🧵 scientific question about mutation and evolution
Anonymous at Sat, 6 Jul 2024 18:07:40 UTC No. 16270541
everyone knows that evolution is all about mutation and selection. mutations which are advantageous in some environment, meaning that the mutant has more offsprings and passes on more copies of its mutation ends up dominating the gene pool until another mutant comes along and repeats the process.
So this means that speciation can not happen if the mutants are constantly mixing with their parent populations because every mutant (potential new species) ends up replicating itself with an already existing species. So this means the only way speciation can happen is if a bunch of mutants get together and just have incest for a few generations until mating with their parent populations becomes impossible. i am pretty sure my logic is unassailable and no one on /sci/tard can prove me wrong.
Anonymous at Sat, 6 Jul 2024 18:25:32 UTC No. 16270556
>>16270541
Geographical separation
Anonymous at Sat, 6 Jul 2024 18:56:28 UTC No. 16270588
And when the mutant has procreated with the existing population N, the population N contains +1 copy of the new mutation. Repeat until copies of this mutation become large in number.
Anonymous at Sat, 6 Jul 2024 19:44:02 UTC No. 16270642
>>16270541
>i am pretty sure my logic is unassailable and no one on /sci/tard can prove me wrong.
I can't tell if this is bait or what.
>dominating the gene pool
It's a lot less binary than that. Given traits can be more or less common without completely taking over or dying out. Often they'll be situational or involve tradeoffs that means every member having it makes it less valuable to any given member, and variation of ANY sort can potentially be valuable in bamboozling diseases or parasites. On top of that, even a purely advantageous or disadvantageous trait can be mild enough to not pressure itself all the way to the top or the bottom.
>So this means that speciation can not happen if the mutants are constantly mixing with their parent populations because every mutant (potential new species) ends up replicating itself with an already existing species.
Thus none of this applies either. If individual traits are extremely advantageous, they can become ubiquitous in the whole species or a particular population of it. Said population doesn't need to be physically separated or intentionally inbreeding, you can have denser or lighter expressions of a trait within a group. It might be advantageous for members of that population to breed more with each other than the parent group (particularly if they're specialized), and they might be inclined to do so anyway due to shared habits and proximity. This can result in a very gradual and organic speciation event.
But if it doesn't, then you just get variations in features within a population and nobody notices anything weird.