Allele Propagation Prediction

TheoMorphic responds to me:

quote:

---

quote:

---

No, not really because we have no idea how that mutation will connect with the morphology already present...

---

​

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

---

That's just it. We can't really know that except in the most mundane of circumstances.You may know everything about the personalities of two people, but you can't know how they're going to like each other when they meet. There are so many variables involved that you cannot control for everything.There's this thing called "emergent behaviour." It is the way in which a system reacts as a whole that cannot be predicted from the parts. The only way to find out is to actually run the system and see what happens.

quote:

---

if the answer is no then we need to find some other reason as to why allele frequencies change.

---

Not at all. We know why the allele frequencies change (and no, it doesn't always happen through being "fitter"...genetic drift fixates neutral mutations, for example.)Do you remember the scene from Jurassic Park where Goldblum's character puts the bead of water on Dern's hand? He asks her to predict which side of her hand it's going to roll off. The thing is, you can't. Oh, we know that the water is going to fall off given the effects of gravity and the unstable nature of the surface upon which the water sits, but we cannot predict which way it's going to go.And we don't need to. Our inability to determine which direction it is going to fall does not deter us from knowing that it is going to fall.Here, let me give an example from biology.Suppose we have a community of organisms that have a system of reproduction where there is an alpha breeder who is ostensibly the parent of all the members of the group. Suppose two new children are born. Each has a mutation that we could reasonably consider "better" than the other members of the community. Which one is going to get propagated into the rest of the community?Well, that depends...the rock slide the kills one but not the other is going to have a say in that. Even though the mutation might be considered "better," we cannot say that it is going to get passed onto the next generation because there are always things that we cannot predict about the system.Your argument essentially boils down to the claim that because we don't know everything, then we don't know anything.You're playing games, TheoMorphic. Just come right out and say it. What is your point?------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

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.

I think you're a bit confused. Fitness is a result of suites of characteristics posessed by an organism in interaction with its environment. Alleles for particular characteristics become fixed over time (read: over generations) in a population based on how well they aid the survival/reproduction of an individual organism which is a member of that population in comparison to members of the population who DON'T posess the trait. There are other factors, of course (like epigenetics, chance, and drift, to name a few) but in the main that's it. It is (currently, at least) totally impossible to predict what the effect of a novel mutation (for instance) will have. There ARE mathematical formulae - the simplest of which is the Hardy-Weinburg Equilibrium equation - to show this. My suggestion is that if you're really interested in pop gen, to check out a text book from the library on the subject. Try Hedrick's "Genetics of Populations" or Hartl's "Principles of Population Genetics". For me, the kinds of rules that you are looking for are mathematically opaque (hey, I'm a field guy, not a geneticist). SFS on this forum might be able to provide you with better titles. You've made this assertion several times without follow-up. Please provide a rationale or argument that shows why the kind of predictions you are asking for are either necessary or even a part of evolutionary theory. The connection between fitness and alleles is as I've stated - fitness is a measure of the effect of suites of alleles in relation to the environment. Natural selection effects allele frequencies by differentially effecting the individual organisms that carry the alleles. Please back up how you derive this connection.