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I was also taught that evolution is primarily driven by changes in allele frequently within a population far more often than by the emergence of new alleles vi

I was also taught that evolution is primarily driven by changes in allele frequently within a population far more often than by the emergence of new alleles via mutation. > Why is it not fair to expect that those most able of doing that are the ones you are likely to see further adaptations on to keep adjusting Its a reasonable hypothesis, what kind of experiment would confirm it? Would you be comparing between species or between offspring of distinct individuals? I think you'd need to focus on sexual reproduction for both your experimental and control variables, since you're looking to reason about the rate of adaptation. I'm going to read the guy's paper and report back, but from the title I'm thinking that he's finding that asexually propagated plants show just as much flowering-time change in the presence of temperature changes as those whose parents were pollinated and concluding that this code is quite flexible, but that any rewrites among the sexually propagated set are not related to flowering time change. That would be my approach anyway. So my point is just that those are different results. It would be interesting (though perhaps a bit Lamarckian) if evolution favored the more plastic when granting adaptations towards still greater plasticity. But that's a totally separate conclusion from one that studies a phenomenon which changes even when genes do not.

taeric 9mo ago
Ok, I think I can square these ideas. You are pointing out that "adaptation" and "evolution" are largely about changes in genetics among a population. Regardless of how that change came to be, it is expected that the change could be seen in the genetics. From there, it is the idea that the plasticity being looked at here is not something you would be able to identify at the genetic level, as they all have that genetic code, as it were. I think that makes a bit more sense, and I can sympathize with the shortening of "not genetic changes" to "not adaptation" for a title. For the experiments I would need to know if something was adaptation or not, my point is that I didn't think adaptation was something that had a driving mechanism in the genetics. Would be like looking for adaptation reasons on why some blood types are more common than others. At large, the answer is just that any blood type that confers disadvantage is expected to go away. Any that confer advantage would be expected to get prioritized. And this advantage will be as influenced by the environment as it is by anything else. Again, it all goes back to my understanding of the moths. In a world where the color of the moth doesn't matter, you'd expect a rough mix of colors. In the world where blending in with soot was important, the dominant color became black. When that went away, the dominant color flipped back. At all times, it was basic genetics that determined what color moth reproduction made. It was major changes in the environment that determined which one had more representation in the populations genetics.

taeric 9mo ago

Ok, I think I can square these ideas. You are pointing out that "adaptation" and "evolution" are largely about changes in genetics among a population. Regardless of how that change came to be, it is expected that the change could be seen in the genetics. From there, it is the idea that the plasticity being looked at here is not something you would be able to identify at the genetic level, as they all have that genetic code, as it were. I think that makes a bit more sense, and I can sympathize with the shortening of "not genetic changes" to "not adaptation" for a title. For the experiments I would need to know if something was adaptation or not, my point is that I didn't think adaptation was something that had a driving mechanism in the genetics. Would be like looking for adaptation reasons on why some blood types are more common than others. At large, the answer is just that any blood type that confers disadvantage is expected to go away. Any that confer advantage would be expected to get prioritized. And this advantage will be as influenced by the environment as it is by anything else. Again, it all goes back to my understanding of the moths. In a world where the color of the moth doesn't matter, you'd expect a rough mix of colors. In the world where blending in with soot was important, the dominant color became black. When that went away, the dominant color flipped back. At all times, it was basic genetics that determined what color moth reproduction made. It was major changes in the environment that determined which one had more representation in the populations genetics.