:D I was responding to your assertion that you "know what it looks like to be wrong." Which was wrong.BillHamp wrote:Nothing like an argument with someone who uses inflammatory phrases like "Wrong:"windy wrote:Wrong: the organisms don't need to "know" anything. Kin selection theory says that since organisms that help their kin will help pass on copies of their genes in those kin, helping kin is favored by selection in situations where the genetic benefits outweigh the costs.BillHamp wrote:Argument from authority. Coyne argues that group selection isn't a great way of accounting for altruism, which I would tend to agree with, if Coyne understood the difference between kin selection and group selection. Kin selection, which Wilson has rejected, says that organisms protect kin because they know that at least some of their genes will be passed on. That is preposterous at first glance, so why it was ever thought viable is unclear.
"Most biologists reject creationism" is also an argument from authority, doesn't mean it's not informative.BillHamp wrote:First of all, Jan was making an argument from authority.
Your original definition was "organisms protect kin because they know that at least some of their genes will be passed on". That's a very different claim from the one you're making now. That organisms recognize relatives is not "preposterous at first glance".BillHamp wrote:Second, I wasn't careful there and, as you rightly pointed out, used an athropomorphic term that muddied the discussion. That was a mistake. It doesn't change the fact, however, that my basic point was correct. Kin selection requires that organisms not only know that they are related, but that they know to what degree they are related. In other words, I have to be able to tell a brother apart from a cousin if I am to be more likely to lay down my life for a brother than I am for a cousin. So, in fact, the organisms do need to "know" something or at least have the capacity to distinguish degrees of relation.
Wrong. With limited dispersal kin selection can work even without individual recognition.The problem is, animals can demonstrate kin selection, as you define it (helping pass on their genes by helping kin) even when they cannot distinguish one relative from another. That means that degree of relatedness is not, in fact, the driving factor.
Do you understand the Dunning-Kruger effect? :DBillHamp wrote:No, no, no, no, no. You misunderstand the founder effect entirely. Go back and read the rest of my response before creating a strawman. The quote that you have there is precisely what I said in the rest of my post. There were four additional paragraphs explaining what I meant by that, but you chose to cherry pick. I'm starting to think that if you and Jan aren't the same person, you must be close because you continually make the same logical errors.Wrong:BillHamp wrote:You are quite correct about the "founder effect" and yet also quite wrong. The error is in thinking that the founder effect makes it possible for negative mutations to become predominant. It does no such thing.
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Reinhard.B ... uerger.pdf
(a founder effect is a special case of drift due to small population size)...deleterious mutations in a large population are kept at a low frequency within a balance between the forces of selection and those of mutation. A population with relatively fewer individuals, however, will have lower fitness on average, not only because fewer beneficial mutations arise, but also because deleterious mutations are more likely to reach high frequencies through random genetic drift.
see also:
http://darwin.eeb.uconn.edu/eeb348/lect ... node3.html
Here's your entire argument about the founder effect: I didn't "cherry pick" or leave anything relevant out, since you repeat the same mistaken assertion at the end.
Which is, simply, WRONG. The white allele can become fixed by chance in a small population even if it's deleterious. Look at the math again:You are quite correct about the "founder effect" and yet also quite wrong. The error is in thinking that the founder effect makes it possible for negative mutations to become predominant. It does no such thing. It can allow a previously rare allele to become more predominant, but only if it note selected against. The founder effect describes an occurrence of a phenotype at a higher frequency than would otherwise be expected. It happens when only a few individuals, who happen to carry relatively rarer alleles, break off from a larger group.
A good example is a black (B) and white (b) rabbit population in which most rabbits are black and only a few are white. Black, we will say, is advantageous in the environment and so it is favored. Still, a few white rabbits are born each year because the recessive white allele (b) can still be among the (Bb) black adults. At some point, a few (Bb) rabbits split from the group. Now the new population they found, instead of being (BB), (Bb), and (bb) is instead all (Bb). In the first group, the frequency is (B)70%/(b)30%. In the new population, it is B(50%)/(b)50%, so the chances of getting a (bb) rabbit are much higher.
If white is not a disadvantage in this group, there will be more white rabbits because the allele frequency will remain the same. If white is an advantage, then the (b) allele will increase in frequency. If white is a disadvantage, then (B) will again become dominant. If it is neutral, it will stay about 50/50 unless there is genetic drift.
So, the founder effect does not cause an unfavorable allele to become fixed in a population, but it does give the chance for a rare allele to become more predominant IF it doesn't confer a disadvantage.
http://darwin.eeb.uconn.edu/eeb348/lect ... node3.html
If that doesn't help, imagine that by chance, the group that splits away has ONLY white rabbits. Is the allele fixed now?
This is first year genetics, so there is little point in discussing the finer points of kin selection if you can't get your head around this.
