What exactly is natural selection and precisely where does it occur?

I don't see what reason there is to believe this, and you certainly don't provide any. If selection is going on, then some individuals (usually males, because traditionally females are viewed as the rarer reproductive resource) are getting some and some males are not.Clearly, that's differential reproductive success under any formula. The only instance I can think of where individuals experience statistically equal reproductive success are asexual species, and that's clearly not "sexual selection", since there's no sex involved. So? Natural selection is the same. In fact this statement would seem to reinforce the idea that sexual selection is a kind of natural selection. There's really no difference between some individuals succeeding because they were selected for, and some individuals succeeding because others were selected against. That's just two different ways to describe the same phenomenon. No, it's just regular sexual selection. There's nothing reverse about it.

I think it's more important to correct his incredible gaffes than to reward what little morsels of sense he's able to serve. When we're talking about a guy who will defend, for several pages, saying things like "digital codes swim through our homologies" as though that statement makes sense, I think there's little merit in handing out partial credit for the fact that, occasionally, he's able to generate small amounts of sense.

Do you think it would be possible for you to respond to any one of the innumerable posts where I respond to your misconceptions about this?

Sure we can, and have. It's phenomenally easy to show how natural selection results in population changes experimentally; it merely takes a model organism who matures and reproduces sufficiently quickly. D. melanogaster is the typical model organism. The "potential" you're referring to are the random phenotypical variation among individuals that arises via mutation. This has long been known to produce the "raw variation" that natural selection "refines" throughout the successive generations of a population.

Going back to those messages, I see that almost all of them do have responses explaining your errors, a lot of them by Percy himself. And a lot of those messages have no reply from you.I recognize that you're one against many, and it's not fair to expect you to reply to everything, but there's a difference between replying to one message that's the best representative of a point several are making; and making it clear that your opponents are on a rotating schedule of being completely ignored. (Apparently it's my turn today.) We've been explaining your errors for 200 posts now. Is there some reason it isn't sinking in?

You're free to respond to any of the innumerable posts where I've done just that. It's specifically your misapprehension that sexual selection is non-selective that I've been interested in engaging you on. Others have taken on the task of rectifying your idiosyncratic "understanding" of natural selection in general.

I have to say, I don't see these questions as especially probative. It seems to me that your time would be better spent, not worrying about whether or not sexual selection is exactly the same thing as natural selection, but in thinking about the effects that:Selection by environment
Selection of males by females
Selection by human breedersetc. might have on the genetics of a population, as opposed to the effects that genetic drift might have on the genetics of a population, as opposed to the effects that mutation might have on the genetics of a population, etc.The idea of thinking about evolution as a series of evolutionary "events", while perhaps applicable in a narrow set of circumstances, doesn't seem like a fruitful approach to understanding evolution in general.It's easy enough to imagine the example of antibiotics and bacteria, and to imagine that the introduction of the antibiotic to the population is the "evolutionary event", because that's the single event that, in the short term, is going to have the most profound influence on the genetics of the population.But evolution in general doesn't proceed in "events"; the genetics of a population is in constant flux, constantly changing. And while in the short term we might identify:the introduction of a new species in the environment,
or an astronomic event such as an asteroid,
or the "founder effect" responsible for punctuated equilibrium's effect on the history of morphology,as the "evolutionary event" that was responsible for a sudden shift in the fossil record, it would be very, very wrong to imply that evolution is just a series of events separated by stretches where no evolution takes place at all. Evolution is constantly ongoing as individuals experience differential reproductive success for a variety of reasons, like luck, or their adaptations to environment (including predation and disease), or their attractiveness to potential mates. And that differential success has a non-random effect on the genetics of the population.Selection is selection. It doesn't seem fruitful to me to worry about the different kinds, except to note that we characterize them with different terms because they have, in general, different effects. Natural selection gives rise to adaptations that promote survivability, defense against diseases and predation, and enable access to new food sources (among other things.) Sexual selection gives rise, in males generally, to weapons for ritualized combat and bright displays for females. Often traits that are maladaptive but nonetheless successful in increasing reproductive success.But selection is selection, and it all works the same way - individuals with the traits being selected for have more offspring, and those with traits being selected against have less offspring. And whenever selection is occurring, changes to allele frequencies are the result, and thus, evolution.

6 paragraphs and the best you have is a glib rejoinder in one line? After you asked for my thoughts? Would it be possible for you to engage my arguments seriously? That you would suggest that leads me to, again, wonder about your ability to comprehend basic statements in plain English. No, I'm not a gradualist, and if you think what I've said stands in contrast to Gould's views on Punk Eek, you understand neither Gould nor myself. I never said that evolution proceeds at the same constant rate throughout all time, and Gould never said that evolution isn't constantly happening. Are you not able to read statements in plain English? A lot of evidence is accumulating that you are not.

If you believe the information at Wikipedia is inaccurate, why don't you go over there and fix it?

You poor dear!

Congratulations, everybody! 288 posts did absolutely nothing to stem HM's tide of pseudoscientific nonsense.

I don't recall reporting that, but I don't believe I would be surprised to find E. coli out on my lawn, or anyone else's.I suspect it's just that, in your truly all-encompassing ignorance, you don't know what it means when a microbiologist talks about a "lawn."

Are you a "scientist" like you claimed to be? I'd like to read some of your published work, if so. (Do you save your nonsense just for us, or inflict it on the journals, too?) Can you pop me a few bibliographies? Email would be fine if you don't want to break anonymity.

I'm sorry that you weren't able to recognize an overture intended for your benefit, and that you feel that it's appropriate to share private correspondence on a public forum without the sender's permission.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.