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Author Topic:   Role of Mutations
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 61 of 62 (329846)
07-08-2006 11:37 AM
Reply to: Message 57 by Scrutinizer
07-07-2006 2:39 AM


information
Actually, speciation can occur without any new information at all, ...
As noted by Ned you will need to have a working definition of "information" to make this statement.
For example, consider two populations of the same species that become geographically isolated. Because of different climates, their gene pools would shrink as natural selection eliminated different unfavorable alleles in either population, ...
Why shrink? They also have constant mutation occurring and the different environment will select for those most to the advantage of the subpopulation for survival and breeding -- from all available sources, and those mutations will necessarily be different than in the other population (being random) and the selection for advantage will mean that new alleles from mutations will be available to selection.
It is the accumulation of these new alleles - replacing the ones that are lost -- that results in the speciation.
Of course, speciation has been observed where there is an "increase" in information: polyploidization in plants. However, in these cases, there has been no new information,...
Again define information and then describe how you can measure "old" versus "new" -- other than by bare assertion.
As an example: all mutations change the information that was there before - the DNA is different, therefore it is changed - and further, all mutations are "new" information in that the particular pattern in the DNA was not in existence before, therefore it is new. "New" information is by definition also "added information" as it was not in existence before and has been added to the amount of information that existed before the mutation.
In every case with which I am familiar, speciation has occured through loss of function of a gene or genes, loss of alleles, or duplication of some kind.
Then you need to pay more attention to facts - take the nylon digesting bacteria, a function never performed by a bacteria before the invention of nylon. Something that never existed before fits my definition of new.
Lions and tigers can produce fertile offspring, ... Speciation in these cases likely occurred due to specialization (i.e., loss of potential for certain characteristics such as a mane or stripes through loss of alleles).
So the common ancestor had both manes and stripes, as well as the spots on cheetahs and the all black fur of panthers ....
Let's assume that a dog evolved into a new species over, say, 100,000 generations. At what point in this evolution does the dog cease to be a dog?
About the same time we would stop being an ape, a primate and a mammal. I addressed this in the post you replied to:
RAZD, msg 49 writes:
Every species is a daughter of the parent species, no matter how distant those parent species happen to be.
Variation and natural selection are enough to cause speciation events -- this has been observed. The other thing that should be fairly obvious to those not logically impaired is that speciation involves new "information" of some kind -- something has been "added" that make a difference in the populations {old species} and {new species} and thus speciation falsifies the concept of "no new information" in a way that creationists cannot honestly deny.
All hominids are apes the same way all dogs are dogs (although all you are talking about is varieties there not species differentiations, so of course they are going to be dogs -- but lets look at the full concept applied to biology eh?).
Just as all chimpanzees are apes (and all gorillas and all orangutans and all bonobos etc).
But before we were apes our common ancestors were primates, and we are still primates, the same way all apes are primates and the same way all monkeys are primates.
Before we were primates our common ancestors were mammals, and we are all still mammals, the same way all apes are mammals and all primates are mammals, and the same way all mammalian species alive and extinct are still mammals.
All that has happened since each of these divisions is descent from a common ancestral population, with variation and natural selection.
If a dog gave birth to something not{dog} that would NOT be evolution -- that would be a typical creatortionista strawman monster.
What part about nested hierarchies resulting from common ancestors don't you understand? It is a simple concept.
Branches do not cut themselves off and then graft themselves on somewhere else.
I am curious to know on what things AiG is "just wrong"?
What do you think is right? One of their more humorous pages is the Arguments we think creationists should NOT use - which has this topical tidbit:
"There are no beneficial mutations."
This is not true, since some changes do confer an advantage in some situations. Rather, we should say, "We have yet to find a mutation that increases genetic information, even in those rare instances where the mutation confers an advantage." For examples of information loss being advantageous, see Beetle bloopers, New eyes for blind cave fish? and Is antibiotic resistance really due to increase in information?
In other words "beneficial mutations occur but we are going to equivocate about how they occur." Most of the answers on this page have similar equivocations on the answers.
Note that this is listed under "Which arguments should definitely not be used?" - and under "What arguments are doubtful, hence, inadvisable to use?" is another topical tidbit:
"Creationists believe in microevolution but not macroevolution."
These terms, which focus on "small" vs. "large" changes, distract from the key issue of information. That is, particles-to-people evolution requires changes that increase genetic information, but all we observe is sorting and loss of information. We have yet to see even a "micro" increase in information, although such changes should be frequent if evolution were true. Conversely, we do observe quite "macro" changes that involve no new information, e.g., when a control gene is switched on or off.
They also conveniently fail to define "information" or establish any metric for measuring how much organism {A} has compared to organism {B}, thereby avoiding finding that information is increased.
This is wrong information. Why is there no definition or metric to measure information if this is so central to these arguments? Because without it they can continue to assert their (false) argument without fear of invalidation by real evidence. This is dishonest.
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This message is a reply to:
 Message 57 by Scrutinizer, posted 07-07-2006 2:39 AM Scrutinizer has not replied

  
Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 62 of 62 (358139)
10-22-2006 1:39 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Jaderis
06-19-2006 4:22 PM


redirect from "science" thread
Holmes'post there to me was one of a reading of the information purveyed by Lithoid-Man on Chris Miller and initiated by Buz as an issue towards Buz such that by posting in this thread as such I leave that discussion for that thread as I told Buz I would.
I am opening this thread back up because in my attempt to show that what in this thread came up as
quote:
What I meant was that they exist and persist, like you said, outside of any selective pressure and that they subsequently become intrinsic to that population (and, perhaps, perceived as beneficial), but they really have no bearing on the survival of the species. Something like this could be an explanation for why humans (and other animals) have emotions, or better yet, specific emotions or how we expres them. I noticed a thread on altruism...maybe something like that?
quote:
http://EvC Forum: Role of Mutations -->EvC Forum: Role of Mutations message 14
identifies the nexus of species selection and species sorting. The only addition to the inquiry on the role here I would add is that there can be traits having become intrinsic to a population that may be netural to the organisms in it but sortable among species. This is the region that Gould attempts to cut out for macroevolution.
I was trying to point out that if one confused species selection and species sorting one might be lead to fail to notice actual barriers which being true to their name ARE barriers but instead a subjective object might rather think that this is a definitional matter of the term "species" itself. The doubleness can occurr in the mind of one and same researcher or hobbyist. I was trying to show by using Gould's example of De Vries that a phenotype may differ as a sport does mutationally but that that sport may also through mutation and selection yield through time into a different species and thus answer Holmes' point that it would be hard to cash out a sense of the limits to change in a given clump of clumped morphospace. It is not simply the issue of is a speciation supported by science vs special creation when it is not clear what the genetics and particularly what Bateson had as vibrationally and Goldschmidt developmentally that De Vries thought was divided between fluctuating and mutational modifications. I realize that this explanation is far from being as clear as I need to make it as I am trying to show how this homogeneity of an unclear explanation of genetic heritability needs involve biogeography.
Some of the difficulty in realizing why this is hard to follow is that we often think of selection in terms of a single act of picking up or out an object but the notion of sorting usually involves a field, or grid or dimensional grating process.
My own ideas on how to show the barriers exist among species (which may come from biogeography as much as from development) are to show how two different geographical locations of a given "species" can be thought as a ring which is a "point" for selection purposes on Earth but may as a ring, divide in ratios, among the levels of organization ordinally within, either of a low or high level of selection. I now understand that by not making it obvious how the maths of this divide- between the nature and role of mutations - I have not been clear enough. Thus I understand how it was that Buz said, Miller corrected him as to mutations in the guppies but Holmes insisted that there was some issue here.
I see clearly how my own attempt in the now closed thread:
http://EvC Forum: The Nature of Mutations -->EvC Forum: The Nature of Mutations
fell short of adequate comprehensibility but this is due to the subjective nature of a given person's understanding, mine in this case.
I will make this difference of dimensionality rigorously clear at
A Method of Panbiogeography
Where you/one can find a diagrammed stepped procedure which WILL indicate the barriers should I be uncriticizable at this place.
This is the "place" of the last vertical dark line in the last step. Which I can explain as a point, series and field all for the same "species."
I hope in the future to have working software which will permit one to do the twists and turns as only so far diagrammed there by me.
Gould has made the argument that sorting and selection of species are different. They are but whether the artificial selection of guppies in a tank of water is one of the one-dimensional method or something rather accounted for by a ledger remained to be discovered on EVC. Since the thread on the nature of mutations is closed this might be the best thread to open it through. I saw nothing in a quick read through this entire thread that should lead "off-topic", but that is my opinion. As we will not likely get another information on Miller, this particular difference which really has to do with current evolutionary theory and as to whether special creations (single points of geographic distributions) or larger biogeographic homologies bound the role and nature of mutations between phenospecies
I do think the idea of "neutral" mutations is a little overblown but it does enable one to address an area that you are correct would and did come up again on EVC.
Edited by Brad McFall, : link correction

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Jaderis, posted 06-19-2006 4:22 PM Jaderis has not replied

  
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