Mutations, bad not good (Introduction)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Saturday, July 23, 2011, 01:18 (4851 days ago) @ dhw

http://darwiniana.org/mayrspecies.htm-This is a good article on speciation which highlights the points of the discussion that we have been having. This persons description, though, is about as circular as they come. (At least that's the way it seems) Two species cannot interbreed, unless they do, in which case we will still call them distinct species unless it causes a total fusion of the populations. .. .. .. There are a few points I did pick up from here, though:-1) Taxonomy is ridiculous in that, instead of seeking objectivity, the field in general is religiously attempting to uphold Darwinism despite the holes in their definitions. -2) They are unable to form a concrete, objective classification system. One of the signs of bad science is that of a lack of testable, repeatable predictions. This seems to me to be a study of bad science.- The premise says that 'species' can not interbreed. When species interbreed, such as the Wolf and Coyotes, they do not follow their own definition, instead, they make exceptions. --There are a number of evolutionary processes that make the delimitation of species taxa from each other and the determination of their rank often very difficult. The most important is so-called mosaic evolution. This means that certain characters may evolve much more readily than others. this results in a discord between the message provided by various characters. In particular, reproductive isolation and morphological difference often do not evolve in parallel with each other. This is why sibling species exist; they are reproductively isolated but morphologically indistinguishable. There is no simple recipe by which the problem posed by mosaic evolution can be solved. The decision has to be made in each case on the basis of the totality of information as well as the usefulness of the proposed classification. -What is often the basic problem is an insufficiency of needed information. This is why the decision about the status of isolated populations has to be based on inference, it is not given directly by the available data. This is as true for populations that are geographically isolated as for stages in the evolution of a single phyletic lineage. -The basic message which emerges from this account of the numerous difficulties of the species problem is that the definition of the biological species must be based on its biological significance, which is the maintenance of the integrity of well balanced, harmonious gene pools. The actual demarcation of species taxa uses morphological, geographical, ecological, behavioral, and molecular information to infer the rank of isolated populations.