evolution text

[John Trueman]

A short comment re Bill Shear's remark ex Mark Ridley's textbook:"Natural
selection is the only known explanation for adaptation".

That statement surely is true, because adaptation is a name we give to the
result of an episode of natural selection (unless the selection has a
stabilizing effect on phenotype -- in which case it most often is
overlooked and not named at all). So 'natural selection' and 'adaptation'
are rather closely related concepts.

But the point is, surely, that many other perfectly non-supernatural
evolutionary processes are known. For example, Darwin made much of sexual
selection. Bottlenecks and founder effects can set populations onto new
trajectories. And a host of molecular mechanisms have been described.
Natural selection is NOT the only known explanation for EVOLUTION.

John T.

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John Trueman
Faculties Research Fellow
Bioinformatics Group
Research School of Biological Sciences
Australian National University
Canberra, ACT 0200,  AUSTRALIA


ph: +61 2 6249 4840
fax: +61 2 6279 8525
email: trueman at rsbs.anu.edu.au

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