"Best" evidence for evolution.

quote:

---

This actually describes the situation of a "purebred" animal which shares all or the majority of its genes with all the others in the population, which means the population as a whole has very low genetic diversity. That's what "near exact" copies of a genome in a population would actually be. That is not the situation in the wild where great genetic diversity prevails even in large populations with a homogeneous "look" to it which is brought out by the the most numerous alleles in the population, and no doubt the dominant ones, as opposed to recessive

---

In reality it describes a wild population quite well, with the variant alleles well distributed through the population. Which, I am sure, was the intent.

quote:

---

Yes I'm sorry, this is a problem I don't know how to solve. it is very difficult to be clear when the word "species" is merely a term that means a "kind" and there are levels of "kinds" involved as species or populations split off and vary from the parent species or population.

---

You don’t know how to stop using your own private meanings for common words? Meanings which change to suit your convenience?
Just stop doing it. It really is that simple for any rational person.

What do I mean by a "brand new" phenomenon.I do have trouble following your post, but nothing you've said suggests evolution beyond the species, but only microevolution within the species, variations on the genes possessed by the species and nothing that would produce something "brand new."Just to try to give an example: Something brand new would be the change from reptilian hide or skin to the fur or hair covered mammals. Or the change to the mammalian ear from the reptilian. I know you say that is already evidenced in a transitional but the argument didn't get through to me.As for what the animal in the picture would become I assume it is one variation on a specific species or Kind and would change in accord with the genetic material in the genome of that population.lEdited by Faith, : No reason given.

WHY CAN'T THEY? Give us a valid reason. Give us a mechanism. So why can't they? Uh, no. Not even close. How we work artificially with animals we wish to breed (or have already bred) and what happens in the wild are completely different. The underlying mechanisms are still in place, but how have your breeding actions perverted those mechanisms into being unnatural?A PhD Chemistry friend told me that he could not ever do anything in the lab that couldn't also happen in nature under the exact same conditions. What breeders do is to create conditions that do not exist in the wild. Artificial selection in breeding served as a basic analogy for natural selection, but that analogy falls apart as all analogies do.Therefore, it is fallacious for you to misrepresent evolution in the wild as being the same as artificial selection in breeding human-domesticated plants and animals.Have to rush off to school now. Today's class is in evolution.

BECAUSE THEY RUN OUT OF GENETIC MATERIAL, GENETIC FUEL AS IT WERE, GENETIC DIVERSITY, GENETIC VARIABILITY. The changes that are supposedly open ended USE UP genetic material as it were. To get a new phenotype means GETTING RID OF alleles for other characteristics. This is why I keep referring to breeding practices where at least the phenomenon ought to be easily recornized. To get a neew breed you have to GET RID OF all the genetic material for all the other breeds. And this is what happens in the wild too when a new population becomes characterized by a new composite phenotype. The genetic material that underlay the composite phenotype of the parent population has been left behind and a new set of alleles is now getting expressed. Nothing new has been adde3d, it's just a new combination of a different set of alleles while the original set has been eliminated or reduced to the point that the new ones can emerge. It takes GENETIC LOSS to get new phenotypes. The WEASEl program is just an expression of the usuel wishfulness of the ToE. What is assumed to happen cannot in reality happen.Back later.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Those groupings are, of course, completely arbitrary. Why 'crows' and not 'birds'? And if we're sticking with crows, does that include ravens? What about jackdaws? Jays?If you mean 'kind', just say 'kind'. It avoids confusion.

You're right, make it "birds."

I feel I should add that I am just about never able to get the whole model I have in mind into one post. For one thing it isn't usually relevant to the question I'm answering. But I just want to say that I know anything I say along these lines always raises questions, and I've already thought through and have answers to most of those what would come up. Just want to say that.

You really think that hummingbirds and ostriches are the same species? Really? Because I don’t see much chance of hybridisation, even if birds are rather more prone to that than mammals.

By Faith's definition all mammalia are the same species.Works for me. Edited by jar, : fix subtitle

Yes I do think hummingbirds and ostriches are the same species. They have all the same body parts, same basic body structure.. They are both clearly birds -- beaks, feathers, wings, bird legs etc. By one species I mean that they share the same genome. Their genome does not include hair or fur for instance.Many species have varieties that (micro) evolved to the point of inability to interbreed with one another.Mammals are not one species however. Bears are bears and are not horses or cows or dogs or cats etc.I've been wondering about rodents. Have to spend some time on that one.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Ma’am, you are finally totally off your ever-lovin’ rocker.

quote:

---

Yes I do think hummingbirds and ostriches are the same species. They have all the same body parts, same basic body structure.. They are both clearly birds -- beaks, feathers, wings, bird legs etc. By one species I mean that they share the same genome. Their genome does not include hair or fur for instance.

---

So, in the same way that humans and chimpanzees are the same species.In other words your private definition of species has no real meaning other than the fact that you want to call them the same species.(ABE for some sanity look here Wikipedia it’s utter nonsense to say that ostriches and hummingbirds have the same genome while humans and chimps do not)

quote:

---

Many species have varieties that (micro) evolved to the point of inability to interbreed with one another.

---

In other words you use your word-magic to deny the fact of macroevolution. But silly word-games don’t control reality.

quote:

---

Mammals are not one species however. Bears are bears and are not horses or cows or dogs or cats etc.

---

Try owls and woodpeckers with their specialised adaptions.

quote:

---

I've been wondering about rodents. Have to spend some time on that one

---

Since it only comes down to what you want, how much time could you possibly need?Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Why do you continually refuse to ever learn anything? It would very much be to your own benefit to learn something about mutations, if for no other reason than to keep from continually hoisting yourself on you own petard of ignrance.In John Maynard Smith's book on population genetics, Evolutionary Genetics (1st ed, page 54), he lists four types of mutations:

1. Base substitution. The replacement of one base by another.
   ​
2. Insertion or deletion of single bases. This involves a "frame shift" in the process of translation.
   ​
3. Inversion of a section of DNA.
   ​
4. Duplication or deletion of a section of DNA.

Those are not the only possible types of mutations; see Wikipedia's Mutation: Classification of types.Note that #4 can, and often does, increase the amount of "GENETIC MATERIAL". For one thing, it can and has created duplicate copies of genes; that is how the gene for lysozyme (anti-microbial enzyme in animal immune systems) could mutate to instead produce alpha-lactalbumin (regulates the production of lactose) without the organism losing the ability to produce lysozyme since multiple copies of its gene have been added to the genome though duplication mutations.IOW, your nonsense about mutations not adding more "GENETIC MATERIAL" to the genome is just that, nonsense. And if you had bothered to learn about mutations, then you would have known that and known to not make that mistake. First, what you are saying about WEASEL programs such as my MONKEY is absolutely false and completely misrepresents what they do and what they are based on. All you demonstrate is your abject ignrance of them. Yet again, taking a small amount of time to learn what WEASEL and MONKEY are and what they do would have kept you from hoisting yourself on your own ignrance petard. But you just refuse to ever learn.No, natural selection does not result in the loss of "GENETIC MATERIAL" which you describe as "GENETIC FUEL", which is a very bad analogy that doesn't even apply. You don't burn up genetic material! Instead, it changes! New functionality can be added and old functionality can be lost, but the genes for that old functionality doesn't simply disappear and could even be restored by a future mutation.For example, birds still have genes for growing teeth. In experiments, placing embryo mouse gum tissue on a chick embryo jaw triggers those teeth genes causing the chick embryo to start growing teeth. Similarly, baleen whales do not have teeth, but at one point in the development of their embryos they start to grow teeth, which are later reabsorbed.More trivially, a trait can go away through natural selection and then come back again in full force when the environment changes. The best known example is the peppered moth. It started out with light coloration so that it could camouflage itself on light-colored tree bark. Then when soot from the Industrial Revolution darkened the bark, the moths lost their light coloration and became dark instead. Finally, when the air pollution was alleviated and the tree bark became light again, the moths went back to being light colored. The genes for coloration never went away. Natural selection changing gene frequency does not remove those unexpressed genes from the genome (as you have repeatedly and falsely claimed would be the case).Old genes rarely go away; they just stop being expressed. Genomes don't lose "GENETIC MATERIAL", but instead accumulate more genetic material along with changing what they had or just simply stop using some of the old stuff, but that old stuff is still there. Your silly nonsense about genomes becoming smaller is just that, silly nonsense. 
BTW, I told you, "Give us a valid reason. Give us a mechanism." You have done neither! All you did was to repeat your contrary-to-reality nonsense assertions that are based on nothing but your abject ignrance and wishful thinking. Absolutely false and a gross misrepresentation. Learn something about WEASEL programs! Read Chapter Three, "Accumulating Small Changes", of Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker. It is in the first half of that chapter that Dawkins describes his WEASEL experiment.Or you could read my page, MONKEY. In writing my program, I used Dawkins' description of his program as the design specification -- Dawkins did not provide a program listing; I seem to recall that he had written it in BASIC while I wrote mine in Turbo Pascal and then recently rewrote it in C. In a collection of WEASEL programs, mine was pointed out as being truest to the original (as I said, I used Dawkins' description as my spec). I provide the source code, an executable (Windows), and an analysis of the probabilities that enable it to work so fast and successfully.No WEASEL program that I know of deals with genetics in any manner, let alone genetic variability, nor do they make any assumptions whatsoever about genetic variability.Rather, WEASEL tests cumulative selection both to illustrate how it works, to demonstrate its speed and power, and to compare its performance with the single-step selection that creationists (yourself included) constantly misrepresent as how evolution must work -- yet again, evolution uses cumulative selection as does life itself, not your puny single-step selection.But last I saw, you seemed to have switched to cumulative selection. In Message 262 you said, "Cumulative selection" is a crock." But then in Message 407 you changed your tune with "The trial and error that must happen is going to make tiny changes over huge swaths of time, ... ", which I pointed out in my reply (Message 417) describes cumulative selection: So far, you have neither admitted switching nor denied it.In Message 249 I described MONKEY to you. You never replied. Here's what I wrote:

First define what a species is to you.Would for example egg laying reptiles to live birth reptiles do it for you, or are you going to move the goal post.

I think I'd include all reptiles in one species, sharing one genome, but I'm not committed to sorting all this out. I don't think it's particularly relevant to anything. Right now just having some agreement on terminology is the main point and I'm not sure this discussion really helps with that, such as how the word "species" is to be used, which is where this topic came up. I just need to be able to use the word or alternative words to get across what I'm talking about where there is confusion about what I mean..Edited by Faith, : No reason given.