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Nick Lane says in his paper "The transition to COMPLEX LIFE(My emphasis) on Earth was a UNIQUE event that hinged on a bioenergetic jump afforded by spatially combinatorial relations between two cells and two genomes (endosymbiosis) rather than natural slection actilng on mutations..."I think he is pretty clear that natural selection was not involved in the transition to complex life. That this was jump and not a gradual transition.
I interpret this to mean that there was a vast increase in genes during the transition and this increase did not evolve by natural selection.
Therefore it could be assumed, if Lane is correct, that this was a macroevolutionary event w/o natual selection.
By the way Lane seems to be very well qualified and is an evolutionist. Nick Lane Personal Website

Edited
I read it to mean that there was a unique jump from prokaroyte to eukaryote, ie to complex life w/o natural selection. That seems to me to be a macroevolutionary event.
Lane seems to be very well qualifed Nick Lane Personal WebsiteEdited by Admin, : Fix quote.

Hi Shadow,If I may, I think what is being said here is not that natural selection was not involved, but that random mutation was the force playing a reduced role. The leap to eukaryotic life was not the kind of change that took place bit-by-bit, under random mutation in the normal sense. It was much more sudden, but that doesn't mean that natural selection would not have come into play as eukaryotes emerged.Mutate and Survive

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On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. - Charles Babbage

I'm not concerned with what you believe. That's for you to decide. It's the quality of your arguments that I find troubling.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

Hi Granny, and thanks for the prior diagnosis. Lane is pretty clear that natural selection was not involved. He says it was "a jump" and a unique event. I take that to mean it was not a normal evolutionary event as would be expected per Darwinan or neo-Darwinan theory.Edited by shadow71, : insert "as would be expected " in 3rd sentence.

Personally, I am not a pan-selectionist. I tend to think that there is too much emphasis placed on selection. However, even those who do emphasize selection usually avoid talking in terms of "rely on natural selection." I haven't read Lane's paper, so I'm going by your quotes from it.The idea that one organism jumped inside another, leading to a sudden transition, is surely mistaken. There had to be a lot of mutual adaptation before that was possible, and natural selection would have been involved in that mutual adaptation.If the point you are making is that endosymbiosis doesn't quite fit in the typical neo-Darwinist picture, then I agree with that. And most neo-Darwinists would probably also agree. I don't see that as a problem with evolution.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

I was just about to say this, and the mutual adaptation likely would have continued afterwards.One possible scenario is that those prokaryotes being consumed by other prokaryotes evolved strategies to prevent being digested and gradually became able to survive and somehow escape. And they also might have evolved the ability to survive and reproduce once eaten, eventually exploding the organism that consumed them. Both prokaryotes would have had to evolve strategies to survive these possibilities, and eventually a permanent symbiosis evolved. The symbiosis would have to continually evolve improvements in order to remain competitive with the well established prokaryotes, and later with other eukaryotes.There wouldn't have been one line of descent, either. There would have been entire genera and families of species of prokaryotes that evolved strategies to survive being eaten, and other genera and families of prokaryotic species that evolved strategies to survive eating an organism that had evolved such defense strategies. All these species would have been able to plug and play among one another, and the best combinations survived. Whether all eukaryotic life today is descended from one or many of these early pioneers would be impossible to say at this time.--Percy

Not in the quote you present he isn't. He is saying that the jump to endosymbiosis did not rely simply upon the normal course of NS+RM. He is not saying that NS played no role at all. I think that you are reading too much into his statement if you are getting that solely from the quote in message 481. Yes, but that does not mean that NS would not have acted normally upon any emergent eukaryote.It would be odd to claim that NS would not act upon the newly emergent eukaryotic organisms. They would have been subject to varying rates of reproductive success and thus would have undergone natural selection. Yes and I think that it's fair to say that it was a very unusual event. I'm not sure why you seem to think that NS could not have acted upon the earliest eukaryotes though. Remember, NS is what selects from amongst varieties that already exist. It does not create variety itself, it only acts as a filter. Just because the normal process of random mutation would have had a reduced role in the change to endosymbiosis does not mean that NS would not have taken place. I do not believe that Lane intended to imply this.Mutate and Survive

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On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. - Charles Babbage

"Change" and "alter" are synonyms.
Either there is a typo or you are contradicting yourself...

perhaps by "change" he means "switch"? it still doesn't particularly make any sense, of course.

Hi, Shadow. He's really not. He's contrasting the rapidness of the symbiotic emergence of eukaryotes with the typical gradualness of other evolutionary events. That he used "natural selection" in his description of one of the two options he was comparing is not indicative of his excluding it from the other option.Here's the quote again:

quote:

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The transition to complex life on Earth was a unique event that hinged on a bioenergetic jump afforded by spatially combinatorial relations between two cells and two genomes (endosymbiosis), rather than natural selection acting on mutations accumulated gradually among physically isolated prokaryotic individuals.

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The first of the two options he is comparing is endosymbiosis. The second option contains three parts: (1) natural selection; (2) acting on mutations; and (3) accumulated gradually. Your interpretation of it acts like the first part (natural selection) is the only part of the option.In reality, the options are: Do you see how this is a more appropriate interpretation of what Lane and Martin said?

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Jesus, Mike, have you never read "arguments Creationists shouldn't use" over at your favourite creationist sites? Where did you get this list of idiotic shite? Dust on the Moon??? I think we need PRAMFT - points refuted a million fucking times.And then what's with this crap about Eintstein and light? Dr A and others have corrected you, yet all you can do is whine that it wasn't the physics you were interested in. Where's the "oh, sorry, yeah got that wrong - thanks for the info"?Not good, Mike. In fact, pretty damn pathetic

The Mutation Problem: The Mutation Problem

"Wrong"? That is the very mildest word I would use for someone who denies that the relation of equality is symmetric.

You also posted that in another thread. I responded there (Message 235).

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Jesus was a liberal hippie