Biologists shoot themselves in the foot....again!
Conclusion: concerning some of the "advantages" that humans have over the lower primates as we have discussed above, the larger brain size, speech/language, communicative eyes, bipedal locomotion; how do each of these transfer to "an individual's reproductive success"? Especially if we are talking about many "micromutations" over a very long time period. What great advantage is 0.01% larger brain size, 0.01% greater speech capability, 0.01% more communicative eyes, 0.01% more bipedal locomotion?
Answer: NONE!Then we would seem to be left with "fortuitous mutations" or "macromutations"!
33 comments
Small mutations can have large effects.
Nobody, to my knowledge, claims that 0.01% improvement qualifies as a "great" advantage. It is simply an advantage; but even a slim advantage can mean the difference between life and death in primitive situations, detecting/avoiding/evading predators or detecting/stalking/striking prey, for example, and those with even such slim advantages have a better chance of surviving, procreating, and passing along such advantages to their offspring.
A 0.01% advantage per generation means a doubling of the advantage over about 7,000 generations, or about 150,000 - 200,000 years for humans - a mere heartbeat in geological terms. And there's a lot wider natural difference between individual humans than 0.01%. Casey is within 0.01% of someone like Bill Gates or Kobe Bryant only in his dreams.
Allan C. Wilson and others answered this question in the 1970s. If you really want to know, read some recent papers (citations below, just a few among thousands). But why do I think you don't?
To reiterate David in very shorthand, in some cases, that .01% can be the difference between life and death. It's a slim margin, but even then it's a difference, and an advantage.
Adressing fundy misconception on evolution #1102
Evolution does not only proceed through random mutations but also by selective breeding. In most species this is done by females selecting the "best" male as they see it.
New genomes are created upon fertilization by recombination of maternal and paternal chromosomes.
Coming back to mutations, certain mutations, or SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) may only become relevant if random recombination places them together.
Casey is not allowed to speak again until he has read a single chapter in a book on genetics.
What great advantage is 0.01% increase in brain size, language, speech, eyes and bipedalism?
A ten times better than a 0.001% increase!
It is, in fact, a 0.01% advantage. When you have millions of people, and millions of years, even the smallest changes add up.
0.01 percent improvement over everybody else can make the difference between being able to reproduce or not. 0.01 percent improvement per generation over many generations can result in large changes.
Being 0.01 percent faster or stronger or smarter then the other guy can result in the other guy being tiger lunch instead of you.
@ anti-nonsense
I don't have to be able to outrun the tiger, Casey, I only have to outrun you, and maybe by only a claw.
Well, given the stark differences between humans and chimpanzees even though they both roughly share 98% of the same DNA, it would not be surprising that a 0.01% increase in any of those categories you have listed would give one primate species a great advantage over another.
"What great advantage is 0.01% larger brain size, 0.01% greater speech capability, 0.01% more communicative eyes, 0.01% more bipedal locomotion?
Answer: ~0.01%!
Fixed.
"What great advantage is 0.01% larger brain size, 0.01% greater speech capability, 0.01% more communicative eyes, 0.01% more bipedal locomotion?"
The person who gets the gold in an Olympic sport like sprinting wins by fractions of a second. So I think that having a 0.01% advantage in bipedal locomotion would be very useful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeobox
Single-point mutations to the genome can translate into huge changes in phenotype - going from what we'd call a severe autistic to a normal brain, or cleft palate to even teeth, or greatly reducing cancer risk during childhood. Those three were three randomly-clicked-on examples from the list Wikipedia gives, and all would improve the odds of having kids.
You fail biology forever.
A circle has 360 degrees.
Our sub-launched ballistic missiles have a range (unclassified) of 4000 nautical miles.
Math is hard. But without it, science is harder.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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