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Author Topic:   [Almost] Convergent Evolution?
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 314 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 11 of 12 (596321)
12-14-2010 11:09 AM
Reply to: Message 5 by Just being real
12-14-2010 7:22 AM


I mean suppose the genome of a species has about a million sites where a change of a single nucleotide could yield an advantage by natural selection. And these sites are spread through some ten thousand genes that each encode some ten thousand proteins. So there would have to be a hundred potential adaptive changes that could occur in each of ten thousand genes. This all means that any given species must have a lot of freedom in the way it evolves.
Not that much, because you're ignoring natural selection.
I recently wrote a computer program where what evolves are two-dimensional shapes. The selective criterion was maximizing area divided by perimeter.
Each time I ran the program, the initial shape was random, the mutations were random ... but the end result was always a perfect circle. Because the selective pressures were not random and were the same in every case, every simulated population converged to exactly the same shape. This is not surprising or unlikely; it is inevitable.
Really, if you can't figure out this sort of thing on your own you need to get an introductory text on evolution and start again from the beginning.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 314 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 12 of 12 (596325)
12-14-2010 11:17 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Tupinambis
12-12-2010 2:15 PM


Is there any real explanation as to why some of the Tegu are much more sociable with humans while the monitors are not?
I shouldn't think so. The property of being or not being domesticable would not have been selected for, so I guess it's just one of those things.
There are differences like this even in closely related species. Horses are domesticable but zebras are downright dangerous; the llama has been domesticated but no-one can domesticate the vicua, despite the fact that there'd be a lot of money in it for anyone who could (its wool is much sought after).

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