Not by natural selection? (Introduction)
by David Turell 
, Saturday, February 08, 2014, 15:53 (3941 days ago)
edited by unknown, Saturday, February 08, 2014, 16:08
By RNA producing multiple possibilities?:-http://phys.org/news/2014-02-evolutionary-important-success.html-When you think about evolution, 'survival of the fittest' is probably one of the first things that comes into your head. However, new research from Oxford University finds that the 'fittest' may never arrive in the first place and so aren't around to survive. By modelling populations over long timescales, the study showed that the 'fitness' of their traits was not the most important determinant of success. Instead, the most genetically available mutations dominated the changes in traits. The researchers found that the 'fittest' simply did not have time to be found, or to fix in the population over evolutionary timescales.-We explicitly showed how phenotypes with a high local frequency can fix at the expense of locally rare phenotypes, even if the latter have much higher fitness. Taken together, these arguments suggest that the vast majority of possible phenotypes may never be found, and thus never fix, even though they may globally be the most fit: Evolutionary search is deeply non-ergodic. When Hugo de Vries was advocating for the importance of mutations in evolution, he famously said "Natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest" [2]. Here we argue that the fittest may never arrive. Instead evolutionary dynamics can be dominated by the "arrival of the frequent".-http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0086635
Not by natural selection?
by David Turell , Wednesday, April 30, 2014, 03:23 (3861 days ago) @ David Turell
Sometimes organisms don't compete but get along together:-http://www.livescience.com/45205-data-dont-back-up-darwin-in-algae-study-nsf-bts.html-"One of Charles Darwin's hypotheses posits that closely related species will compete for food and other resources more strongly with one another than with distant relatives, because they occupy similar ecological niches. Most biologists long have accepted this to be true. "Thus, three researchers were more than a little shaken to find that their experiments on fresh water green algae failed to support Darwin's theory — at least in one case."- 'It was completely unexpected," says Bradley Cardinale, associate professor in the University of Michigan's school of natural resources & environment. "When we saw the results, we said 'this can't be."' We sat there banging our heads against the wall. Darwin's hypothesis has been with us for so long, how can it not be right?"-"Certain traits determine whether a species is a good competitor or a bad competitor, he says. "Evolution does not appear to predict which species have good traits and bad traits," he says. "We should be able to look at the Tree of Life, and evolution should make it clear who will win in competition and who will lose. But the traits that regulate competition can't be predicted from the Tree of Life."- -'The researchers — who also included Charles Delwiche, professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland, and Todd Oakley, a professor in the department of ecology, evolution and marine biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara — were so uncomfortable with their results that they spent the next several months trying to disprove their own work. But the research held up.- "The hypothesis is so intuitive that it was hard for us to give it up, but we are becoming more and more convinced that he wasn't right about the organisms we've been studying," Cardinale says. "It doesn't mean the hypothesis won't hold for other organisms, but it's enough that we want to get biologists to rethink the generality of Darwin's hypothesis."
Not by natural selection?
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Wednesday, April 30, 2014, 04:39 (3861 days ago) @ David Turell
Evolution fails in its predictions: > "Thus, three researchers were more than a little shaken to find that their experiments on fresh water green algae failed to support Darwin's theory — at least in one case." > > > 'It was completely unexpected," - Denial:-> "When we saw the results, we said 'this can't be."' We sat there banging our heads against the wall. Darwin's hypothesis has been with us for so long, how can it not be right?" > > "Evolution does not appear to predict which species have good traits and bad traits," he says. "We should be able to look at the Tree of Life, and evolution should make it clear who will win in competition and who will lose. But the traits that regulate competition can't be predicted from the Tree of Life." > > > > -Discomfort & rebellion against the facts:-> 'The researchers..were so uncomfortable with their results that they spent the next several months trying to disprove their own work. But the research held up. > > > "The hypothesis is so intuitive that it was hard for us to give it up, but we are becoming more and more convinced that he wasn't right about the organisms we've been studying," -More denial:->Cardinale says. "It doesn't mean the hypothesis won't hold for other organisms,... but it's enough that we want to get biologists to rethink the generality of Darwin's hypothesis."- Alright boys and girls.. according to good scientific practice, what do we do when a theory or hypothesis fails in its predictions?
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.