Do you understand you are now reverting to shaming and circular reasoning?
Shaming, yes. Since you ignore everything substantive, it seems appropriate. Why are you not ashamed?
But circular reasoning, no. By “evidence of those mutations” I refer to the remnants of, chromosomal fusions in the form of degenerate telomeres and centromeres, the synteny of chromosomal segments among populations, and other direct evidence, not inferred from phylogenetic trees.
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One should be ashamed of never admitting to being wrong on substantive points, of always coming up with lame excuses and impotent distractions, and of constantly engaging in pathetic mis-directions and tone-trolling in response to substantive refutations and arguments.
The fact that you are not says more about your character than it says about our arguments.
By all accounts you’re wrong, knowingly, and constantly trying to distract from that seemingly to the point of being outright proud of what can only be described as a kind of volitionally obtuse stubbornness. A person who is that should be ashamed, and anyone who interacts with such a person has a moral duty to shame them instead of merely padding their petty and ill-calibrated ego by only engaging them on substance.
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@colewd, you obviously know that you have nothing left to stand on. You should be ashamed of your behavior here.
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I cannot help but feel that Bill is displaying a form of Fideism towards ID and rejection of evolution, and that far from being “ashamed” of it, he is proud of his absolute stubborn devotion in the face of all evidence and reason. 
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Maybe, but if that is his position he should just state that instead of this strange performative act of continuing to “argue”* a position that doesn’t form the basis of his convictions in the first place.
(*) For exceedingly broad conceptions of argue.
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Yes, but part of the mindset appears to be that if he faithfully argues against, and refuses to accept, all the evidence and reasoned arguments against his position, then this evidence and reasoning doesn’t really exist. The “performative act” is an integral part of his fideism, by this viewpoint.
I may seem obtuse but maybe there is a reason I am not caving to the pressure to conform to evolutionary group think.
The problem with your argument and paper is:
You are comparing a species that reproduce in weeks with species that reproduce in years. Do you realize how different this is? Populations grow approximately exponentially so you will get hundreds of thousands of mice before the first deer is born. This generates chromosomal variation that is not possible in deer populations.
The evidence you have provided is interesting but it does little to support identifying the cause of what we are observing in deer.
Only true if the population is growing rapidly, but most populations are stable. Also, again, your estimate of house mouse generation times is way off. And all that would mean, if anything, is that it would take longer for changes to happen in deer populations than in mouse populations. But how much longer? If mice can do it in less than 500 years, then how much longer would it take for deer? Is that longer than available? Do the math. Let’s randomly suppose that the typical mouse generation time is 1 month, while a deer’s is 10 years. That’s a difference of 120x. 120 x 500 = 60,000 years. I will also point out that population size is irrelevant to neutral evolution, and that under nearly neutral evolution small populations actually evolve faster than large ones. So much for impossibility.
Personal incredulity is the last refuge of the creationist.
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I object to your use of the verb “seem.” You are being deliberately, blatantly obtuse.
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The assumption that these mutations are neutral may not be valid. The model here you are proposing is simply time to a population containing chromosome count variants. This is valid for the human population as well as small groups exist for mutations like Robertsonian translocations.
The time for a variant to get fixed in the population (m musculus or deer) is much longer based on current models and may not be feasible given chromosome differences make reproduction more difficult.
As far as supporting the claim “all deer share a common ancestor” a model is needed to show how gene differences became fixed in a new population. Here is the paper you posted earlier with a gene Venn diagram that shows gene differences of two different muntjac deer.
Do you agree that chromosomal fusions occur naturally? Yes/no.
That’s basic population genetics.
You do know that population genetics exists, right?
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“Much longer” than what? Would you kindly specify a range of plausible durations, and justify it with explicit computation. Thank you.
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Generation times has no impact on whether chromosome counts can be fixed in a population. The only impact generation time would have is how quickly it can occur, with population size also having a large impact.
The generation time for wild house mice is 3 months. What is it in deer? This paper lists a generation time of 4 to 6 years in roe deer. So a 24x difference. Mice fixed chromosomal differences into 6 isolated populations in 500 years. 24 x 500 is 12,000 years. How is this a problem?
A new species would start out as a sub-population, most likely an isolated sub-population just like those on the island of Madeira.
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You say this as if the entire field of population genetics, which models that very thing, does not exist.
Here is a model.
Yes, but you need a model showing how gene differences become fixed.
That’s what this is.
Thank you, that’s great, but we need a model.
What is wrong with the model we provided?
Nothing in particular, but is there a model?
…repeat until heat death of the universe.
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Bill doesn’t seem to understand what the term “model” means in science.
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No, that’s not the model at all. The variants are fixed in the mouse populations. So they could be fixed in deer populations in comparable time. And small, isolated populations can give rise to new species in which the chromosomal mutations are fixed.
No, you have no understanding of neutral theory. It takes longer for a neutral variant to become fixed in a larger population, but those mutations happen more frequently, and that exactly balances out. The number fixed per generation is identical.
No, that’s not what you need to provide evidence of common ancestry. Still making the same basic error, year after year.
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If you look at very small sub populations there is fixation but also many variants of the 2n=40. If you look at a territory like Switzerland there is no fixation across that geographic territory with 2n=40 being the dominate chromosome count.
What you are ignoring is the deleterious nature of chromosome change when hybrids are formed.
s12862-018-1322-y.pdf (1.7 MB)
You are not dealing only with neutral mutations in this case according to the paper above I cited.
Providing evidence for common ancestry does not confirm a single ancestor for deer.
Yes, hybrids between populations that have been isolated for a while which will only speed up the process of speciation. Obviously, the chromosomal fusions within each population were not strongly deleterious, otherwise they would not have reached fixation. Or are you trying to claim that these populations of house mice were separately created?
If these populations of house mice were not separately created, then what is your explanation for these observations? How is it that these different chromosomal fusions in each population were able to reach fixation?
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Switzerland is a political territory, not a geographic one. Mice do not respect national boundaries.
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