Natural Selection and what it didn\'t do for dogs... (Evolution)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, January 25, 2010, 02:45 (5226 days ago) @ David Turell

David,-If I understand your position:-1. The actual cause of genetic variance is mutation--mutation plays a more significant role in speciation than genetic recombination? -2. Natural selection only operates via an exterior event. -Why do you think that sexual recombination itself couldn't uncover most of these "mutations?" Take the common ancestor of man and chimps. Whatever this thing was, it had the ability to both become man and chimp. However, the circumstances that lead our paths to diverge could only come about via some kind of selection. I hope I'm talking clearly...-If the genotype existed for both, how could you argue that selection wasn't the reason that some members of the common ancestor went chimp and the other went human? In my understanding it isn't mutations that cause this, but the variations allowed by sexual reproduction combined with a selection event. -And then when we consider that nearly all animal life has the same generic form, why does it not stand to reason that it is selection that forces the hand of creatures to change? To me, it seems that the background DNA is the substrate and selection event is the active force of change--it forces a path for the organism. I think your take is exactly the opposite?-And why can't PE be described simply as a "ramping up" of selection events? I've asked this a couple times, but you've remained silent here. -It sounds to me that epigenetics and such are to explain a ramping up in the rate of mutations, but in the grand scale of things I still don't see how that displaces selection nor provides any kind of basis to argue for a deity. -Going back to dogs, it is true that all dogs can still interbreed and by the definition of species that I am familiar with, a pug isn't a different species than wolf. But my point was the source of variation. Everything inside of a wolf's DNA allows it to be a pug. Only the act of humans breeding for traits made goldens, pugs, poodles, etc. The variations you see from continent to continent in wolves are minor because the selection pressures are minor. The selection pressures for dogs are major and therefore you get all the variations that you see. There's no need in this scenario to posit anything other than sexual reproduction + selection as far as I can see.

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