That’s because Natural selection has no power to create new traits. I am not sure what you mean. If you mean there are other forces besides random mutations that produce variations this is a well-known fact.
I thought it was quite clear that I was referring to how natural selection can spread traits from random mutations throughout an entire population.
I have already done this several times now. I just gave you an example in the last post regarding development plasticity. A plant can change form when placed in a different environment without any gene changes. The environment such as the soil composition its nutrients and the surrounding organisms all contribute to helping the plant fit into its new environment. This is a well suited and integrated change. Therefore, natural selection plays a minor part because the changes have already been determined as a good fit before selection gets the chance to do anything. Selection is more about weeding out the weak and sick lifeforms so if the changes are already well suited and integrated then there's no need for selection. If you want to know more then read the paper.
What plant? What was the different environment? How did it change? Show me a source that tells me these SPECIFIC details. You do know what SPECIFIC means, don't you?
I have also given the example of how development bias can produce certain phenotypic variation over others such as the number of limbs in land-dwelling complex creatures being 4 as opposed to 5 or 6 or 8 regardless of the environmental pressures or species. If evolution is open to any possibility, then why not 6 legs so creatures can run faster and get away from prey. Why not several eyes or eyes in the back of the head to be able to see predators more easily. Why are there certain forms repeated over and over again rather than any other forms regardless of environment and the individual circumstances of the different creatures?
You gave examples? Okay. What organism did you mention in your example? And what specific phenotypic variation did you mention? You don't seem to know what the word SPECIFIC means.
As for your other questions, it is likely that there is some cost associated with such variations which outweigh the benefit gained. Sure, a six limbed animal might be able to run faster, but it will have the cost of added weight of two extra limbs, extra fuel requirements to power the muscles, added costs in developing those limbs... If the speed benefit it gains is only a little bit then the organism is going to be at a disadvantage overall, isn't it?
The standard theory says these similar forms are the result of a massive coincident from convergent evolution. But evidence shows it is more because of the development process being biased to produce certain forms. The example is given by the paper
For example, cichlid fishes from Lakes Malawi and Tanganyika exhibit striking similarities in body shape, despite being more closely related to species from their own lake than to those from the other lake [17,33]. Such repeated parallel evolution is generally attributed to convergent selection. However, inherent features of development may have channelled morphology along specific pathways, thereby facilitating the evolution of parallel forms in the two lakes [17,33]. If so, then the diversity of organismal form is only partly a consequence of natural selection—the particular evolutionary trajectories taken also depend on features of development.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4632619/
So it is not a case of mutations throwing up any possible variation and selection weeding out the bad and finding the best in a blind process like the watch maker Dawkins describes but that the development process drives change and throws up only certain forms which selection may then refine. Primarily the variation has already been decided before natural selection comes into the picture.
Funny, I always thought that the reason why tetrapods had four limbs was because we all evolved from a common ancestor with four limbs. Want to tell me why that is wrong?
Here are some examples for niche construction
‘Niche construction’ refers to the process whereby the metabolism, activities and choices of organisms modify or stabilize environmental states, and thereby affect selection acting on themselves and other species [71–73]. For example, many species of animals manufacture nests, burrows, webs and pupal cases; algae and plants change atmospheric redox states and modify nutrient cycles; fungi and bacteria decompose organic matter and may fix nutrients and excrete compounds that alter environments. Niche construction frequently scales up, across individuals in a population, and over time, to generate stable and directional changes in environmental conditions [73,74].
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4632619/
So creatures can alter their environments and those changed environments alter creatures including those around them and visa versa. Therefore entire ecosystems change as well. If creatures can change environments so that they are well suited and accommodating for them then why would they need natural selection as much. Living things change the environment rather than having to be adapted to the environment through selection and random mutations.
Did you even read my reply to you from when you mentioned this earlier...? Because you have not addressed it at all.
The fact that an organism can have an effect on the environment does not mean that the organism was TRYING to have that effect. Bacteria may change the composition of the atmosphere, but that doesn't mean that they WANT the atmosphere so altered. The change comes simply as a by product of what they were doing to survive.
I haven't made any personal claims but have repeated what the scientific articles have said.
What you THINK they have said, I suspect.
If you want further info on this then you will have to read the papers. They clearly state that natural selection is only one influence on evolution and there are many other influences of variation and, in some cases, natural selection is not needed at all. IE,
What is in question is whether natural selection is a necessary or sufficient force to explain the emergence of the genomic and cellular features central to the building of complex organisms.
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/suppl_1/8597.full
Evolutionary-genomic studies show that natural selection is only one of the forces that shape genome evolution and is not quantitatively dominant, whereas non-adaptive processes are much more prominent than previously suspected.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2651812/
As for the difference between the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) and the Standard Evolution Theory (Modern Synthesis)
The Modern Synthesis
adaptive variants are propagated through selection
The EES
In addition to selection, adaptive variants are propagated through repeated environmental induction, non-genetic inheritance, learning and cultural transmission
The Modern Synthesis
rapid phenotypic evolution requires strong selection on abundant genetic variation
The EES
rapid phenotypic evolution can be frequent and can result from the simultaneous induction and selection of functional variants
Developmental processes play important evolutionary roles as causes of novel, potentially beneficial, phenotypic variants, the differential fitness of those variants, and/or their inheritance (i.e. all three of Lewontin's [98] conditions for evolution by natural selection). Thus, the burden of creativity in evolution (i.e. the generation of adaptation) does not rest on selection alone [12,19,25,27,60,64,73,99–101].
It can be summed up by the following statement
The extended evolutionary synthesis perspective
From this standpoint, too much causal significance is afforded to genes and selection, and not enough to the developmental processes that create novel variants, contribute to heredity, generate adaptive fit, and thereby direct the course of evolution.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4632619/
Here's a question for you.
To show that you actually understand what you are talking about, explain it in simple terms, without any of this "rapid phenotypic evolution", and "simultaneous induction and selection of functional variants" stuff.