Traits don’t objectively exist, the are subjective in the minds of people. The only thing we can measure, that objectively exists in a material sense, is the nucleotide sequence. Yes, this codes for information, but it is the functional output of that coded information that determines fitness. Therefore it is only by changing alleles (nucleotides) that fitness is affected. Get it? Mutations don’t change traits, mutations change nucleotides.
I get it. You don’t. The traits are the properties of the phenotype and it is those properties that determine fitness. In the case of the peppered moth it is the trait - the colouration - that determined which moths were at greater risk of predation. The gene sequences only mattered because they controlled that trait.
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So when there are no humans around, all animals are identical?
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Are you still unaware in 2026 that the peppered moths experiment was a fraud?
In any case, “coloration” is a high level trait, and nobody, including creationists, is denying that camoflage works.
You’re missing the whole point of the distinction. It’s about how selection cannot purify deleterious mutations that exist in the giant grey area between “traits” that have selectable differences between them.
When there are no humans around, nobody is arguing about what horns are, or whether evolution is true.
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Entire economies are built around traits objectively existing. Number of seeds and fruits produced by certain crops, how much milk their cows produce, etc. etc. One barely knows where to even begin.
You are in lala-land now Paul. Seriously.
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Are you still unaware in 2026 that it was not, and that it has been repeated and found true multiple times?
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The nucleotide sequence has NO direct intrinsic bearing on fitness. It is the expression that is the fitness effect. That traits are not material and cannot be measured has to be the daftest thing I have read in apologetics in a long time - I will add it to my collection.
I expect your weird dismissal of traits, which are indeed measured all the time, is tied in with your crank apologetics to somehow make it about rusty information.
So it’s not the horns that can give the animal an edge at fighting off predators or at attracting mates. DNA does that directly, not through a body it ever coded for the development of, at least not enough so to justify our claiming as much.
Of all the hills to die on, what a choice!
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No, that was just a dishonest smear.
I’m not sure that I would call melaniem a “high level trait”. But do you accept that I was correct and it is the traits that matter for fitness?
That is hardly an honest response - claiming that I am “missing” something which is not relevant to the point I was making. However there must be a difference in traits - which may be very subtle - for there to be any difference in fitness.
It takes human minds to decide what those traits are, and which ones to care about. You’re talking about artificial selection, not natural seelction. You may have picked up this mistake from Hancock.
No, I’m in the land of philosophy. A land that more scientists should spend a lot more time in, actually. It would help a lot.
What I was referring to was the staged photos that were circulated around in textbooks right up to the present day, as if they were actual photos of the event happening in nature. But as I said, nobody is denying that camoflauge works.
It didn’t, and the edits and comments since I submitted it made it unnecessary, so I made the comment that was approved instead. All good.
I have come to the conclusion that creationism is a religion of falsehood and pride. We’re getting a very good demonstration of that today.
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When all else fails, start throwing the insults. Usually works with the crowd.
The choice, delusional as it is, is made because GE is only pretentiously about population genetics or anything to do with science. It is an apologetic contrivance designed to serve an overall rhetorical narrative that is appealing for a number of reasons. Unlike much of creationist content, it is not a defensive response to evidence for deep time - it is presented as a positive argument against deep time. It starts with a perfect fiat creation of archetypes, which are then degraded as exposed to the ravages of the fall. Best of all, it is apocalyptic, with certain death as the ultimate fate apart from redemption. This is dogma as pseudoscience at its finest, that is the agenda. Understanding nature is of little interest, and as usual, discovery and explanation just spoil the apologetic.
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in case you hadn’t noticed you are the one that is ducking and diving while trying to avoid admitting to an obvious error. It is your failures that prompted my observation, not mine.
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No I am talking about milking a cow and weighing the product. I am talking about counting how many offspring it has and what they weigh and how fast they grow. The tonnage of wheat yield.
Regardless of whether humans selected for the traits or not, the traits are objectively measurable empirical facts that economies that export anything from butter, beer, banana, bacon and a billion other things are based on.
You can’t just subjectively decide to count milk your cow doesn’t objectively produce and sell it to the dairy. They’re going to want the actual milk, not your halluscinated amount of it.
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You mean the photographs produced to illustrate the difference in visibility. So the experiments weren’t fraudulent after all? So far as I can tell the use of staged photographs was simply an issue of practicality - and certainly did not deceive in any way significant to the issue of natural selection of the moths.
Since it has subsequently been demonstrated with extensive field work that the moths do indeed rest on tree trunks, and their coloration substantively affects their probability of survival against predation depending on the background.
So, traits work then?
Despite these high levels of local gene flow, color variation is strongly correlated with habitat color in most populations, suggesting that natural selection for substrate matching is strong in this species.
Again, are mutations which alter the expression of color deleterious, neutral, or beneficial?