Genome complexity: variation within species (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, December 15, 2016, 19:39 (2900 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTES: It's unusual for animals like killifish — which have life spans of years, not months — to evolve so rapidly, especially in four separate spots. To Whitehead, that suggests the mutation for the AHR deletion already existed in the larger killifish population, lying dormant like a superpower the animals didn't know they had. Once the changing environmental circumstances made the mutation useful for fish in polluted spots, it rapidly spread to the rest of the community. In real time, the animals evolved to adapt to their poisoned habitat.[/b] (David's bold)

“'There’s a critical level of genetic diversity that's necessary for the adaptive potential of species,” he continued. Most endangered species, by virtue of being endangered, don't have it." (David's bold)

David’s comment: Please read my bolded areas especially. This supports my contention that challenged surviving species have original genetic diversity to help them survive. No inventions involved.

dhw: All perfectly logical, including the fact that no invention is involved in adaptation. It is innovation that leads to speciation, and nobody can explain that. Potential is the key word. The potential for the life-saving mutation must have been there, or the killifish couldn’t have survived. And there is obviously genetic diversity, or every species would survive. This means that individuals and species are all different, with different potentials. How do they fulfil their different potentials? According to you, through programmes handed down by the very first cells, or by God personally intervening. My (theistic) alternative is that your God gave individuals the ability to use whatever potential they have, and potentials themselves continued to develop as cell communities devised more and more ways of coping with or exploiting the environment.

If bacteria, the initial life forms, are extremely variable within species as shown in this article I presented on Dec. 9th: Friday, December 09, 2016, 18:51,

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/47510/title/The-Pangenome--Are-Si...

why not accept that the variability was supplied by God from the beginning? They obviously use the 'toolkit' easily as the article describes and can live anywhere/everywhere as we see. They didn't have to 'devise' much, if anything, with the tools they were given originally. You are right. All existing potential!