Absurdity of evolution

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EarthScienceguy
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Absurdity of evolution

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Post by EarthScienceguy »

How is evolution even possible in light of the following?

1. Haldane's Dilemma

The cost of substitution Cs is 30 and it is paid off in installments (Ps)of 0.1 each generation. At that rate, it takes (Cs/Ps) 300 generations to pay the cost of substituting one gene. Haldane's conclusion was over the long term the average rate of gene substitution is no better than one gene every 300 generations. (Crow and Kimura, 1970 p 244-252; Crow 1968 p 168-173; Ewens 1979 p 252-256; Merrell 1981 p 187-193)

In a human-like population with a nominal generation time of 20 years 10 000 000/(20x300) = 1667nucleotides could have been changed. That is 0.000047% of the human genome. For 1% of the human genome to be changed in this fashion would take 210,000,000,000 years.

Haldane's dilemma ended the idea of selection causing evolution.

How is there time for evolution?
How can there be evolution without selection?

2. Kimura's Neutral theory of evolution

Kimura is credited with coming up with the solution to Haldane's dilemma. He suggests that neutral mutations is the way that most of the genome was changed.

Error catastrophe is when harmful mutations accumulate too fast and genetic deterioration becomes unavoidable. The standard genetic model the one model taught in every evolutionary textbook -predicts that error catastrophe occurs when the mutation rate gets much above one harmful mutation per progeny. (that is 0.5 harmful mutations per gamete per generation) At that rate, each progeny typically has one more harmful mutation than its parents. Above this threshold, the species would rapidly accumulate harmful mutations from generation to generation.

Kimura estimates that amino-acid altering mutations are roughly ten times more likely to be definitely harmful than neutral. (kimura 1983, p 199; King and Jukes 1969 p 795) That would indicate that the expressed neutral mutations cannot be more common than 0.05 per gamete per generation.

The neutral theory predicts that the neutral substitution rate is equal to the neutral mutation rate per gamete. (Kimura 1983 p 46-48) Therefore, expressed neutral mutations are substituted no faster than 0.05 per generation. In ten million years, a human-like population could substitute no more than 25000 expressed neutral mutations. That amounts to 0.00007% of the genome. So that means if 1% of the human genome were to change it would 14,000,000,000 it is closer to the age of the universe.

How would evolution have time to occur?

3. Punctuated Equilibria

Punctuated Equilibria was developed in response to seeing cladogenesis in the fossil record and not anagenesis. Punctuated equilibria has three central postulates.

Postulate 1: Most evolution occurs in short, rapid bursts (called punctuation events) followed by stasis. This produces a large morphological gap.

Postulate 2: Most evolution occurs at speciation (in other words, punctuation events are closely tied to speciation)

Postulate 3: Speciation has no inherent directionality. A daughter species tends to originate in a random, non-adaptive direction from the parent species.

Punctuated equilibria destroy the idea of discernable phylogeny in the fossil record. Punctuationists declare that evolution is a labyrinthine bush, not an identifiable tree.

How can evolution be true if phylogeny is not discernable in the fossil record?

Remine, Walter The biotic message
Last edited by EarthScienceguy on Tue Nov 09, 2021 4:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Absurdity of evolution

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Purple Knight wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 4:39 pm Haldane's Dilemma probably applies pretty well to organisms that can't mate and recombine benefits, however. This is probably why bacteria are still bacteria. They must linearly fix one beneficial mutation and then wait for another. I also don't have a lot of hope for whiptail lizards. They can't become anything better than they are, and will probably fail to adapt to the next big change that hits them and go extinct.
Prokaryotes have a trick to get around that. It's called "lateral gene transfer." It can happen occasionally in animals and plants, but bacteria are really good at it. And example is the nylon gene. A species of bacteria in a waste pond at a factory making nylon, evolved a mutation (apparently by a frameshift) that allowed them to metabolize nylon oligomers. Before long, the same mutation was showing up in other species of bacteria. Conjugation allows them to swap bits of DNA, and they can evolve more quickly thereby than mere mutation and replication allows. Cases of this process involving antibiotic resistance have been documented, also.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/bi ... onjugation

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Re: Absurdity of evolution

Post #72

Post by Purple Knight »

The Barbarian wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 10:28 pm
Purple Knight wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 4:39 pm Haldane's Dilemma probably applies pretty well to organisms that can't mate and recombine benefits, however. This is probably why bacteria are still bacteria. They must linearly fix one beneficial mutation and then wait for another. I also don't have a lot of hope for whiptail lizards. They can't become anything better than they are, and will probably fail to adapt to the next big change that hits them and go extinct.
Prokaryotes have a trick to get around that. It's called "lateral gene transfer." It can happen occasionally in animals and plants, but bacteria are really good at it. And example is the nylon gene. A species of bacteria in a waste pond at a factory making nylon, evolved a mutation (apparently by a frameshift) that allowed them to metabolize nylon oligomers. Before long, the same mutation was showing up in other species of bacteria. Conjugation allows them to swap bits of DNA, and they can evolve more quickly thereby than mere mutation and replication allows. Cases of this process involving antibiotic resistance have been documented, also.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/bi ... onjugation
Yes, I remember this now that you specifically mention it. The whiptail lizards are still screwed, though.

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Re: Absurdity of evolution

Post #73

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Purple Knight wrote: Fri Nov 19, 2021 12:18 am Yes, I remember this now that you specifically mention it. The whiptail lizards are still screwed, though.
Pretty much so. There are environments where parthengenesis is selected for, but they aren't common, and when the environment changes, such organisms are pretty well screwed. In general parthenogenic species of lizards live where conditions are marginal for lizards. For the obvious reason:


Science
Vol. 197, No. 4306
Animal Parthenogenesis: A new evolutionary-ecological model is needed.
Parthenogenesis can only evolve in areas devoid of the generating bisexual species, because such species would prevent newly formed unisexuals from establishing clones due either to hybridization or competition. Furthermore, the two unique features allowing parthenogenetic species to invade and occupy open habitats faster than bisexuals are (i) a double intrinsic rate of increase and (ii) the ability of one individual to establish a new colony.

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