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Author Topic:   How many generations does speciation take?
custard
Inactive Member


Message 1 of 3 (188811)
02-26-2005 9:52 PM


I'm not sure how to phrase this question, so I'll just come out and ask it.
Assuming the following:
1- Common decent from a single species
2- Rate/frequency of mutation is constant for all species
3- No evolutionary stasis/stagnation - i.e. a species does not remain unchanged for 60 million years
4- No cataclysmic events wiping out significant numbers of species.
How many generations of offspring would have to be produced to achieve a similar level of speciation we see today - say 50 million species- from a single (Alpha) species over 3.5 billion years?
This question arises as a result of several things I have read recently: Jay Gould's Structure of Evolutionary Theory, some stuff on neo-darwinism, Haldane's dilemma, and from some things I've seen in ongoing threads that keep using analogies such as "imagine evolution is a walk down the street from house A to house G and the fossil record is a series of snapshots..." implying a gradual rate of mutation that leads to eventual speciation.
I realize this question might seem very open ended, but I'm just looking for a hypothetical mathmatical model that I can use as a starting point to help me understand how frequently mutations need to occur, and how frequently speciation needs to occur, for a Common Decent model of evolution to work.
I couldn't find anything this specific, in this forum, but if this has been explored in other threads, or if you know of links that would be helpful, please point the way.
Thanks.
This message has been edited by custard, 02-26-2005 21:57 AM

AdminJar
Inactive Member


Message 2 of 3 (188953)
02-27-2005 3:22 PM


Thread copied to the How many generations does speciation take? thread in the Biological Evolution forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.

AdminJar
Inactive Member


Message 3 of 3 (188955)
02-27-2005 3:23 PM


Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

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