RE: I 'believe' in Evolution
October 23, 2012 at 10:23 pm
(This post was last modified: October 23, 2012 at 10:25 pm by Whateverist.)
(October 23, 2012 at 9:01 pm)Polaris Wrote: It's like saying that people who have similar ethnic characteristics are undergoing gradual evolution each time they pass on their genes.
I don't think it is anything like that. The vast majority of the time there is no mutation beyond the normal range of the gene pool. Occasionally there are truly abberant mutations or, as the evo devo quote from wikipedia suggest, changes in the switching mechanisms which control embryo assembly. When -infrequently- the mutation is beneficial for the current state of the environment, the advantage can be passed on if there is improved competitiveness for breeding.
Evolution is NOT like clay-mation in which every generation presents a smooth but gradual change toward a new species. It is infrequent and rarely advantageous. But over eons of time, some changes stick and enough changes can result in new species. If you read up on evo devo it seems that more radical and faster changes can occur based on how the genetic information in expressed in embryo creation. So when these switching HOX genes are effected -and possibly directly by environmental influences- you can get much more rapid morphological changes simply by changing the size or number of repetitions of a modular structure. I haven't adequately digested this yet but if it pans out it seems that much more drastic change may be able to occur much more abruptly than previously thought.
(October 23, 2012 at 9:01 pm)Polaris Wrote: Microevolution is an analogy to evolution, but is not evolution.
What are you saying? What does being an analogy to evolution look like? What do you think it really is?
