Animal Breeding and evolution

[Gracchus]

Natural selection - artificial selection comparison fail.

Humans are as much a part of nature as any other species, although some folks like to think that their feces aren't aromatic. In other words, the distinction between "natural" and "artificial" selection is a strictly egotistical one.

Humans are predatory, and also have a tendency to commensalize, like leaf-cutter ants and fungi.

I will say that possibly artificial selection can be faster. but natural selection is brutal and tends to produce more self sufficient creatures that have more useful adaptations or traits.

I submit that "natural" selection is seldom as "brutal" as the abattoir.

Artificial selection only produces traits that humans want in the animal while natural selection produces traits to help that animal stay alive

Traits that are useful to humans help a species to stay alive.

 

[Sanguis]

Humans are as much a part of nature as any other species, although some folks like to think that their feces aren't aromatic. In other words, the distinction between "natural" and "artificial" selection is a strictly egotistical one.

Humans are predatory, and also have a tendency to commensalize, like leaf-cutter ants and fungi.

Artificial selection is a form of natural selection, but artificial selection is more to do with a certain type of environment, where the "fittest" are the most useful to mankind.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Artificial selection is a form of natural selection, but artificial selection is more to do with a certain type of environment, where the "fittest" are the most useful to mankind.

Not really. Artificial selection is where we specifically determine who breeds with whom. It's distinct from natural selection in that the environment plays no part in the actual selection process.

 

[Nathan Poe]

The result must be far less probable in an unguided solution unless you allocate a lot more time to the process and indeed the best solution from a survival point of view may never be achieved.

Time's only a factor if you're a YEC, and Natural Secection doesn't produce the "best" solution, only the first one that works.

 

[Skaloop]

Not really. Artificial selection is where we specifically determine who breeds with whom. It's distinct from natural selection in that the environment plays no part in the actual selection process.

But humans would constitute part of the environment, and as such would play a part in the natural selection. The only real difference is that we can make it happen faster and more directed than it would happen without human intervention, but it's still the same evolutionary process.

 

[Sanguis]

Not really. Artificial selection is where we specifically determine who breeds with whom. It's distinct from natural selection in that the environment plays no part in the actual selection process.

We become the part of the environment for the selection, though.

Cows that produce the most milk become the "fittest" because they breed mor often, and don't have to worry so much about predators (Except McDonnalds, well, I say McDonnalds, but does anyone genuinely believe they make their burgers with real beef?), or having to find food.

Artificial selection is just natural selection with deliberate human intervention.

As Skaloop said, we become part of the environment. The animals that are the fittest are the ones that we deem most useful, in return, they get food, protection and usually a mate.

We're still a part of nature. Artificial selection is just more consciously directed than natural selection.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

We become the part of the environment for the selection, though.

Cows that produce the most milk become the "fittest" because they breed mor often, and don't have to worry so much about predators (Except McDonnalds, well, I say McDonnalds, but does anyone genuinely believe they make their burgers with real beef?), or having to find food.

Artificial selection is just natural selection with deliberate human intervention.

As Skaloop said, we become part of the environment. The animals that are the fittest are the ones that we deem most useful, in return, they get food, protection and usually a mate.

We're still a part of nature. Artificial selection is just more consciously directed than natural selection.

But humans would constitute part of the environment, and as such would play a part in the natural selection. The only real difference is that we can make it happen faster and more directed than it would happen without human intervention, but it's still the same evolutionary process.

It's the same process, but artificial selection isn't a specialised subset of natural selection. I suppose it depends on how general you consider 'natural' selection to be. I see it as any selection pressure that arises naturally (hence the name), as distinct from any selection pressure that arises artificially.

 

[LifeToTheFullest!]

Over a couple of centuries dog breeders have effectively turned dogs who were more like wolves into poodles. This has been a result of guided selective breeding programmes.

Dawkins in his book "The Greatest Show on Earth" clearly thinks this is a proof that evolution by natural selection could also produce remarkable changes in a period of millions years without intelligent guidance.

But it strikes me that this example only proves that Intelligent design can produce guided changes over time in a more effective and timely way than the mechanism of natural selection, survival of the fittest et al could ever hope to achieve.

I haven't read all the posts, so sorry if this has been mentioned already, but it certainly bears repeating.

Between a lion and a chihuahua, who do you think would last longer in the wild? Guess which one is also a product of non-random natural selection?

The OP is the kind of false dichotomy one imagines without a basic understanding of natural/sexual selection.

To the OP, I recommend you finish Dawkin's book, you may actually learn something.

 

[Split Rock]

I doubt it, but I suppose you misunderstood me. One cannot make a credible argument where claiming that artificial selection requires intelligent input, therefore natural selection requires the same.

Well, I agree with that. I wasn't sure what point you were trying to make, nor really what point mindlight was trying to make either.

 

[mindlight]

Still doesn't explain the common errors, like why we should have the same defective genes as chimpanzees, ERVs, etc.

Physical similarities between species are likely to be damaged in similar ways by changes in the natural order. Common errors do not have to be considered as proofs of common ancestry

 

[mindlight]

The only difference between natural and artificial selection is the origin of the selection pressure. Thus, artificial selection is a valid way to show how natural evolution works.

Not really there is also the determination and purpose with which a certain selective pressure is pursued. Artificial selection by Human beings for instance serves human agendas which may have nothing to do with survival. How long do you think poodles would actually survive in the wild!!

Natural selection can't fail, since it doesn't have goals. Artificial selection is quicker than natural selection because human-induced selection pressures are often stronger than those found in nature. But that's just a minor, and frankly irrelevant, detail.

The key point here for me is the efficiency with which purposeful selection and breeding works as opposed to the more random and drawn out theory of natural selection. The first approach is purposeful, disciplined and determined and the second a matter of random drift which only occasionally hits the genetic jackpot.

 

[Split Rock]

Physical similarities between species are likely to be damaged in similar ways by changes in the natural order. Common errors do not have to be considered as proofs of common ancestry

I'm sorry but, this makes no sense. We are refering to similarities in the genetic material between species that you claim are not genetically related. Just as similarities between your DNA sequence and your brother's are do to a common ancestor, so it must be for species.

 

[Split Rock]

The key point here for me is the efficiency with which purposeful selection and breeding works as opposed to the more random and drawn out theory of natural selection. The first approach is purposeful, disciplined and determined and the second a matter of random drift which only occasionally hits the genetic jackpot.

No. Natural Selection is not random. It is a form of Selection. That means that certain genotypes will be selected over others because it provides a better fitness (chance of reproductive success). Genetic Drift, on the other hand, is random. And it is genetic drift that is responsible for most of the differences genetic sequence between us and chimpanzees. That is why there is no way of explaining these differences (because they are random and do not alter phenotype) outside of common descent.

 

[mindlight]

Most of what you say is true, but I don't see how that leads to your conclusion. Yes, natural selection is usually (although not always) much slower than artificial selection, and less likely to produce any particular phenotypic change. (I don't know how to evaluate your last statement, since the best solution from a survival point of view is not usually the goal of artificial selection, and is unlikely to be achieved for either natural or artificial selection, at least for anything larger than a bacterium.)

The question you should be asking, however, is not whether natural selection is as fast as artificial selection, but whether it is fast enough to explain the changes that have occurred over the history of life. This is an empirical question, so there's really not a lot of point in just guessing at the answer. One way of approaching the question is to study natural selection in the wild, either in natural experiments using populations that are experiencing a new environment, or in planned experiments in which some aspect of the environment is changed in a way that mimics a natural process, like the introduction of a new predator. Then you can see just how fast a species changes visibly when exposed to a new selective pressure. The answer is, "Very fast" -- many orders of magnitude faster than the average rate of change of fossil species, and even orders of magnitude faster than the rate of change during the bursts of evolution known as adaptive radiations.

Given the actual time available for natural selection to have acted, which is very large, and the rate at which natural selection can be observed changing species, natural selection seems to be more than adequate as an explanation for the history of life.

I agree the evidence supports the view that changes can happen very fast in the natural world as in the human. That the fossil record does not therefore ever truly articulate so called evolutionary jumps might be one way of reading that. I am not sure that this speed of natural change when faced with different stimuli necessarily supports your concluding endorsement of natural selection though. That life has survived, thrived and died with such rapid rises and falls may be explained in a shorter timespan than natural slection requires if a guiding intelligence is assumed rather than its absence.

 

[mindlight]

This discussion leads me to the conclusion that intelligent interventions in the natural world can generate changes in species configuration and diverse expressions of each species in a very short time period.

That if human beings with such limited intelligence are able to make such changes so rapidly a higher intelligence would be able to do so even more rapidly.

Natural selection is only necessary as an explanatory mechanism if one assumes a lack of intelligent intervention from the beginning of ones research. The time spans required and relative inefficiency of this method vis a vis intelligent intervention lead me to think it a matter of dogmatic faith to hold to this doctrine.

So called false starts/ extinctions would be explicable to a YEC by a consciously orchestrated global flood which wiped out a diversity of species expressions unprecedented in the modern context.
In that sense the brutality of such an intervention is more worrying to me than the day to day mechanics of survival of the fittest.

Survival is not the most powerful force in my experience. It is not survival that compels a man to look after his children or to stay faithful to his indifferent wife when younger more attractive females are available. Love is both more powerful and adequate as an explanatory force in creation as in human experience and it is only in its absence that the hollow falsities of survival of the fittest start to appeal. Beetoven was blind for crying out loud.

 

[mindlight]

I'm sorry but, this makes no sense. We are refering to similarities in the genetic material between species that you claim are not genetically related. Just as similarities between your DNA sequence and your brother's are do to a common ancestor, so it must be for species.

Not if you see the genetic material, phenotypes etc as mere building blocks for a grand designer. Of course there would be design similarities between different species. Any good developer of new things reuses good designs which work. These prove a common designer not a common ancestor. But each species taken as whole remains a unique creation. The spin offs and differentiation that is possible within individual species do not prove movement from primal species to a variety of descendants merely the flexibility of each original geneotype. The essential presumption of evolution is the godlessness of the process. But this is an assumption not a fact until people choose the assumption as a fact and all evidence as interpreted in the light of it. The evidence is that life is a miracle which really should not exist at all given the terrors of this universe and yet it does exist and it does thrive.

 

[mindlight]

No. Natural Selection is not random. It is a form of Selection. That means that certain genotypes will be selected over others because it provides a better fitness (chance of reproductive success). Genetic Drift, on the other hand, is random. And it is genetic drift that is responsible for most of the differences genetic sequence between us and chimpanzees. That is why there is no way of explaining these differences (because they are random and do not alter phenotype) outside of common descent.

Natural selection does not have to result in survival it can mean extinction also. The circumstances in which one species dies may be ones in which a long extinct species would have thrived. If this is not randomness then what is. Selection of hairless skinnny beauties can be on the basis of todays warm weather only to find that the fat hairy girl was the only one that would survive the sudden iceage. Randomness and rapid catastrophic change render the model ridiculous or make its defences appear contrived.

 

[mindlight]

Time's only a factor if you're a YEC, and Natural Secection doesn't produce the "best" solution, only the first one that works.

Actually given the apparent evidence for extinctions in the fossil record why according to this theory would you necessarily believe that Natural selection improves the odds of survival of any one particular genotype over another.

 

[mindlight]

But humans would constitute part of the environment, and as such would play a part in the natural selection. The only real difference is that we can make it happen faster and more directed than it would happen without human intervention, but it's still the same evolutionary process.

This of course logical within your theoretical framework but then why not take one step further and assume that the rapid changes experienced under human direction may have occurred even more rapidly under that of an even greater intelligence. It is the assumption of a dumb process that renders the theory of natural selection so dumb ;-)

 

[Skaloop]

Not if you see the genetic material, phenotypes etc as mere building blocks for a grand designer. Of course there would be design similarities between different species. Any good developer of new things reuses good designs which work. These prove a common designer not a common ancestor.

Design similarities, sure, but not in the nested pattern that we find them. Why would gills be the design for all the fish, and lungs for all the whales, with no crossover? If being mammalian can work in the ocean, and having gills can work in the ocean, why does no mammal have gills? Why does no fish produce milk for its young?

Why use very different designs for identical environments or very similar designs for very disparate environments? Instead of common design, which could have any animal show any trait, the pattern we find shows decent with modification, precisely as suggested, predicted, and required by evolution.