replied to this, so I'll provide a couple answers. If "what I'm talking about" is breeding then ignoring mutation is perfectly reasonable. Most breeders never see a useful mutation over their entire breeding careers. They happen in coding regions with a noticeable effect only very rarely over such short timespans. That's why breeding doesn't produce new species.But if "what I'm talking about" is evolution, which occurs over much long timespans, then mutation plays a significant role. Evolution does produce new species. Your model is entirely different from reality because it is based upon your imagination and what you wish were true rather than evidence. Now you're saying that mutations *do* happen upon rare occasions, and if you're still thinking about breeding then you are correct. Given the short timespans useful mutations don't happen very often. Mutations are an extremely minor factor in breeding.The same cannot be said of evolution. It happens over longer timespans with much larger populations than breeders usually work with. The longer timescales and larger populations make mutations a common component of evolution. It's the model based upon evidence from the real world.--Percy

In your entire history here no one has ever been convinced that your weird conclusions follow from real world evidence. Even worse, you keep yourself uninformed by ignoring most evidence presented to you, often pleading that you just can't read it or that you're too tired or that you can't understand it or that you'll come back to it but never do. You ignore many messages entirely, 146 messages so far in this thread alone.But that you don't argue from evidence is not the topic of this thread. Just declaring that your arguments are based on evidence means nothing. It's actually doing it that means something, and if you do then you will carry the day.--Percy

Nobody has replied to this, so I will. Where the quoting was missing I've filled it in: All that is being asked of you is to provide an example of two populations of the same species that cannot interbreed. The reason you cannot do this is because you're wrong, for multiple reasons.The main reason you're wrong is that you're using the wrong definition of species, as has been explained to you many times. What separates species from one another is their "inability to interbreed." If two populations cannot interbreed then by definition they cannot be the same species. Quail and rabbits cannot interbreed, therefore they are not the same species.Certainly it is true that zebras can mate with horses and tigers with lions because they are very closely related species and are very similar genetically. But squirrels cannot mate with chipmunks, wildebeests, birds, lizards or fish because their genes and chromosomes and too dissimilar. It makes no sense for you to pretend ignorance of something so obvious and that has been explained so many times.Although there is the occasional surprise, when comparing different species the more different the species phenotypes the more different DNA analysis reveals their genes and chromosomes to be. It doesn't take a very large difference in genes and chromosomes to completely destroy interfertility. This is why ducks and crocodiles cannot mate. There will never be any such creature as a crocoduck.You can apply the same test to any two populations. Take two populations of creatures and determine whether they can interbreed. If they can then they are the same species. If they cannot then they are different species. If they can interbreed to some degree then they are closely related species. No one has mentioned frogs in this thread. You'll have to fill in more details about what you're referring to. Which plants are you talking about? Whichever plants they are, if someone provided a DNA analysis (as no doubt they already have) would you look at it? Or would it be too white or too complicated, or would you be too tired or just not interested anymore, or would you just ignore the post altogether? This is false. You're using an incorrect definition of species, and you're making interpretations that are at odds with the facts.--Percy

PaulK replied to this message already, but I had a couple other comments: What other definition of speciation could there possibly be than the origination of new species? You might convince yourself it doesn't actually happen, but that doesn't affect the definition. I don't believe in reincarnation, but that doesn't affect the word's definition. A statistical DNA analysis of a population (a DNA analysis of all individuals would not be practical, so the analysis would have to be statistical) would reveal the extent to which all possible allele permutations are represented, which would tell you how much more is possible, and the likely answer for the higher animals (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) would invariably be that only a tiny amount of potential allele permutations are actually represented. Given the number of genes and average alleles/gene in the higher animals, the potential number of permutations would have to be huge, many many times larger than the population itself.For example, let's say that just 1% of the 20,000 human genes are not fixed, i.e., not homozygous. Let's further say that there are only two alleles (the minimum possible) in the entire population for each of these heterozygous genes. This means that each gene could have any of four different combinations of these two alleles: AA, Aa, aA and aa. The number of ways the four combinations per gene can be permuted across 200 genes is 4²⁰⁰ = 2.6 × 10¹²⁰, which is quadrillions and quadrillions and quadrillions of times larger than the current human population.In other words, there is not the remotest possibility that any population of higher animals has exhausted its possible variability. All higher animals everywhere have hugely more potential variation than could ever be represented in their current population.And mutation increases the potential variation even more.--Percy

I know PaulK has already responded to this, but I wanted to add a bit more. Much evidence is constantly being presented to you. You deal with this evidence in various ways. You deny it was ever presented. You deny it actually exists. You claim it's too white. You claim it's too complicated. You claim it wasn't what you were actually discussing. You ignore it entirely. Actually taking up the evidence, comprehending it, and then discussing it is something you rarely do. According to the fossil record, the deeper you delve into the past the more different species were from modern forms. Why are you asking PaulK these questions - the elephant seal is your example. What does "level of vitality" mean? Why are you asking PaulK about "further variation" when phenotypic change was your claim?--Percy

RAZD already replied to this message, but I wanted to comment on a few things that he chose not to. This is dead wrong. RAZD stated something that is true by definition. The possible allelic combinations in a subpopulation must, by mathematical necessity, be a subset of the possible allelic combinations in the main population.Of course, if mutations are added to the mix then this is no longer true. The most interesting species of a ring in the context of this discussion are those on opposite sides of the ring end point where the original species and the last species inhabit the same region and can no longer interbreed. They represent two different species, and this is due to mutation. The more recent species does not have a subset of the alleles of the original species. Both species have lost and gained alleles. The only way to gain alleles is by mutation. Entirely new genes are also possible, though probably unlikely given that indirect gene flow around the ring still exists between the two species. Your casual criteria of "general homogenous appearance" has no meaning. "Motley traits" has no meaning. Allele frequencies between two populations may be very different, but if both populations have all the same alleles, just at different frequencies, then they must, by necessity, be the same species. This is because any particular allele combination is possible in either population.Genetically, if two different species have the exact same genes and chromosomes, only differing at the allelic level in terms of allele set and frequency, then even if they refuse to interbreed naturally, sperm could still fertilize egg in a test tube. Species is simple conceptually but complicated when you get into the details. In this case the two populations are different species simply because they never mate, but genetically they're still the same species. There's no single term describing this situation, so it can only be described. But breeding pigeons only manipulates allele frequencies. It doesn't create new species. This is completely untrue. Have you understood so little of what people are saying? No one has ever argued that it takes mutations to create those pigeons. We've said over and over again that mutations play an almost non-existent role in breeding. I think you misunderstand what has been explained. No one is arguing against the dramatic phenotypic changes that can be achieved in pigeon breeding. The unusual pigeon breeds do not appear in the general pigeon population because of the extreme unlikelihood of the sequence of mating pairs chosen by the breeder occurring at random in the wild, particularly since there are no natural selection pressures that could duplicate the choices of the breeder. --Percy

It wasn't a fact I mentioned, but since you bring it up, scientists don't find creationist views convincing because their conclusions trace back to religious myths instead of to facts from the real world. There's no "EvC twisting system." There's only science which seeks to build theory upon facts, something you have in very short supply. There's nothing special about EvC. The only reason you're here is because it has light text on a dark background. We're I to reverse it you'd be gone in an instant. The quality of your thinking is not how convincing you find it, but how convincing it is to others. The inability of an idea to persuade anyone in a fact-based context is a measure of its poor quality. There were no false accusations. You've done everything I listed you doing, and multiple examples can be found of each. When you hit a dead end you make up excuses for why you can't continue the discussion. They include, but are not limited to, claiming that it's not the standpoint you're arguing from (very recently with HereBeDragons), claiming that it's too white or too complicated, claiming you're too tired, claiming you'll come back to it which you never do, claiming you've been insulted, refusing to talk to anyone who in your assessment has offended you, and just plain ignoring messages, 161 in this thread alone so far. If you'd like to be discouraged less often then identify the facts and present views consistent with them.--Percy