It is not a correct interpretation if you want to claim that your argument has any scientific basis. Mutation and selection does not work that way either empirically or mathematically.
In no way does this answer refer to what I asked. I was asking if
you would clarify a theoretical and admittedly tangential point for me. But of course you are correct: asking
you to explain anything will never result in anything with a scientific basis. I withdraw my question, and let your refusal or avoidance of answering it speak for itself.
Until you present something that is measurable and repeatable, you present nothing more than mush. The hundreds of citations which I have posted identify explicitly what the selection pressures are, the target genes for the selection pressures and often times identify the specific loci and mutations required for adaptation to the selection pressures. So far, all you have presented is mush.
The fact that several different groups of animal have countered more or less the same set of selection pressures in different ways alone shows that the process is repeatable. When faced with the selection pressures I listed before (or a subset thereof, or a combination of these, or the subset, with unlisted ones), animals will evolve a way to get from tree to tree easier, for instance to get away from an arboreal predator. Some have solved this by flying, some by gliding, some by jumping, and so on.
But I will present you, again, with the
Brassica example. When different diploid species of
Brassica were cross-bred, polyploid progeny occurred. These were cross-bred again, according to certain patterns (1), for five generations, and the resulting polyploid hybrids are analogous to two species of natural hybrids. In five generations of inbreeding, the plants acquired several morphological and physiological changes, including changes in leaf shape and colour, branching patterns, number of side shoots, and differences in fertility. The genetic distance between the F5 generation and the F2 generation varied between 3.7% and 9.6%. The selection pressures included having to cope with two different copies of the same gene within the same genome, having to cope with sudden polyploidisation, and several other factors which are present for all plants, such as microbial and other parasitism, pathogens, and so on. The authors used 82-89 nuclear DNA probes to detect changes in the genome, and detected changes with 23-59 of these probes, indicating, again, that no specific genes were targeted.
There are of course more details in the paper, but as you never read details and instead only post stock answers and lies, I see no reason to elaborate further.
Kotatsu, you are trying to make connections where none exist. You don’t have selection pressures which would make these transformations.
How on Earth can you make such a categorical statement? Am I to understand that you believe that regardless of what group of animal is under study, the researcher never knows any selection pressures operating on that group? Regardless of what gene he/she is working with?
The relevant selection pressures would of course change depending on the gene, the organism, and other factors. The same selection pressures wouldn't necessarily operate on a EF-1α tree as on an 18S tree. And in trees based on other genes, it is often possible to be very specific on at least some of the selection pressures operating on the gene in that organism.
Just because
you don't understand phylogenies --- and this is becoming abundantly clear --- doesn't mean that the people who work with them don't.
Kotatsu, you are in denial. Mutation and selection is not an incomprehensible process mathematically. If you ever come to understand that this process is nothing more than a sorting/optimization problem, you would realize that your belief system is wrong. The empirical evidence of how mutation and selection works verifies this. The pictures you draw are based on a mathematically impossible theory.
This, again, has nothing to do with my post. I was simply making the same observation as several other people have done before me, that your arguments are changing gradually as you are overwhelmed by evidence.
For some reason I don’t think I’ll ever pass your class in evolutionism or joobz’s class in alchemy.
No, I would imagine reading comprehension would be needed for both.
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(1) This can all be found in the paper, Song
et al., 1995 (see earlier posts for complete reference).
