The Truth about Species! - Part 1 (Why Sex) http://nature-sucks.blogspot.com/2010/10/truth-about-species.html
December 4, 2010
Today I will show how easy is to understand species without complex theories, in a simples and natural way. The only way! My first point it's about the meaning of the word species. Species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. This means that you can't apply this concept to all forms of life, in other words, some forms of life can't bee classified as species in this way. The best example of this are the Prokaryotes. Surely they can be morphological classified, but not as species. Secondly, you can't understand a specie without understand sexual reproduction. Today, sexual reproduction means processes that pass a combination of genetic material to offspring, resulting in increased genetic diversity. But this may be a wrong definition, because the evolution of sexual reproduction continues to be a major puzzle. However this is a wrong definition, because this is in fact a very simple puzzle as I will show next. The placed pieces of the classic view do not solve the puzzle, because they are wrongly positioned in the next way: 1. Speciation (all organisms); 2. Sexual selection (some species) Those pieces need to bee changed, like this: 1. Speciation (some organisms); 2. Sexual selection (all species). For any classic evolutionist this sounds stupid, but I can explain it; you need to think in species as an end by itself, this means that Prokaryotes have no species like mammals laid no eggs! Speciation it's an acquired skill, it's so simple that is annoying how people don't see it! Now you can complete the puzzle in a extremely trivial way, knowing that sex it's the mechanism that support speciation like the mammal womb discard the need of eggs! For the question, why sexual reproduction? You may simple answer, because it's the mechanism of speciation. In this moment some may ask, but aren't there asexual species? We should never forget that we are first of all working with words and their meaning. Words are some times very miss leading and more subject to opinions than facts. For a child, a tree it's an asexual organism, like for some grownups, because for them trees
don't move. For a classic evolutionist a tree it's a sexual organism, because its wisdom says him that trees have sexual organs. However, they are all wrong! Thinking in the Parthenogenesis, we may ask, are not they an asexual species? Again, for the classic evolutionist, its wisdom says yes, it is, because they are all females. Here, the classic evolutionist it's like the child thinking in trees, arguing that they don't move! The answer it's in fact very easy, and lies in the first question. When we ask if there aren't asexual species, the answer it's an absolute no, there are not asexual species, because sex it's the de facto speciation mechanism. Thinking again, Parthenogenesis are species, so they are sexual. Simple isn't it? No? Ok, I understand! Let's return to the tree example. Trees are not sexual just because they have sexual organs, they are sexual because there is a process that can be classified as sexual selection. In this process we don't just have the flowers, we have the pollinators. Pollinators are not only participants but essential to the sexual selection achievement. Now the child knows that albeit trees don't move, bees fly. "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." - Albert Einstein Classic evolutionists can't see sex as a no matter what kind of process (mating courtship), unlike the anything matter kind of process of the Natural Selection, and it's because that they need sexual organs, and it's because that they don't see bees, and it's because that Parthenogenesis are asexual, and it's because that they say: "A lack of sexual reproduction is relatively rare among multicellular organisms, for reasons that are not completely understood." - Wikipedia, Asexual reproduction The no matter what kind of process in Parthenogenesis, for instance in the case of the New Mexico whiptail, makes that despite being an all female species, the whiptail still engages in "mock mating" with other members of its own species, giving rise to the common nickname "lesbian lizards". A common theory is that this behavior stimulates ovulation, as those who do not "mate" do not lay eggs. By other words, the classic evolutionist doesn't see the mating process as central in the sexual reproduction, the classic evolutionist can't see beyond the organism's physical hardware, where instead, sex it's all about software, all about species.
Aspidoscelis neomexicana To be continued...
References: An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection by Rui Monteiro - 2010
The Truth about Species! - Part 2 (Cambrian Mystery) http://nature-sucks.blogspot.com/2010/10/truth-about-species-part-2.html
December 4, 2010
Today I will clarify my previous post about speciation as an acquired skill. I will try to answer the question or observation that I am making a circular argument! Thirst of all, I'm not one of those that support Ring Species, so, I am the thirst one to refuse those kind of circular arguments as you can see in my post Ring Species another Illusionist
Trick. My point it's very simple, I defend that speciation it's an acquired skill. I'm just saying that speciation isn't possessed by all organism, I'm saying that there is a very sharped cuted frontier between organism with and without speciation, I'm saying that that frontier it's between Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes! My following argument it's strongly based in the brilliant article of Rui Monteiro entitled An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection. In the article mentioned before, that I strongly recommend, we see the following very important concepts: 1. Potencial Speciation; 2. Polymorphisms; 3. Species' Kernel.
Delimitation of the Species' Kernel This Species' Kernel it's a landmark in the perception of the evolution of life. However, for more ingenious that you can think about that landmark, the terms Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes already have the answer. Prokaryotes - Without a nucleus; Eukaryotes - With a nucleus (kernel). The previous definitions are about the Hardware of the organism, but what a classic
evolutionist can't do, it's to turn this Hardware concept in a Software one. If they did, it would be evident that speciation it's all about nucleus, the never glimpsed, Species' Kernel. Kernel, nucleus or core, are names for a very important concept, the concept that something can be very strict and at the same time very versatile. As an example, your computer system are very common among other computers. However, the way each computer system or operating system it's configured, reveals a great adaptation to circumstances in a very independent way from the system itself. This concept does not aply only to computers, or are exclusive to human activites, and aren't necessary an human invention. Planet earth has a core, sun has a core, which dispense any intention or even life, it's something intrinsic to nature. Brains, from the more simple to the more complex have a core, the so called Hypothalamus, making something natural even to life. Even physics reveal that the materialistic world of atom have a center, designated by Atomic nucleus, amazingly discovery only in the past century. So, we should not be surprised that the concept of nucleus, as the base of speciation, remains a very obscure subject. With nucleus, or kernel, we have another important concept, called layer. Nowadays everything that is produced have layers, and the respective process itself are layered. You are seeing this page thanks to protocol layering, with the OSI model as it's best metaphor. In fact, protocol layering it's the core of the Internet revolution that we see today. No wonder that life had catched it's potential thousand of millions of years ago, giving birth to Eukaryotes and its layered Polymorphisms! What have a classic evolutionist to say about this? In facto nothing! For him, there are only Natural Selection, and he is blind to the point of think in an animal as a bacteria. For him, the sharp difference between Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes doesn't ring a bell. For a classic evolutionist, evolution it's a continuous event. The classic evolutionist are living a nineteen century philosophy, unknowing that nature aren't continuous, that nature are discrete and countable. So a classic evolutionist says things like: "The tyranny of the discontinuous mind" - Richard Dawkins something that I must correct: "The tyranny of the discontinuous nature" Unfortunately, classic evolutionist are supporting their own chains. Unfortunately they are now dependent of the allopatric speciation, they can't explain sexual selection, and can't give a good explanation to the Cambrian Explosion! "Allopatric speciation is just another miss intuition, where a species needs to
be isolated from other to evolve. There is something that separates all the species in an irrefutable and allopatric way, time. Despite some species have millions of years of existence; they would be able to interbreed with others along any moment of that same time. So, for instance, crocodiles exist for 200 million years, and yet, the crocodile of 200 million years would be able to interbreed with the actual one. This means that the process of speciation does not depend on isolation, it is much more robust and abstract than any intuition could predict." - in An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection Well, everything can be refutable however. For instance, Michio Kaku believes in time travel, and in invisible man. If you believe in that blindly, maybe crocodiles are interbreeding along time, and time aren't a allopatric isolation! Michio Kaku believes in time travel By the way, Charles Darwin wrote a book entitled On the Origin of Species, yet, this book has a dangerous idea, and that idea it's in the title, misleading the classic evolutionist. The book should have been entitled On the Origin of Life, because Life and Species aren't the same thing! The dangerous idea it's thinking that Life and Species started at the same time and are the same thing. We may forgive Charles Darwin, because he hasn't had the tools to study Prokaryotes, however, we can't excuse the contemporaneous evolutionists, because nowadays we have all the tools to see the difference between Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes! This is why the classic evolutionist will never explain the Cambrian Explosion, because the Cambrian Explosion is in fact the Origin of Species. Life started along time before, but it was the strength of speciation that generated an explosion of life that only the new acquired skill allowed, being the prove of its revolutionary new concept. The new concept of speciation it's powerful precisely because doesn't require any kind of isolation, allopatric isolation or any other kind, and it's because the break of this restrictions that life exploded as never seen before (see Entropic Nature for more explanations). To be continued... References: An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection by Rui Monteiro - 2010 The Truth about Species! - Part 1 (Why Sex)
The Truth about Species! - Part 3 (Inductive Nature) http://nature-sucks.blogspot.com/2010/11/truth-about-species-part-3.html
December 4, 2010
Today I will specify the terms I have been used before. One of the terms are Software. When I say that Sexual Selection it's more about Software than Hardware what I'm really saying? For Software I mean what Faraday expresses about Matter and its Lines of Force, whose theory holds that all of reality is made up of force itself. So, I will explore this Lines of Force to explain speciation. In An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection, we have a new scheme, that gives a new meaning to the word Species.
Scheme for the The Survival of the Fittest Next we see stated the following about the The Survival of the Fittest: "By analogy, it means the survival of the most adapted object to the environment. By induction, it means the survival of the most adapted protocol to the environment induced by its objects." - in An Open Letter
about Natural and Sexual Selection Looking to the scheme, we can see that speciation doesn't apply to Prokaryotes. There is a void in the line of species. In the sentence that follows we see speciation associated with induction, that supports a take off of a new layer, here called protocol. The organisms aren't considered in an isolated form, the fittest is now made collectively, it's the specie that it's the most fitted not the organism, supporting a strict differentiation between organism and specie. Now we will take the concept induction a little further. We will try to construct a good metaphor for this induction concept. The Electromagnetic Induction it's a good example of Induction, where a systematic variation of a magnetic field results in an inducted electric current. We know that the most efficient way to induce an electric current it's trough a solenoid, or a coil if you prefer. This solenoid are made of loops or turns, where the Inductance (the induced electric voltage) it's proportional to the square of the number of loops, and some
how to the coil radius.
Solenoid as a group of loops Now we will construct our metaphor. I stress the word metaphor, to rest no doubts about this reasoning. In this metaphor we have: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Solenoid = Specie; Loop = Organism; Magnetic field = Environmental Opportunity; Induction = Selection; Alignment (torque vector) = Fitting.
In this example we will think in a specie of birds and two differing environmental opportunities (small seeds in patch A, large seeds in patch B). This two differing environment opportunities can result in two polymorphisms or in two species through a speciation process. This environment opportunities need to be two previously unexplored opportunities, or else, they aren't opportunities at all. Thinking in the Solenoid metaphor we have the following two scenarios:
1. Polymorphism as a single bended solenoid (specie)
2. Speciation as two straight solenoids (species) We may argue that there is a Ultimate Limit State beyond which the specie breaks up. The line of force comes from the opportunity that resembles a strong magnetic field. This disruption it's well described in the article On the Origin of Species by Natural and Sexual Selection, by the following image:
Simulated speciation with the punctual population split - in On the Origin of Species by Natural and Sexual Selection
Simulated speciation with the punctual mutational process - in An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection "In this way, a polymorphism is reversible if, for any case, the associated opportunity ceases is effect. On the other hand, a speciation has its own kernel, ending the previous implication, that is, a speciation is not reversible if, for any case, the associated opportunity ceases is effect." - in An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection In the same articled sited before it's stated the following: "However, there is one thing that I think as a wrong presumption. The presumption that the migration rate leads the speciation, because is another example of bad intuition. In the Fig. 3 of your article, where you correlate migration rate with sigma, there is a clear symmetry. This symmetry reveals a correlation between sigma and migration rate, with the first causing the last! Being so, migration rate is the consequence, and not the cause." - in An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection
Fig. 3. Effect of ecological parameters on the rate of speciation. - in On the Origin of Species by Natural and Sexual Selection For the question, in which way it's Sexual Selection the mechanism of speciation? We may answer that Sex; Selects the Fitting of the Organism accordingly to the Fitting of the Specie, which in turn, Fits the Specie to the Environmental Opportunity, or metaphorically saying, Inducts the Alignment of the Loop accordingly to the Alignment of the Solenoid, which in turn, Aligns the Solenoid to the Magnetic field. By other words, Sexual Selection forces the integrity of the Specie (Solenoid), not allowing any change by nothing else than an opportunity acting in an aggregated way, and it's exactly because of this, that species, instead of polymorphisms, are reversible only by extinction. So Sexual Selection it's not about diversity as many try to prove! Sexual Selection it's about aggregated exploitation of existing opportunities. Sexual Selection doesn't support diversity by itself, Sexual Selection tolerates aggregated diversity at the cost of an opportunistic exploitation. For this aggregated diversity, we may even think in the premises of another kind of induction, the mathematical induction. Here we basically need two conditions: 1. The basis: One chosen organism of one given aggregated diversity represents an opportunistic exploitation; 2. The inductive step: An opportunistic exploitation by one organism of one given aggregated diversity, implies the same opportunistic exploitation by one other subsequent organism of the same aggregated diversity. The previous conditions are needed to any specific diversity become dominant in an opportunistic niche. "Mutation is the resource of information for any species, however, it as to be amplified by an Opportunistic Exploitation to be convergent at a Species level." - in An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection The speciation skill forces the integrity of the species trough the respective kernel, so we should expect long periods of stability and short periods of fast change (speciation). In general, we may conclude:
1. Prokaryotes - Phyletic gradualism; 2. Eukaryotes - Punctuated equilibrium. This is probably one of the main reasons why transitional fossils tend to be missing links. To be continued... References: An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection by Rui Monteiro - 2010 On the Origin of Species by Natural and Sexual Selection by G. Sander van Doorn, Pim Edelaar, Franz J. Weissing - 2009 The Truth about Species! - Part 1 (Why Sex) The Truth about Species! - Part 2 (Cambrian Mystery)
The Truth about Species! - Part 4 (Entropic Nature) http://nature-sucks.blogspot.com/2010/11/truth-about-species-part-3-entropic.html
December 4, 2010
This will be the last post of the series of 4. Today I will try to close this subject about species. In the post about the Cambrian Mystery, there is a very important thing that was not talked about. Today I want to show that life has a true cancer, this cancer has its roots in the entropic physical world. Nowadays, entropy in evolution it's a no man's land. Here the Classic Evolutionist has little to say, for him mutations takes millions of years where the deleterious ones are minimized by Natural Selection. What you don't see an Classic Evolutionist answer, it's to the following questions:
How can Natural Selection minimize frequent day by day deleterious mutations being a very slow process? If de novo deleterious mutations are so frequent, why aren't called entropic mutations? To have an idea of the amount of this deleterious mutations, we may refer the numbers from the CDC showing America's leading types of birth defects. Researchers looked at the U.S. rate of birth defects from 1999-2001. Here's the list of the six major types of birth defects covered in the CDC's report, along with the number of babies per year born with those conditions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Genetic defects (Down syndrome and other conditions): 6,916 babies per year; Mouth/facial defects (cleft lip and/or cleft palate): 6,776 babies per year; Heart defects: 6,527 babies per year; Musculoskeletal defects (including arm/leg defects): 5,799 babies per year; Stomach/intestinal defects: 2,883 babies per year; Eye defects: 834 babies per year.
Birth defects are the leading cause of infant death and contribute substantially to long-term disability, the CDC reports. As we can see in the following graphic, the incidence of this kind of disease are more or less the same along time, something that make us to suspect of its systematic character, something that strongly indicates limitations intrinsic to the reproduction system.
From CDC And this isn't all. If doubts remain, we just have to point
out the correlation between age and autosomal trisomy. The Relationship between Maternal Age and Chromosome Size in Autosomal Trisomy by N. Risch et al., proves that not only Trisomy 21 are exponential correlated with the maternal age, but also, many others trisomies.
Exponential incidence of Down Syndrome In this case, not even Chernobyl can compete with age when it comes to cause birth defects. "In terms of the sheer number of cases, genetic factors are the most important cause of congenital anomalies. It has been estimated that they cause approximately one third of all birth defects (see Fig. 19-1) and nearly 85% of anomalies with known causes. Any mechanism as complex as mitosis or meiosis may occasionally malfunction; thus, chromosomal aberrations are common and are present in 6% to 7% of zygotes. Many of these early embryos never undergo normal cleavage to become blastocysts. The changes may affect the sex chromosomes, the autosomes, or both (chromosomes other than sex chromosomes). In some instances, both kinds of chromosome are affected. Persons with chromosomal abnormalities usually have characteristic phenotypes, such as the physical characteristics of infants with Down syndrome. Numerical and structural changes occur in chromosome complements." - in Before We Are Born, Keith Moore and T. V. N. Persaud
Fig. 19-1: Aneuploidy - a deviation from the human diploid number of 46
Here the Classic Evolutionist suports Natural Selection exclusivity arguing that the severity of the previous anomalies have a serious effect on health, making impossible the achievement to the reproductive age, and so, minimizing this anomalies in the gene pool. However, they don't have nothing to say about the systematic character of this anomalies. But even with the argument of the reproductive age we have problems, for instance, if we include the children up to 2-yearold, we have an increase of incidence of birth defects from 3% to 6%! And in the case of including the up to 5-year-old children we have 8% of incidence, due to the fact of some birth defects being only detectable at upper age. And more can be said: "Congenital anomalies may be single or multiple and of major or minor clinical significance. Single minor anomalies are present in approximately 14% of neonates. Anomalies of the external ear, for example, are of no serious medical significance, but they indicate the possible presence of associated major anomalies. For example, the presence of a single umbilical artery alerts the clinician to the possible presence of cardiovascular and renal anomalies." in Before We Are Born, Keith Moore and T. V. N. Persaud Those minor anomalies doesn't necessarily diminishes the population at fertile age, making Natural Selection exclusivity a little bit limited. Now that we start to realize that Entropic Nature aren't a far-fetched idea, we can see it as a barrier to the development of complex organisms as explained in the following graphic:
Per-site mutation rate versus genome size for CChMVd and other biological entities "These primitive replicons would also resemble hammerhead viroids in their extremely error-prone replication.
Thus, our results support the notion that the emergence of replication fidelity mechanisms was central to the evolution of complexity in the early history of life." - in Extremely High Mutation Rate of a Hammerhead Viroid by Selma Gago et al. Complexity it's an important issue, and so, it's unsurprisingly that human activities, like production, have to solve the same problems as those that from the beginning undermined life's complexity. In the end of the 20st century, increased complex products like chips demand a new and more strict kind of quality control. The old 3 Sigma became obsolete to this new complexity, and for those new extremely complex products, like mobile phones, computers, and other electronic devices, was drafted the new 6 Sigma, resulting in 3.4 defects per million items, something that makes nature blush of shame. Not so much? Yes, you are right! We should not misunderstand life. Organisms are of an extremely and unimaginable complexity and incomparable with the most complex devices ever made. However, my point isn't about increased conformity, it's more about the need for a new form of reproduction, the Sexual Reproduction in life. As told in The Truth about Species! - Part 1 (Why Sex) post, Sexual Selection it's the mechanism of speciation. So, this mechanism have to guarantee the health of the specie. Because the Classic Evolutionist lives obsessed with the sexual dimorphism, that in fact is no more than a curiosity, he becomes a passionate to the point of believing in this sexual dimorphism as a prerequisite for sexual selection. For me, sexual dimorphism it's just a variable trait dependent on the species, so, you may have great dimorphism, middle dimorphism, low dimorphism and no dimorphism at all (see New Mexico whiptail in Why Sex), and yet, because they are all species, they are all sexual mating organisms (see Why Sex). Now I will exemplify how Sexual Selection blocks Replication Entropy accordingly to that same dimorphism in the next manner:
Sexual Reproduction same as Gaussian Product For the special case of two Gaussian probability densities: the product density has mean and variance given by: Those two Gaussian curves represent the distribution of
Sexual Attraction for each sex. Note that as told before, this it's a kind of fitness at the species level, that has nothing to due with environmental fitness. This fitness it's all about Sexual Selection and nothing about Natural Selection. For a Classic Evolutionist, Sex it's all about diversity, and more diversity. So, it's hard to convince him of Sex as a mechanism of Speciation, as a mechanism of sameness, where inducted diversity is the only diversity, as explained in The Truth about Species! - Part 3 (Inductive Nature). But as we can see, Sexual Reproduction reduces variance, because the product of two Gaussian probability densities with variance less than 1, results in a new Gaussian probability function with a reduced variance, reinforcing the Species' Kernel. In An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection, there is a simulation of sexual reproduction as the product of two Gaussian probability densities, where it's concluded that the Mating Process it's the most value compared to asexual reproduction.
Asexual vs. sexual reproduction in replication fidelity If the problem its the expression entropy, we can call it noise, distortion, inefficiency, drift or any other names that essentially means the same, divergence of alignment. Now we realize that induction it's the main tool against entropy, and population number it's the fuel of that induction. With low populations induction loses its strength, and the fitness of the organism can't be sexual selected accordingly to the now weakened fitness of the respective specie, because this specie starts to act more as a singular organism than a group of them. There is a miss-intuition that says that genetic homogeneity it's the cause of genetic diseases (intrinsic to the organism). But if genetic diseases are distortions how can we say that there is a genetic homogeneity? In fact, it's the other way around. What we have it's a distortion trough entropic mutations that become accumulated in the gene pool, and finally, because the mechanism of induction are weakened, this mutations start to being fixated trough genetic drift, and it's this fixation that indicates a greater vulnerability to intrinsic
diseases that have never before been able to fixate. For instance, the Cheetah species have accumulated intrinsic genetic diseases, due to low population size able to induce otherwise, and so, it becomes divergent of its own species trough genetic drift and its resultant intrinsic genetic diseases' fixation.
Random genetic drift of a single given allele By other words, we are assisting to a Population bottleneck, something that doesn't only supports the notion of Species' Kernel, but also the irreversibility of a species as opposed to what it happens in the case of a polymorphism, just as supported in all the previous posts (see Inductive Nature). To end this series of posts, I can add to the second post about the Cambrian Mystery, that the explosion may also happened mainly due to this entropic nature conquered by the new speciation skill, with induction as his essence. References: An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection by Rui Monteiro - 2010 The Relationship between Maternal Age and Chromosome Size in Autosomal Trisomy by N. Risch et al. Before We Are Born, Keith Moore and T. V. N. Persaud The Truth about Species! - Part 1 (Why Sex) The Truth about Species! - Part 2 (Cambrian Mystery) The Truth about Species! - Part 3 (Inductive Nature)