That made me laugh. Thanks.
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Hi Andrew
It seems you understand my point that a point on one graph can be a tree on another. I agree a phylogenetic pattern going back to Noah may form a tree also.
Would you predict a star going back to Noah’s family if that was a true bottleneck? If so can you explain why?
I think so. Is it several branches converging on a single point.?
No. AFAIK common ancestry predicts a nested hierarchy regardless of bottlenecks, so even if we are all descended from a post-Flood population of Ne = 5, we would still expect a nested hierarchy. @John_Harshman, please correct me if I’m wrong.
(When I say common ancestry here I’m not referring to universal common ancestry, but the fact that all humans are descended from a single ancestral population.)
Yes, a polytomy occurs when a tree cannot be fully resolved, and so more than two branches converge on a single node. A star tree is when a tree is rooted in such a polytomy.
Can you understand why the “identical genes” model of separate ancestry that you have proposed predicts a star tree? Do you understand that we do not see a star tree, but instead a nested hierarchy, which falsifies that model of separate ancestry?
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Yes. Because without that assumption you can’t say they were conserved. You don’t know what the separate starting conditions were or how much they’ve changed since then. You don’t know how long it’s been since either of those starting points. And thus you can have no idea whether they’re similar because the sequences were conserved or whether they started that way recently.
You could, but of course how do you know what they were like 400 million years ago?
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For sure, as long as that common ancestry is of non-recombining entities. Of course human ancestry isn’t a tree but a network with every human descended from two branches, not one. You can’t really make a tree of human autosomal sequences for that reason, but you can make a tree of uniparentally inherited sequences, i.e. Y chromosome or mtDNA.
Carry on.
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Hi Andrew
It depends on what is making up the tree. In the current case you are looking at you are comparing diverged sequences.
If we looked at the chromosome sets (number of chromosomes) going back to Noah I would not expect a tree. If we did the same for gene sets (type of genes) I also would not expect a tree.
For Y chromosome or mitochondrial DNA sequences I agree we would expect to see a tree pattern as the sequences diverge over time.
Yet that’s exactly what we see, again and again. Have you ever considered looking at the data before pontificating?
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Bill is talking about “going back to Noah”, which presumably means within the human population. I would suspect that few humans have unique genes, either gained or lost, and not enough in any case to resolve any sort of tree. It wouldn’t be a star tree. It just wouldn’t be anything. Can’t make a tree with no data. What does this have to do with anything? No idea.
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I was not talking about human sequences any more, but your model in which each ‘kind’ begins with some identical genes. In those cases, the genes which began as identical sequences should form a star tree, since each ‘kind’ would immediately split off from the identical sequence with no prior history.
Since we don’t see a star tree, this hypothesis is falsified.
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Correct.
Even if we all descend from Noah (with no Interbreeding with others), we certainly don’t see a “star pattern” in human variation.
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Who can say for certain? I was responding to the bit about “gene sets” because domain gain/loss in myosins provides a grand tree.
I am skeptical that this is your hope, as I would think that you would make a more sincere attempt to explain in plain language if it was.
Your writing strongly suggests to me that your hope is that you can obfuscate things that you cannot explain.
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Why should @misterme987 produce a definition of a term you have been using for several days? Why can’t you produce your own definition?
Unless you’re in the habit of using terms you don’t understand. That would explain it.
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I second Roy’s question, @colewd. Your demand that someone define a term you’ve been using appears to be a bad-faith demand. Can you explain your reasoning?
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Hi Andrew
Is the pattern you see forming based on the same starting point and then mutational divergence from that point?
The lack of an explanation, coupled with this ridiculous sealioning, is consistent with your demand having been made in bad faith.
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Yes, that’s exactly what I said. You suggested that certain genes were created in each ‘kind’ or ‘starting point’ with the same sequences, and they diverged from that point. This hypothesis predicts a star tree, and since we don’t see that, the hypothesis is falsified.
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We can predict from first principles that common ancestry will produce a nested hierarchy. The observation of a nested hierarchy is not evidence against common ancestry. Your endless claims about supernatural magic being able to also produce a nested hierarchy is not evidence against common ancestry.
What evidence against common ancestry do you actually have?
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Bill does not understand the concept of “evidence against.” He is truly blessed with an astonishing number of things he cannot understand.
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Hi Andrew
I think you need to look at actual data to confirm your assertion. Over deep evolutionary times we are seeing different patterns depending on the conditions. There is a lot of variation depending on the conditions.
If we selected 6 living organisms that theoretically split from a common ancestor 400 million years ago and selected a mutationally tolerant gene would we predict a star tree based on comparing that genes sequence?