Darwin's Illusion

[Dan From Smithville]

This is just false. I have personally pointed you to such experiments and so have others. Multiple times.
Sticking your head in the sand and handwaving, is not an argument against it. Nor does it make it go away.



Why leave e coli out of it?
Too devastating to your case?



That experiment is exactly what you ask for.
A gradual change in species that spread throughout the population due to the advantage it gave to the organism.

More head-in-sand behavior on your part.



Your intellectual dishonesty is noted.

I checked, but maybe I missed something. I saw no list of reasons against or any discussion why Lenski's experiment with E. coli should be excluded. I must concur that it seems that the only reason is that it falsifies claims that natural selection doesn't act to drive change in populations. For which it is very good evidence.

Perhaps it is only word games that a claim that some have detailed their reasons 30 or 40 times. I haven't seen that even once.

I'm still waiting for a list of Darwin's assumptions and a detailed explanation why they are considered all wrong by some. I don't think we are going to see that. I have seen a few assumptions credited to Darwin, but those are wrong. Darwin did not consider populations stable or that members of a population were uniform in formulating his theory of evolution. If he did, then he never would have come up with the theory that he did. It wouldn't make sense to discuss variation and selection if he thought populations were uniform and stable.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Using Google Scholar and the term "population bottleneck", I got over 550,000 hits in 0.08 seconds. Indeed they are very rare. LOL!

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I've read this paper before. In fact, I have a copy of it in my library.

The silver fox domestication experiment - Evolution: Education and Outreach

It is a good paper on the history of an animal breeding program that illustrates how intense artificial selection can rapidly lead to change in a species much more rapidly than would normally be seen in nature. Not speciation, but quantitative change due to selection. It illustrates how nature and artificial breeding came together to further domestication of companion animals from wild stock. The fastest rate of change and speciation in nature that I'm aware of is the cichlid species super flock of Lake Victoria. Nearly 700 endemic species evolving from a starter population of only one or a few species of cichlid in about 15,000 years. That was driven by radiation into numerous unoccupied niches. Breeding works and it is not the result of bottlenecks, but of selection.

But I think the more interesting story in this article is the history of Trofim Lysenko. Has anyone else actually read this article? You should. Lysenko was the product of a combination of cultural naivete and hubris turned into government policy. Numerous uneducated people were "hired" into the scientific community to glorify the average citizen. Lysenko was the uneducated son of peasants that didn't learn to read until he was in his teens and had no real formal education in anything, let alone science. Lysenko took advantage of this situation and rose to power in Russian science raging against genetics and "reductionist" science based on what he believed and not on anything he had learned or studied. Imagine someone that believes every idea that enters their head is some sort of "truth" and that actual science is a subversive lie. The philosophy of a country and the exploitation by an uneducated, but clever enough, person lead to one of the darkest periods of Russian science. For science in general, considering how many actual experts were probably lost in that rise to and retention of power.

Strange how this mirrors in so many ways what scientists and supporters of science face in struggling against the imaginings of self-proclaimed experts, ignorance and the empty assertions levied as if they were fact today. Even on this forum.

It is with a sense of delicious irony that I smile knowing how this article first came to this thread.

 

[John53]

The silver fox domestication experiment - Evolution: Education and Outreach

For the last 59 years a team of Russian geneticists led by Lyudmila Trut have been running one of the most important biology experiments of the 20th, and now 21st, century. The experiment was the brainchild of Trut’s mentor, Dmitri Belyaev, who, in 1959, began an experiment to study the process...

evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com

I've only had a quick read but the article is about the attempt to domesticate foxes by humans manipulating Darwin's principle of natural selection.

ALL OBSERVED CHANGE IN SPECIES is sudden and always results from bottlenecks. The fossil record does not show otherwise.

That's your claim. I asked for evidence.

I'm not suggesting change in species is common. Even though Darwin assumed populations are stable the fact is bottlenecks are very uncommon or species would be changing much more often. Almost every single time we see a change in species there is a bottleneck or a mutation that caused it.

It must be at least as common as the number of species that have ever occurred otherwise there wouldn't be the diversity of life that there is.

I'm also not sure what you mean by rapid change. 10 generations, 100, 1,000?

 

[John53]

Using Google Scholar and the term "population bottleneck", I got over 550,000 hits in 0.08 seconds. Indeed they are very rare. LOL!

If it takes a genetic bottleneck for specification to happen then it must have happened as many times as the number of species we have as well as those that have gone extinct. I don't know what that numbers is but it must be at least many millions if you just counted plants and insects.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I've only had a quick read but the article is about the attempt to domesticate foxes by humans manipulating Darwin's principle of natural selection.

That is a better, more succinct summation than my own and equally correct.

That's your claim. I asked for evidence.

That seems to be all you will get. That and claims that a detailed rebuttal was provided like 450 million times or some some large number of times.

It must be at least as common as the number of species that have ever occurred otherwise there wouldn't be the diversity of life that there is.

Consider that it is estimated that 99.9% of species that have existed on Earth or now extinct and you get a good picture of how common speciation is given the time and natural selection.

I'm also not sure what you mean by rapid change. 10 generations, 100, 1,000?

It has never been defined, just claimed. It was compared to the time that it takes stars to form as I said previously. But that seems like a desperate attempt at a diversion to avoid the fact that all change in living things is not sudden.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

If it takes a genetic bottleneck for specification to happen then it must have happened as many times as the number of species we have as well as those that have gone extinct. I don't know what that numbers is but it must be at least many millions if you just counted plants and insects.

I'm one post behind you and trying to catch up it seems. Yes, you hit on the fact that there are a lot of species on Earth and over the history of this planet, there were even more.

 

[John53]

Using Google Scholar and the term "population bottleneck", I got over 550,000 hits in 0.08 seconds. Indeed they are very rare. LOL!

According to this website 2.16 million identified species and that's only animals. That's a lot of bottlenecks without counting plants and extinct species

How many species are there?

How many species do we share our planet with? How many of these species have we found and identified?

ourworldindata.org

 

[Dan From Smithville]

If it takes a genetic bottleneck for specification to happen then it must have happened as many times as the number of species we have as well as those that have gone extinct. I don't know what that numbers is but it must be at least many millions if you just counted plants and insects.

I saw above a claim that nature selects at bottlenecks. While the bottleneck portion of that claim is incorrect, the recognition of natural selection is a major breakthrough that I didn't expect would be admitted to here.

 

[gnostic]

I have never said otherwise but you refuse to parse the meaning I clearly state. You are confused by my saying local bottlenecks introduce new genes. The local population has less genetic diversity but the bottleneck gives rise to some new unusual genes that by definition get mixed back in with the general population resulting in more of these unusual genes.

Global bottlenecks give rise to a new species but I never said they increased genetic diversity. The new species has a less diverse genetic pool which is part of what makes it a new species.

The theory of Evolution only talk of population bottleneck or genetic bottleneck, not global bottleneck vs local bottleneck.

In your all the times, you argue with @Dan From Smithville in the last months this year, not once did you ever bring up "local bottlenecks". This is the first time you mention such thing.

You are the one playing word game, cladking. You are trying to invent a new bottleneck where none exist.

Try reading biology textbook, and stop making up words or modifying the meanings of known words to suit your deluded fantasies.

Plus, your example of dog breeding, isn't Evolution and isn't speciation. Breeding dogs to have certain desired physical traits (hence Artificial Selection), but there are no "changes to species" as you claim. They are still the same species, just different breeds.

Breeding dogs for certain traits, DON'T INVOLVE ANY BOTTLENECKS!

You clearly don't know what a bottleneck is.

Stop pretending you understand biology.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

According to this website 2.16 million identified species and that's only animals. That's a lot of bottlenecks without counting plants and extinct species

How many species are there?

How many species do we share our planet with? How many of these species have we found and identified?

ourworldindata.org

With all those bottlenecks reducing numbers and diversity, it is a wonder that there are any species left.

I have seen estimates from 3 to 7 million species to as many as 100 million. I'm coming to the conclusion that it is probably somewhere around 10 million give or take. The estimates aren't just based on a particular species definition, but the means that were used to derive the estimate. Some were clearly very optimistic and others somewhat conservative. I think we getting better at making estimates.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

The theory of Evolution only talk of population bottleneck or genetic bottleneck, not global bottleneck vs local bottleneck.

In your all the times, you argue with @Dan From Smithville in the last months this year, not once did you ever bring up "local bottlenecks". This is the first time you mention such thing.

You are the one playing word game, cladking. You are trying to invent a new bottleneck where none exist.

Try reading biology textbook, and stop making up words or modifying the meanings of known words to suit your deluded fantasies.

Plus, your example of dog breeding, isn't Evolution and isn't speciation. Breeding dogs to have certain desired physical traits (hence Artificial Selection), but there are no "changes to species" as you claim. They are still the same species, just different breeds.

Breeding dogs for certain traits, DON'T INVOLVE ANY BOTTLENECKS!

You clearly don't know what a bottleneck is.

Stop pretending you understand biology.

A local bottleneck would be a reduction in numbers and diversity of a population in a localized portion of its entire range. It is an unfortunate consequence of timing, but the Ukraine is an example of a local bottleneck for the human population in that portion of our range.

It is subverting a term with an recognized, established, widely used definition and substituting a meaningless definition in its place that doesn't describe anything that actually exists.

Speciation doesn't occur at bottlenecks. What is being described using a subverted version of the term is natural or artificial selection.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

According to this website 2.16 million identified species and that's only animals. That's a lot of bottlenecks without counting plants and extinct species

How many species are there?

How many species do we share our planet with? How many of these species have we found and identified?

ourworldindata.org

We probably have a better idea of the larger species and groups of vertebrates like mammals, birds, reptiles, fish and amphibians. And plants as well. But even in those well-studied groups new species are found annually.

We probably have killed off or been complicit in the extinction of species that we never even knew existed, simply because there aren't enough taxonomists to study and discover new species and we alter environments at an increasing rate these days.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

According to this website 2.16 million identified species and that's only animals. That's a lot of bottlenecks without counting plants and extinct species

How many species are there?

How many species do we share our planet with? How many of these species have we found and identified?

ourworldindata.org

By the way, excellent link. I have and I believe will continue to find that very useful.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

If it takes a genetic bottleneck for specification to happen then it must have happened as many times as the number of species we have as well as those that have gone extinct. I don't know what that numbers is but it must be at least many millions if you just counted plants and insects.

It is my personal opinion that the choice to use bottleneck to describe what amounts to selection and breeding was an effort to deny recognition of the latter and create a fan fiction version of an aspect of biology that fits what the believer believes so that natural selection can be continued to be denied.

 

[John53]

It is my personal opinion that the choice to use bottleneck to describe what amounts to selection and breeding was an effort to deny recognition of the latter and create a fan fiction version of an aspect of biology that fits what the believer believes so that natural selection can be continued to be denied.

I'm late to the discussion and confess to being somewhat confused. I'm also too slack to bother reading back.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

According to this website 2.16 million identified species and that's only animals. That's a lot of bottlenecks without counting plants and extinct species

How many species are there?

How many species do we share our planet with? How many of these species have we found and identified?

ourworldindata.org

As you are well aware, I'm fond of insects. It is my personal bias to enjoy the fact that the group with the most described species is insects. But the reality is that another group of animals might very well outnumber insects by a significant margin. Knowing that in every gram of soil, nematodes abound and knowing also that they persist in numerous symbiotic relationships with plants and animals from harmless commensal all the way to disease causing agents. If one is to consider the number of plant and animal species and then think of the possibility that each species might harbor one or more unique symbiont nematodes, their numbers could be vast beyond anything else. Add to that the number of free living species that are known and those yet to be discovered and they may actually be the most speciose group to exist.

Of course, I cannot rule out enhanced understanding of bacterial speciation putting those organisms at the top in numbers of species as well as numbers of individuals, but animals have come a long way in much less time.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I'm late to the discussion and confess to being somewhat confused. I'm also too slack to bother reading back.

That pretty much sums it up. A person that likes to play word games with existing terminology arbitrarily decided to use bottleneck to describe selection to avoid admitting that selection exists seems to be what is at play. Given that the source never or so rarely provides detailed accounts supporting the many claims offered, I'm left to come to my conclusions on the context that is provided. That context says word games.

 

[gnostic]

I'm late to the discussion and confess to being somewhat confused. I'm also too slack to bother reading back.

This thread has over 5600 posts, so I wouldn’t try.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

This thread has over 5600 posts, so I wouldn’t try.

Fortunately, the empty and extraordinary claims get repeated with severity, so even if you miss it the first 1,000 times, you still will see it come back up. Much like a vultures dinner.