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To: r9etb
What would be the result of accumulated genetic changes within one population, but not shared with another? If X amount of genetic changes occur in 3000 years, then how many more changes would occur in 3 million or 300 million years?
16 posted on 05/28/2002 1:57:26 PM PDT by Junior
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To: Junior
What would be the result of accumulated genetic changes within one population, but not shared with another?

Maybe nothing except a plethora of incredibly beautiful women, as is the case in Iceland. ;-) Or, more seriously, problems such as hip displasia, as occurs when dogs become too inbred.

BTW, this article doesn't actually tell us whether these colonies are truly isolated, or if there's a possibility of intermingling between adjacent islands. It seems to me that if these birds are island-hoppers, there's no reason to expect that they only hop to un-colonized islands.

If X amount of genetic changes occur in 3000 years, then how many more changes would occur in 3 million or 300 million years?

Who knows -- certainly neither of us does. If I had to guess, I'd say that the changes over 3 million years would be minor, primarily because I think the colonies would intermix over time. Nobody's claiming, after all, that this species all of a sudden appeared only 3000 years ago -- I suspect that the silvereye species has been around for a long time.

At any rate, this is pure guesswork. It is certainly not a "test" of evolution to attempt to extrapolate these results to arrive at some pre-determined conclusion. At best, I think one can claim that this is nothing more than a "test" that proves obvious fact that children bear the genetic characteristics of both parents.

24 posted on 05/28/2002 2:21:04 PM PDT by r9etb
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To: Junior
"Sudden" and "Gradual" are relative terms. Sudden may mean in the million year range for mammals and ten year range for bacteria.

I would speculate that various genetic processes occur at different rates. If there were a diffusion-like drift (I haven't checked to see if this is a good model.) things would happen at all time scales. The non-independence of mutations and the effects of selection make analysis difficult.

26 posted on 05/28/2002 2:27:14 PM PDT by Doctor Stochastic
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To: Junior
If X amount of genetic changes occur in 3000 years, then how many more changes would occur in 3 million or 300 million years?

We have a few examples of genetic changes from 300-400 million years ago - the shark and the coelacanth. The answer is ZERO. Speculation is not science, evidence is science and you can speculate all you want but without evidence you got nottin'.

39 posted on 05/28/2002 7:23:47 PM PDT by gore3000
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