Allele Propagation Prediction

I guess you have a problem then. A mutation can be considered beneficial if a) it has a phenotypical effect and b) that effect has relevance for the overall adaptation of the individual organism in its particular environment - or allows the individual carrier to exploit a new environment or niche. That's all. There are no really universal, general rules - although a lot of ink has been expended trying to find and justify some. Most of the rules in biology are generalizations, and like most generalizations have lots and lots exceptions. Why not? Nearly the totality of the science of population genetics does just that - provides a theoretical framework and description for how and why allele frequencies change in a population over time. In addition, it's very rare that you can point to a single allele and say "this one's a good'un" even if you take in the environmental context in which it manifests - at least in vertebrates. Occasionally you can point to a specific trait that places an individual organism further up the adaptive peak of its particular environment. However, in general relative fitness relies on a suite of phenotypical traits rather than a single allele, many of which are covariant (IOW, change one trait implies changes in others). Basically, in one sense you are correct: the analysis is a posteriori rather than predictive, except in very generic terms.Of course, no biologist ever said it was, so I don't understand your argument. Maybe you can explain what implication you think this has for evolutionary theory.

There are actually quite a few mathematical formulae to calculate the relative fitness of new alleles (or the effect of allele changes in hypothetical populations). However, none of them have been really well confirmed in the field, and I don't know how to copy weird symbols into a post anyway. IOW, there are plenty of "rules" if I'm understanding how you're using the term, but few confirmations from actual observations. Sort of like the difference between theoretical and practical physics. In truth, physics is easier, because all you need to do is spend a couple gazillion dollars on a supercollider and see the reactions when you blow things up. Without a time machine, evo biologists are unable to do this.However, This is incorrect. The "driving forces behind evolution" (as you put it) are the known and observed mechanisms that alter the frequency of specific traits in populations over the generations. Whether those changes will be beneficial or not is only possible to determine by actually observing their effects on the organism in its environment. The fact that we can observe beneficial and deleterious mutations in short-lived organisms like Drosophila and observe similar "mutants" in wild drosophilid populations bears out the validity of the evolutionary mechanisms. We DO see the mechanisms operating in the wild - just that the patterns observed are much much smaller than would possible if we could observe them over millions of years.I'm still unclear why you think evolution has to predict anything about which alleles in which environments "push evolution", since that's not what evolution is. Natural selection and all the other mechanisms are what "push evolution". Changes in allele frequency are the results.

I think you're a bit confused. Fitness is a result of suites of characteristics posessed by an organism in interaction with its environment. Alleles for particular characteristics become fixed over time (read: over generations) in a population based on how well they aid the survival/reproduction of an individual organism which is a member of that population in comparison to members of the population who DON'T posess the trait. There are other factors, of course (like epigenetics, chance, and drift, to name a few) but in the main that's it. It is (currently, at least) totally impossible to predict what the effect of a novel mutation (for instance) will have. There ARE mathematical formulae - the simplest of which is the Hardy-Weinburg Equilibrium equation - to show this. My suggestion is that if you're really interested in pop gen, to check out a text book from the library on the subject. Try Hedrick's "Genetics of Populations" or Hartl's "Principles of Population Genetics". For me, the kinds of rules that you are looking for are mathematically opaque (hey, I'm a field guy, not a geneticist). SFS on this forum might be able to provide you with better titles. You've made this assertion several times without follow-up. Please provide a rationale or argument that shows why the kind of predictions you are asking for are either necessary or even a part of evolutionary theory. The connection between fitness and alleles is as I've stated - fitness is a measure of the effect of suites of alleles in relation to the environment. Natural selection effects allele frequencies by differentially effecting the individual organisms that carry the alleles. Please back up how you derive this connection.