Phylogeny - Help me see what you see

You aren’t aware very far. You will note that the conflicts among those trees are largely in dotted-line branches, showing poor support. Collapse those branches and there’s much less conflict. That morphological tree is from 1998, too. More recent analyses have agreed more strongly with molecular results. And of course one example doesn’t make a rule either.

Now you’re giving away the store. If good correlation between morphology and genetics shows that the species on a tree are one kind, then humans are the same kind as other primates, all vertebrates are one kind, and so on. Of course you’re very vague on what a kind is. What do you mean by “many of the primate species”? Which ones, and why not all of them?

I’d have to agree (!) with @scd here. Fusion isn’t evidence for common descent, just evidence against a creationist objection (different chromosome numbers) to common descent. Defeat of an argument for separate creation isn’t the same as evidence for common descent, just as evidence against evolution isn’t evidence for creation.

I see what you mean, but the truth of that statement actually depends in part on how much background knowledge we include when considering the hypothesis of common descent.

In total ignorance of chromosome numbers from any species, common descent predicts nothing about the number, or changes in numbers of chromosomes, nor anything about how they would or even could change. Thus finding any particular number of chromosomes in some species is neither evidence for or against common descent if we know nothing about it.

It is only in the context of knowledge of differences among the numbers of chromosomes between related species, and additional information about the mechanism of inheritance (and I gather, also, evidence from similarities in chromosome bands between chromosomes from different species), that common descent entails that a fusion took place. Only when this background knowledge is included does a chromosomal fusion become evidence for common descent, beyond it’s absence merely constituting a potential falsification.

But that door swings both ways also. Differences in the number of chromosomes only becomes a potential falsification of common descent in the context of knowledge that implies either that there is no way for the number of chromosomes to change (because there is no mechanism for it), or that such changes would be overwhelmingly more likely to be strongly deleterious.

In the same way, differences in the relative proportions of transitions to transversions only becomes evidence for common descent in the context of knowledge of transition bias. Without this knowledge, common descent doesn’t predict these relative proportions. But once included, it essentially demands it, and thus becomes evidence for it.

One could go even further and say the same thing about trees and nesting hierarchies. To get a nesting hierarchy there has to be not only descent but also modification. Perfect inheritance even along splitting lines of descent, while that would result in genalogical trees would not yield any trees in the data, and thus common descent would not predict a nested hierarchy. It is only in the context of knowledge that descent includes change(however it might arise) that common descent entails a tree in the data.

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evolution has no problem with gene loss. thus missing chromosomes isnt a problem for the theory. thus it doesnt predict a chromosomal fusion.

any reference for that specific case?

its not juts one but many. or to be precise- 12 out of 21 cases show a wrong position in the tree.

actually when we test it with human we get the same contradiction:


(Molecular Phylogeny. 2 Phylogeny is the inference of evolutionary relationships. Traditionally, phylogeny relied on the comparison of morphological features. - ppt download)
do you think that chimp has a morphology which is more similar to human than to gorilla?

see also this one:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2009/06/orangutans-human-relative-evolution/

This is as blatantly wrong now as it was when you said the same thing in the other thread. Try again.

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… of genes that don’t positively contribute to reproductive fitness.

Here let me link you these two entire posts again.

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Let’s see if this helps you understand:

Suppose someone claims to have the ability to predict winning numbers in a lottery. You’re incredulous, but you decide to give him a chance. Over the next year, he predicts the winning numbers in hundreds of lotteries, and in every single case he is correct.

Your response: “That doesn’t prove anything. Those numbers would have come up anyway, even if you hadn’t predicted them.”

Do you see how that would be missing the point? Hopefully you do.

It’s the same thing with the fusion . It is not the fact that the fusion occurred that supports evolution (or, more specifically, common descent.) It is the fact that the existence of the fusion was predicted on the basis of common descent.

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Wikipedia gives John Gray’s pre-molecular analysis (1825), which is the same as the molecular analysis. So that slide is wrong.

300px-Hominoid_taxonomy_7.svg

Have you worked out that phylogenies aren’t constructed using MS Paint yet?

Yes, but why don’t you use your skills to find one? Simpler.

How do you determine that?

After all this time, you still think phylogeny is determined by overall similarity? You have learned nothing.

Cherry-picked. Schwartz is a well-known crackpot.

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Interesting article.

Question about it, to see if I understand this correctly.
If I were to compare this to homology, would it be right to say that SIFTER would equate to homology and BLAST to homoplasy? Is that a valid assessment?

Unless qualified carefully, this is not universally accepted by even atheist evolutionary biologists. If it means “macroevolution is nothing but microevolution continued over a longer period of time,” not everyone would accept it.

Ah, but I now see Paul Nelson has made this point on a side-thread. Well, I leave the statement of the actual range of views among evolutionary biologists in the hands of a man who knows the technical literature better than I do.

By microevolution I mean singular mutational events. The total genetic divergence between any two species (i.e. macroevolution) is the accumulation of these singular mutation events. Which mutational events make it into modern populations is a matter of natural selection, drift, and many other mechanisms. This is the consensus view as far as I am aware.

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See these rebuttals:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2010.02354.x

The fact that Schwartz and Grehan’s fringe idea has made no headway in the last 12 years should tell you something.

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Well, that’s a low bar. Paul may know the literature better than you do, but he doesn’t know it very well. And in fact much of what he said is wrong. Still, your point is correct: many evolutionary biologists think that macroevolution can’t be reduced entirely to accumulated microevolution. Not entirely, just mostly.

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Thanks. I was only making that limited point, i.e., that it’s not true (without qualification) that all evolutionary biologists would say that macroevolution is nothing but the result of accumulated microevolution. “Many” (to use your word) think that more is involved. (And I’m not suggesting here that the “more” that is involved is “miracles.” I realize that evolutionary theorists don’t postulate miracles. They look for other natural mechanisms.) Anyhow, my point was merely a footnote to the claim that was made, and I’m content to leave the discussion at this point, though of course if you and Paul Nelson and others write more about it, I will read what is posted as time permits.

The basic problem is that there are many definitions of both microevolution and macroevolution. If you ask biologists what they mean by microevolution adding up to macroevolution I think you will find that they agree with the other camp who says microevolution does not add up to macroevolution.

I agree. Much apparent disagreement on all subjects is caused by miscommunication based on differing meanings of words. However, even if we sat down all evolutionary biologists and got them to agree on a single precise meaning for each of these terms, I don’t believe there would be complete agreement among them on the question whether all major changes are produced by nothing but the accumulation of small mutation/selection changes such as those which gave polar bears their white fur or give finches longer or shorter beaks. There seems to exist a view that there are sometimes changes at a deeper level, beyond mutation, selection, and drift, which affect the course of evolution. What might be included under “changes at a deeper level” someone like John Harshman would be better able to articulate than I can. But I think that some such notion underlies the resistance of those who don’t assent to “macroevolution is just repeated rounds of microevolution.”

Give examples of these major changes you think cannot be produced by mutations and/or recombination?

This is wrong. DNA or RNA is the most fundamental level at which evolutionary forces can act (at least after the prebiotic era). If you have evidence to the contrary, please present it.

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As a non-scientist, I’d love clarification here. My understanding is that micro is below the species level, but macro is at or above species level. This is in contradistinction to the YEC focus on baraminology that, basically, puts micro somewhere around family (sometimes order)…anything that works with their view of “kinds” (though, interestingly, OECs make the distinction even more limiting than YECs). I want to be accurate in what I teach and report on what “science says” vs. where creationists often go.

A key thing to keep in mind is that biologists have multiple different meanings attached to both microevolution and macroevolution. It’s gonna be confusing till you can pin down which definition each statement is working with.

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I didn’t realize there was such disparity. is there a summary of the basic divergence, or is each individual sort of left to their own thinking/definition? That is, is it left to individua biologist, or are there tendencies of definitions to certain sub-fields?

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