Premarital Sex

MosbyMarion
Fri, 30 Apr 2010 23:17:02 +0000

I haven’t looked up the science to this, but in my somewhat-educated opinion, it would become more complex. Those bacteria now had a new tool in their arsenal.



Well, for the record, I have looked up the science:

Before: Population contains both individuals posessing the trait of resistance to antibiotics, and individuals not possesing it.

After: Individuals lacking said trait die, leaving only the ones with resistance.

There is no new tool in their arsenal. The old tool has simply been isolated and made common by natural selection.



Neither. I object with the concept of “something.” No single organism “changes into a different form.” A bug might accidentally be born with red eyes instead of green eyes, but that one small change doesn’t equate to something entirely new. Only after many changes would “variation within a species” become a completely new species. Lamarck proposed that individuals changed; Darwin and subsequent alterations to the theory of natural selection propose that populations change. I have no qualm with the “emergence of new traits,” in fact, I said that before. What I mean is, I do think the “emergence of new traits” is a perfectly reasonable part of natural selection, as explained better by fairy_dreams.



The idea that individuals do not change, but the population does, is exactly my theory. Basic genetics and the theory of natural selection tells us that a population will tend to have it’s ratios of different alleles change over time. You seem to think that entirely new alleles are introduced, at a rate fast enough to turn reptiles into birds and proto-rats into humans within about 60 million years. The only way new alleles can enter the gene pool is if individuals change.