A test for claimed knowledge of how macroevolution occurs

Why are you posting this again without responding to Edge's rebuttal in Message 45? You again ignored the following two paragraphs:

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However, when researchers stopped their artificial breeding efforts and let nature take its course, the relationship between shape and size returned to normal in just 15 generations.

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In other words, many generations of artificial selection were reversed relatively quickly when natural selection itself was left to decide which characteristics were the best for the flies. To understand why this is so requires a more detailed explanation.

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For those who need the more detailed explanation the article can be found at 58,046 fruit flies shed light on 100-year old evolutionary question.Note that the word "mutation" does not appear even once in the article. Though the article doesn't say, at the genetic level the wing changes could only have been caused by changes in allele distribution/frequency.The technical paper upon which ScienceDaily based the article can be found here: Complex constraints on allometry revealed by artificial selection on the wing of Drosophila melanogaster. It explains that the changes were caused by changes in allele frequency:

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A potentially confounding source of response to selection is the creation of linkage disequilibrium between alleles that affect wing size and alleles that affect L2 length. Such linkage disequilibrium could have generated a change in the allometric slope without changes in allele frequency. For example, an association between alleles that increase wing size with alleles that increase L2 length would increase the allometric slope between wing size and L2 length. To minimize linkage disequilibrium, we used disassortative mating when selecting on the static allometric slope. Female flies in the cluster above mean wing size were mated with male flies from below and vice versa (see Materials and Methods), so that recombination would be maximally effective in breaking up linkage disequilibrium. However, this does not completely prevent association between alleles, and we need to consider if the reversal of the response could have been due to breakup of linkage disequilibrium. Assuming an average recombination fraction of r = 0.365 between random loci in D. melanogaster (37), we estimated that the maximum fraction of the response that could be due to linkage disequilibrium averaged only 19.9 22.6% and 14.3 24.0% in males and females, respectively.

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--PercyEdited by Percy, : Minor correction.

Hello Caffeinated:
Yes I know chimp to human is not the way it happened, but since this is hypothetical and the differences between those two are smallish compared to others I figured we could do it this way. But if not, then pick some other duo.And I know the differences are enormous but I thought maybe we could pick a mutation here and there to illustrate what has to happen to get from one species to another. Perhaps that is impossible too. But I keep thinking that mutations are such a random thing, even getting one that a new species could build from is impossible anyway. You'd have to pick a track from one possible mutation to another to another among thousands of useless mutations. So I suppose it's impossible. Too bad.What I want is a hypothetical mutation or series of mutations that do more than just change the protein for a trait built into the genome of a given species. I mean, the genome for, say, a dog, makes dog stuff, it doesn't make anything else. A mutation or mutations that could turn a dog into a different species would have to change the dog genome in some way, otherwise mutations would just vary the dog stuff and it would still be a dog. If that doesn't make sense I'm not sure how to make it clearer.Yes I don't think mutations account for any similarities or differences between any two creatures no matter how closely or distantly related. Perhaps a mutation or two could be shown to be in the picture, but otherwise it's all the result of ordinary sexual recombination of ordinary built-in genetic stuff, built in from the Creation. But since this model isn't the evo model I'm asking for how the evo model could generate the mutations it supposes would have to occur in order to get from one species to another.Maybe I'm not addressing your question. Oh well.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'm taking a different message from what you're saying than did DWise1 and Tanyperyx. I think you're saying that despite the huge flow of new mutations into the human population, humans do not evolve into a new species. This is both true and false. Let me explain.It is true in that no human will ever give birth to a different species. Humans will always beget humans. This is because, on average, there are only about 100 mutations in each new baby, and they almost always have no measurable effect, if any. Genetically each new baby will be virtually identical to its parents, i.e., still human.But across a population as large as humans with 360,000 births globally every day, around 36 million new mutations are introduced daily into the human population. Over the course of generations mutations will only gradually spread, being more common nearest their point of origin. This is because even in a global economy most people still marry people who live nearby, so most new mutations will spread only slowly over the generations from their point of origin, from one village to the next. As mutations spread and combine with other mutations gradually the human genome will evolve. There don't even have to be any selection pressures for this to happen - genetic drift by itself would be sufficient.And that's why what you say about humans always remaining humans is also false. Over enough generations the human genome will change to the point where we are no longer the same species. Even if in that distant future we still call ourselves human, were we able to travel back in time to the present interbreeding would not be possible.--Percy

Actually we're saying the same thing that's already been said a number of times. We're not admitting that we don't know how to breed a whale from a Pakicetus so much as saying that that would be pretty much impossible without genetic engineering. Here's why.Imagine we're actually carrying out your thought experiment where we begin with a Pakicetus population and through artificial selection breed it to replicate the evolution to modern whales. Assume we know the Pakicetus genome. The experiment reaches the point where it is time for a certain specific mutation to occur in the Pakicetus population in order for it to make the next step toward whale-ness. How are we to insert that mutation into the Pakicetus population if not through genetic engineering?As a practical matter and as explained earlier, even artificial selection and genetic engineering together would not allow us to transform a Pakicetus population into a whale population. We don't have enough knowledge about what everything in any genome does yet. For example, if we wanted to move the nose incrementally toward the top of the head we might not have any idea what specific genetic changes would be necessary.--Percy

Inbreeding reduces genetic diversity but does not produce mutations, other than those that normally occur as part of any reproduction.--Percy

Then don't ask for evidence if you aren't going to look at it.

You are a flat out liar. You refused to look at the evidence when I presented it. Pull you head out of the sand.

Check the asterisk: I copied the article into Word where I could put it against a black background so I can read it.

The evidence is right here: Human Genetics Confirms Mutations as the Drivers of Diversity and Evolution – EvoGradThe x-axis is the rate of each type of mutation according to a comparison of human genomes. The y-axis is the observed rate of these mutations that are observed in new births, the de novo rate. Notice that the two perfectly correlate with each other. The observed rate of transition, transversion, and CpG mutations in humans strongly correlates with the differences seen between humans. That's the evidence. The differences between humans looks exactly like the new random mutations we see happening in live births right now.Here is another chart, showing the same data in a different format. One set of bars maps human genetic diversity (All SNP's) while the other bars map observed mutation rates in humans (Human de novo): Then your model needs to explain why transitions outnumber transversions, and why differences at CpG's occur at the highest rate. Evolutionary mechanisms explain this perfectly, but I have yet to see your model explain this. Those are combinations of alleles that differ by mutations. You need to brush up on your Mendelian genetics. You claim that you have a model, yet you don't even understand the basics of genetics.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Yes, necessarily. What was the genetic diversity in that population? Did they differ by 2% like chimps and humans do?

And with this post, you have lost all credibility. Inbreeding does not cause unnaturul mutations. Inbreeding increases the chance of pairing rare deleterious recessive alleles that already existed.

Well, I don't think those are mutations, you see, I think they are normally occurring variations based on the sexual recombination of built-in alleles. But this is all interesting because of the fact that evos do interpret everything in terms of mutations and I don't. Actually, rather than that I don't understand what you consider to be the basics of genetics, it's that I reject the whole idea that you consider to be those basics, that mutations are the cause of any of this. Mendel had no notion of mutations, he was just showing how combinations of genetic stuff from different parents, which I assume he assumed were built in, produced predictable results.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

They sequenced the genomes of the father, mother, and child to measure the de novo mutation rate. Those are mutations. You can hold the parent's DNA up to the child's DNA and see where the mutations happened. How can you say that these are not mutations when we can observe them happening in real time?When we compare the rate of mutations happening right now they exactly mimic the genetic differences between people in the human population. How is this not evidence for mutations producing human genetic diversity? I would agree that you have to reject everything in genetics in order to hold on to your fantasies, including the most basic concepts of Mendelian genetics.

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Well, I don't think those are mutations, you see

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Why not ? It’s explicitly about changes to the DNA sequence.

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I think they are normally occurring variations based on the sexual recombination of built-in alleles.

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You don’t actually know what the graphs are showing, do you ?
They are showing the frequency of particular changes in the gene sequences. Eg “A <> G” represents the replacement of adenine with guanine or vice versa.

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But this is all interesting because of the fact that evos do interpret everything in terms of mutations and I don't

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Given that you are interpreting mutations as “normally occurring variations based on the sexual recombination of built-in alleles” I think the problem is yours. Especially in the light of Message 116

In answering your post DWise1 says you don't understand evolution, and this is self-evident, but it might help to note that you don't have to accept evolution to understand it.There's nothing wrong with creationists understanding evolution. Fred Williams who runs Evolution Fairy Tale understands evolution, so his arguments against evolution are based upon what it really says.But your arguments make no sense. You think you're arguing against evolution but you're not. What you're actually arguing against is your own personal misunderstanding of evolution, which doesn't exist as a scientific theory.You did say one thing that is actually true: If the genome remains unchanged in any significant way then that unchanging genome represents the limits of what breeding can accomplish. But if the genome can change in significant ways, which becomes likely when timescales become much longer than the time since man first began domestication of plants and animals, then there is no limit to evolutionary change. Mutations add genetic diversity, which is the opposite of a dead end. You can't have it both ways. It makes no sense that breeders who do not deal in mutations hit dead ends (your "genetic limits"), while evolution involving trillions of mutations also hits dead ends.--Percy