Holmes'post there to me was one of a reading of the information purveyed by Lithoid-Man on Chris Miller and initiated by Buz as an issue towards Buz such that by posting in this thread as such I leave that discussion for that thread as I told Buz I would.
I am opening this thread back up because in my attempt to show that what in this thread came up as
quote:
What I meant was that they exist and persist, like you said, outside of any selective pressure and that they subsequently become intrinsic to that population (and, perhaps, perceived as beneficial), but they really have no bearing on the survival of the species. Something like this could be an explanation for why humans (and other animals) have emotions, or better yet, specific emotions or how we expres them. I noticed a thread on altruism...maybe something like that?
quote:
http://EvC Forum: Role of Mutations -->EvC Forum: Role of Mutations message 14
identifies the nexus of species selection and species sorting. The only addition to the inquiry on the role here I would add is that there can be traits having become intrinsic to a population that may be netural to the organisms in it but sortable among species. This is the region that Gould attempts to cut out for macroevolution.
I was trying to point out that if one confused species selection and species sorting one might be lead to fail to notice actual barriers which being true to their name ARE barriers but instead a subjective object might rather think that this is a definitional matter of the term "species" itself. The doubleness can occurr in the mind of one and same researcher or hobbyist. I was trying to show by using Gould's example of De Vries that a phenotype may differ as a sport does mutationally but that that sport may also through mutation and selection yield through time into a different species and thus answer Holmes' point that it would be hard to cash out a sense of the limits to change in a given clump of clumped morphospace. It is not simply the issue of is a speciation supported by science vs special creation when it is not clear what the genetics and particularly what Bateson had as vibrationally and Goldschmidt developmentally that De Vries thought was divided between fluctuating and mutational modifications. I realize that this explanation is far from being as clear as I need to make it as I am trying to show how this homogeneity of an unclear explanation of genetic heritability needs involve biogeography.
Some of the difficulty in realizing why this is hard to follow is that we often think of selection in terms of a single act of picking up or out an object but the notion of sorting usually involves a field, or grid or dimensional grating process.
My own ideas on how to show the barriers exist among species (which may come from biogeography as much as from development) are to show how two different geographical locations of a given "species" can be thought as a ring which is a "point" for selection purposes on Earth but may as a ring, divide in ratios, among the levels of organization ordinally within, either of a low or high level of selection. I now understand that by not making it obvious how the maths of this divide- between the nature and role of mutations - I have not been clear enough. Thus I understand how it was that Buz said, Miller corrected him as to mutations in the guppies but Holmes insisted that there was some issue here.
I see clearly how my own attempt in the now closed thread:
http://
EvC Forum: The Nature of Mutations -->
EvC Forum: The Nature of Mutationsfell short of adequate comprehensibility but this is due to the subjective nature of a given person's understanding, mine in this case.
I will make this difference of dimensionality rigorously clear at
A Method of Panbiogeography
Where you/one can find a diagrammed stepped procedure which WILL indicate the barriers should I be uncriticizable at this place.
This is the "place" of the last vertical dark line in the last step. Which I can explain as a point, series and field all for the same "species."
I hope in the future to have working software which will permit one to do the twists and turns as only so far diagrammed there by me.
Gould has made the argument that sorting and selection of species are different. They are but whether the artificial selection of guppies in a tank of water is one of the one-dimensional method or something rather accounted for by a ledger remained to be discovered on EVC. Since the thread on the nature of mutations is closed this might be the best thread to open it through. I saw nothing in a quick read through this entire thread that should lead "off-topic", but that is my opinion. As we will not likely get another information on Miller, this particular difference which really has to do with current evolutionary theory and as to whether special creations (single points of geographic distributions) or larger biogeographic homologies bound the role and nature of mutations between phenospecies
I do think the idea of "neutral" mutations is a little overblown but it does enable one to address an area that you are correct would and did come up again on EVC.
Edited by Brad McFall, : link correction
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