Evolution is Fact

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

With the forest floor clear, more lodgepole pine seedlings are able to grow from scratch compared to a dense forest of lodgepole pines, where the floor is crowded for water and nutrients and the canopy is blocking the sun.....

HB, you are confusing the "evolution" of ecosystems with "biological evolution".

Ecosystems change over decades, sometimes over years, sometimes even more quickly if something like a fire or flood destroyed the previous ecosystem. That's not evolution in the biological sense, where genetic change comes about over centuries and millenia from natural selection and sexual selection.

[stereologist]

Succession is interesting. It is change without the requirement for genetic change. I always found succession in sagebrush zones to be interesting. It's the occasional fire that keeps the sagebrush as the dominant plant in many areas. Some warbler species have increased due to timbering operations that create zones of young trees. All of this change is independent of genetic changes.

[HydrogenBond]

The point I was making, is the forest fire allowed more fireweed to grow. More fireweed means, more plants making more seeds. More plants making more seeds means more possibilities for genetic change. Maybe nothing appears to have evolved in a decade. However, there is now more genetic possibilities for the future, due to the larger numbers of seeds made possible by the change.

Let us say this web site is an ecosystem. The owner sets the environmental potentials, which are goals and protocols. As members generate and bring in new ideas, sort of like the DNA making changes (I am like a random gene generator), the potential of the site will determine what will have selective advantage. That which minimizes potential to he goal will have advantage.

Say the site was sold, and the environment changed, so what was left was now right, the . The environment would have a new goal in mind from which new criteria of selective advantage would appear. The fireweed see a new environment, which for the short terms gives them all the advantage in the eco-system as well as advantage (number of changes for the future).

[stereologist]

Yesterday I pointed out:

You state that more of a plant exists and therefore evolution must be taking place. That is a conjecture.

Again HB this is all conjecture. Do you have any evidence that evolution is more likely in large populations? You have made repeated claims with all sorts of analogies that might not be appropriate.

But do you have any evidence to back up your conjectures?

[sman]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

The point I was making, is the forest fire allowed more fireweed to grow. More fireweed means, more plants making more seeds. More plants making more seeds means more possibilities for genetic change.

Large populations actually have a tendance towards "stasis", while small peripheral populations is where the real evolutionary action is. It is sexual recombination that is having this effect. Your above statement, I believe, rings true for bacteria.

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

The point I was making, is the forest fire allowed more fireweed to grow. More fireweed means, more plants making more seeds. More plants making more seeds means more possibilities for genetic change. ...

If you want some arguments about possibilities for genetic change, written rigorously, and even have the possibilities calculated , may I recommend the book, The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins. It was his first published book, and I think part of it was taken from his PhD thesis. It's an easy read, you can find it in paperback, and it will show you how to do the (simple) math of applying probability (possibilities) to genetic situations.

Fun read. You can probably find it in your nearest library.