Exactly what, in your mind, does "differential reproductive success" mean?
It means that those organisms with allele A will:
a) have a higher rate of survival in various life hazards (predation, disease, etc.) than those without or
b) be more fertile, producing larger numbers of offspring than those without, or
c) both a) and b) acting together.
So, for example, if a disease hits the population and of those with allele A 50% die of it, while of those without 55% die, that is differential reproductive success. If both alleles were distributed evenly through a population of 200 thousand, the surviving population would consist of 50 thousand with allele A and 45 thousand without. The distribution of allele A has increased (and with it the resistance of the population to this disease.)
Or, if those with allele A normally produce an average of 12 offspring each breeding season while those without normally produce an average of 10, the proportion of the population with allele A will increase--especially if it also offers survival advantages as well.
You misunderstand what I said. I didn't say that genes came about as a response to environmental cues, I said that their expression comes about in response to environmental cues.
What you said is that genetic change came about in response to environmental cues.
No, what I described is the difference between two entirely different mechanisms of genetic change, one that is based upon random chance accidents and one that is based upon non-random chance genetic change due to environmental cues - which have been verified now for over 30 years.
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The presence of pre-existing variational genes is the exact same thing as genetic change due to environmental cues...it is non-random because those changes are mediated by the organism's genome in direct response to those cues..
Naturally, I took "genetic change" to mean genetic change, not change in gene expression.
Thank you for clarifying that you actually meant a change in gene expression.
Variational alleles to not occur randomly with respect to their affects on the organism, they are already present within the genome en trans, kept until they are cued into expression...they have been there since God put them there the day they were created.
Genetic change is as real as changes in gene expression. There are all sorts of reasons why genes themselves change (apart from changes in how they are expressed.)
Whatever genes the creator originally made, they have changed over time, for apart from natural selection, genes normally change at a fairly steady rate. In addition there are normal changes to the regulatory sections of genes which affect the gene expression as well. This is not a matter of changing gene expression through environmental cues, but through mutations in the DNA sequence that regulates the functioning of the gene.
Then you didn't understand what I said, or you didn't understand what the papers state. They both support what I said they do.
Since you have clarified that you actually meant changes in gene expression, not changes in genes, yes they do.
And I didn't say that they were. Genes are not altered by their environment, their expression is either turned "on" or "off" by the cues they receive from their environment.
You didn't specify that earlier. I would not have misunderstood if you had been clearer.
You aren't making much sense here. Whether or not the direct offspring's phenotype is the same as the parent, the exact compliment of the genotype remains the same. Expression does not change that, and the parent's grandchildren, if raised in the same environment as they were, will inherit their phenotype. So phenotypes are heritable.
The genotype is what is inherited. How it will be expressed will depend on environmental cues. As you say, if both parent and child are raised in the same environment, the genotype will be expressed similarly giving similar phenotypes. And if they are not, we may expect the phenotype to be different, although the genotype is still the same.
This is not an evolutionary change though. As you say, if the grandchildren are brought back to the same environment as the grandparents, they will express the genotype as their grandparents did, and not as their parents did.
When genes themselves are changed, that is a permanent, inheritable change and the pre-requisite for evolutionary change.
No, evolutionary change states that a single celled organism can, over eons of time, give way to an elephant.
Actually, no it doesn't. For nearly two billion years all life on earth was prokaryotic. Many, many new species of prokaryotes were produced and there is huge diversity among prokaryotes. If that had continued, without eukaryotes or complex organisms arising, that would satisfy the theory of evolution.
The theory does not say that more complex cells or organisms must come about because evolution is an ongoing process. But it does say they may.
And since we clearly do have a planet filled with more complex cells and organisms than prokaryotes, then we can say that historically, evolution did produce these forms of life. But history is contingent on many factors. It didn't have to turn out the way it did. A planet with diverse prokaryotes and no elephants would still be a planet on which life is evolving.
What you describe here is genetic inheritance.
When the gene inherited by the parent is changed before it passes to the child, that is a heritable genetic change. Some genetic change happens in pretty much every cell division. Humans, on average, have about 100 differences in their genome from what their parents had.
There is no such thing as "microevolution" except in the mind of the evolutionist. This is another word game played to give "macroevolution" the feel and smell of reality.
Funny, I have always associated those terms with the denial of evolution. So many say they agree microevolution happens, but are doubtful about macroevolution.
To scientists, it is all evolution. "micro" and "macro" simply designate scale, not a different process.
Agreed, the variation is pre-existent, environmental cues do not create new alleles, but that's not what I said. I said that environmental cues signal into expression variational alleles that have been stored within the genome unexpressed until they are needed.
You said "genetic change" without explanation. Again, I am happy to have the clarification.
I am somewhat confused by "variational alleles that have been stored within the genome unexpressed until they are needed."
Now it sounds to me as if you are confusing Mendel's discovery of dominant and recessive genes with gene expression keyed to environmental cues.
Do you realize there can be only two alleles in a genome? And if they are both the same, they will be expressed, whether or not they are needed?
What exactly do you mean by "natural selection favours?" and how is that not "mystical" to assign cognative words to a mindless process?
Same as differential reproductive success. See above.
