Allele Propagation Prediction

has science made any predictions/verifications as to what alleles are more likely to propagate through out a species?i did some searches, but i couldn't find any examples, or really attention to this question. maybe i was searching for the wrong thing.are there any prediction/verification examples, or is deciding what alleles copy themselves the most in a species and environment just ad hoc reasoning?

you make it sound like it's totally luck. given your squat/fat body vs. long lean body, you can examine the makeup of the body and make guesses as to which body type will be better in a given environment. Pretend we already know what differences there are between 2 animals (preferably one small mutation). given the knowledge of what that mutation does to the organism's body, and what environment it will be set in, we should be able to predict if that organism will do better or worse than other animals with out its mutation.finally, i don't see any other options in this choice. either science has made predictions about "fitness" (surviving to adulthood and producing successful offspring) or it hasn't. if no predictions have been made, then fitness is based on how well an allele propagates throughout a species, and the propagation is dependent on the fitness.

with out general rules about how well various alleles will do in various environments with various other alleles it means nothing to talk about beneficial or detrimental mutations.with science it's not enough to just look at the current evidence and explain it. predictions have to be made. it's not enough to say "this structure of an atom can explain these elements". you have to add "and we are guessing that someday we will find this, this and this element."it's not enough to say "well, since these alleles have propagated throughout this species, they are better at propagating themselves". you have to add "but this same allele won't propagate as well in this environment, however it will if it is combined with this other allele."

how about an analogy. pretend someone asserts that cars that have bad breaks are more likely to get into car crashes. when a car crash occurs the person says "well that car probably had bad breaks". when a car crash doesn't occur the person says "that car probably didn't have bad breaks." However if you give this person a set of breaks he is not able to tell you if they are bad or good. so maybe such a thing as "bad breaks" doesn't even really exist. at least not in a quantifiable and predictable manner. it's just another way of saying whether a car is more likely to get in a crash or not.a similar analogy. pretend you have someone that says "luck causes people to win at craps". when you show him a person who won some money at craps they say "that person was lucky". when you show him someone who lost they say "that person was not lucky". but you can't show them a person and expect them to tell you if they are lucky or not. so in this sense luck is simply an extension of whether they won at craps or not.so there's no such thing as luck, and no such thing as bad breaks... at least not in any significant sense.yes deciding what these predictions are would be very difficult. the environment, genetic code, and the code's effect on the organisms body would have to be taken into account. maybe we're really far away from knowing enough about any animals body to make a prediction like this. but can you at least see the need for these kinds of predictions?

until predictions can be made about alleles (even if the predictions are very very complex with lots of conditions with regards to environment and other genes) there is no driving force behind evolution. genes are heritable, and can mutate a bit when they are passed on. but a given set of genes is no better or worse than any other set.so either evolution has to predict which alleles in which environments will push evolution, or a new engine has to be found. until predictions can be made about the effects of alleles on survival chances, the relationship may as well not exist.

er, well i didn't explicitly state this, but i thought i implied it. basically pretend we know everything EXCEPT how the organism will actually perform in an environment (including the effects of a single mutation on all other parts of the organism). Will we actually be able to predict its relative success in terms of survival, and reproduction?if the answer is yes, then are there any examples, if there are no examples, what do we need before we can make these predictions. if the answer is no then we need to find some other reason as to why allele frequencies change.

if chance of survival and reproductivity (I think I just made this word up it means ability to reproduce) have no discernable (predictable) influence as to which alleles propagate throughout a species, then it can not be said that fitness (read: relative survival/reproductivity ability) has any influence on allele frequencies.so (without predictions and verifications) there is no connection between "fitness" and alleles, and in turn there is no connection between natural selection and allele frequencies.actually any of the "driving forces" (sexual selection, natural selection etc.) become irrelevant unless predictions can be made that connect those driving forces and allele frequencies.

well fine, could you give me very simple and controlled example of verification of an allele being predicted to propagate in a group of organisms?(please don't read this as "ha, you can't provide an example so you're wrong". I think it is possible and feasible to make this kind of prediction in this kind of situation, but i wasn't able to find any examples.)i'm not asking for hard fast rules that take into account every single situation and are right 100% of the time. i want general rules that are more often (statistically so) correct than incorrect.we won't know which way the water falls every single time, but if we examine the hand we can guess that it will flow between the 2nd and 3rd knuckle more often than not. if you've gotten this impression from me then either i haven't been clear, or you've misunderstood me.can we make a connection between alleles that are more likely to propagate (predicted before hand) and the allele actually propagating in a species?with out predictions like this then there is not a proven connection between natural selection* and changes in allele frequencies.so my point is if there are no predictions/verifications then it can not be said that natural selection is a mechanism that causes alleles to become more common in a species.just like with out predictions and verifications there is no such thing as inherently lucky people, or bad breaks, and so luck and bad breaks can not be invoked to be the cause of anything.*i'm not sure, but i think natural selection includes things like sexual selection, and geographic isolation; in that WHATEVER the situation/enviornment, some animals are more likely to produce more offspring, and other are more likely to produce less offspring.