Evolution May Be More Random Than Previously Believed
Some ecologists say the theory needs an update. They’ve proposed a new dynamic driving the emergence of new species, one that doesn’t involve adaptations or survival of the fittest.For reasons that remain unclear, they don't seem to be calling it the Cohen Theory of Evolution.Give evolution enough time and space, they say, and new species can just happen. Speciation might not only be an evolutionary consequence of fitness differences and natural selection, but a property intrinsic to evolution, just as all matter has gravity.
9 comments:
We win!! God bless the New England Complex Systems Institute.
However, I fear they will soon all be on the street begging for quarters. As Chinese palaeontologist, Jun-Yuan Chen, once quipped, “In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize the government but not Darwin.”
Well, no one likes it when their god is blasphemed.
Especially from within.
Well, duh.
I'm pretty certain I typed stuff almost exactly along that line back in the day.
Of course random variation happens; therefore, reproductively isolated populations will diverge over time.
Why is this such a revelation?
Nice try, Skipper, but David and I have long memories.
I don't -- what did Peter just win?
Joe: Basically, see any thread in which I called Darwin trivial, but for example see this thread and this thread.
David:
You are in your Delphic mode again.
Regarding the first link (it was interesting entering the WayBack machine) -- any follow up to the original study?
Also, one thing struck me all these years later about the statistical discussion: no one mentioned the certainty that if mutations are random, some mutations will themselves mutate in a (I think) Poisson distribution. Each time a mutation mutates, their is a 1:4 chance it will return to its original state.
I don't have the mathematical sophistication to analyze the probabilities, but it sounded a lot like the original analysis excluded the probability of original > something else > original.
From the second link, you said:
I just think that almost any mutation that can be expressed in a living creature can survive.
Penguins and flamingos say otherwise.
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