(December 23, 2016 at 7:52 am)robvalue Wrote: It makes sense to me. A species is always naturally tending towards the most efficient form for the environment (although a good degree of junk tends to sneak through the net along with it). So if there's a big change in the environment, there going to be a big gap between the current norm for the species and the new optimum characteristics. Useful changes are going to be more important and so will get factored in faster.
If the environment doesn't change or changes only slightly, the norm won't be very far away from optimum.
Or, y'know, reality is a big lie and it's all done by magicks.
The "next generation is different" idea has problems. First, how many animals have to have the same mutation to produce a successful breeding population? Second, the more likely response to a "big change in the environment" is a mass dying off. If savannah changes to tree-less plain the giraffes are going to have problems. Can they convert to "grazer" quickly enough? Nothing in the fossil record supports this. In fact the fossil records don't show "big change" at any time in one-half billion years. But there's still time, I suppose.
