A barrier to macroevolution & objections to it

Hi Faith,I think I've lost the thrust of your argument over the last two threads - it probably got buried somewhere in the myriad of posts to which you've had to respond. This is the bit which brought to my mind the fact that I'm not sure anyone is really twigging on to what your asking for: Could you clarify what it is you are talking about here? What is the difference between the two "diversities" you mention? I think that might help. This seems to be a key point. From what I can gather (and from what we were discussing in the other thread), this appears to be a "new" requirement. At least in my case, in the other thread I was trying to show that novel alleles DID in fact arise in separated populations - that could not have arisen simply by recombination - because that's what it appeared you were arguing against. Since you now seem to be agreeing that mutation can cause novel alleles to arise in these populations, has the requirement changed? Has the argument changed, or was this your requirement all along? If so, we seem to have wasted an entire thread and two thirds of another one arguing past each other. Could you clarify exactly what it is you want? Please be as specific as possible on what would satisfy your requirements, here. Maybe (it may not be possible), we can finally come up with an example of what you are looking for.

Too bad this came at the end of this thread. We have been talking at cross purposes. Although I'm not sure how you can state this so authoritatively since you wouldn't read the article and wouldn't accept my word (and later Equinox's) for what the article contained, you are at least partially correct. Mutation was "assumed" for the creation of novel alleles. Here's the rub, however: there were enough distinct alleles between the subpopulations examined that recombination, genetic mixing, and sequestration of alleles could not account for the divergence. There COULD be epigenetic effects that might account for some of the diversity (i.e., it might not necessarily be due exclusively to mutation), but it most assuredly was NOT due to recombination exclusively, either. Simply reshuffling existing alleles can't explain the genetic diversity. That, of course, leaves mutation, even though the article didn't specifically address mutation. Remember this part?

quote:

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Making a long story short, there is sufficient genetic divergence between the two "ends" of the E. eschscholtzii chain to indicate that a) the most distant populations do not simply represent a statistical assortment of existing alleles, and b) genetic diversity has not only not decreased, but has actually increased over the range of the species.

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The only way we can get further into the "data" you keep requesting is to dig deeper into the literature and begin discussing things like quantitative trait loci (QTL) studies, which if you think the articles already provided are too technical, are going to be very difficult to digest. I'm happy to give it a whirl, but given past history, I'm not sure we're going to get very far - especially with such a short time remaining in the discussion.

Thanks crash, that was exactly what I've been trying to express. Although some new phenotypes can be created through recombination occasionally, the vast majority are caused by "something else" (since Faith doesn't want to use the term "mutation"). There is entirely too much diversity - both phenotype and genotype - between populations that have been separated for any length of time to be the result of simply recombining existing alleles or sampling error. That's the part that I simply have been unable to get across to Faith.

Hey! Look who's back and continuing to make unsupported assertions. Care to back up these claims with some evidence? Like for instance, how you know Start by operationally defining "observed diversity". That's a new one on me. Of course, what do I know?Then tackle this ridiculous statement:which you can qualify by defining "level of kinds". Even generically.

Not incredulity, Faith - evidence. As to not providing any, I thought you said you accepted the explanation I gave on the Ensatina articles? That IS evidence - exactly the kind of evidence you asked for (although as I said they weren't talking about mutations, per se). I even offered to go further, and break out references to QTL studies that get in depth on the genetics of speciation and genetic diversity, and which do indeed cover mutation. You can deny the evidence all you wish, however it doesn't change the facts.

Ridiculous. A simple examination of the genetics and a count of the different alleles in the separated populations shows unequivocally that recombination, etc, are insufficient to account for the diversity in genotype seen. This is OBSERVED, not some hypothetical, ad hoc invention. Now all you need to do is come up with a real world counter-example, and we can go from there.

Since dog breeds are not species, this argument is spurious. Try again. And I couldn't care less your opinion - please provide specifics, as I've asked you before. Oh, and the "supporting evidence" for my position is found in the three journal articles I referenced in the previous thread. Where's yours?