The Truth about Species! - Part 3 (Inductive Nature)

Today I will specify the terms I have been used before. One of the terms are Software. When I say that Sexual Selection it's more about Software than Hardware what I'm really saying?

For Software I mean what Faraday expresses about Matter and its Lines of Force, whose theory holds that all reality is made up of force itself. So, I will explore this Lines of Force to explain speciation.

In An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection, we have a new scheme, that gives a new meaning to the word Species.


Scheme for the The Survival of the Fittest

Next we see stated the following about the The Survival of the Fittest:

"By analogy, it means the survival of the most adapted object to the environment. By induction, it means the survival of the most adapted protocol to the environment induced by its objects." - in An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection

Looking to the scheme, we can see that speciation doesn't apply to Prokaryotes. There is a void in the line of species.

In the sentence that follows, we see speciation associated with induction, that supports a take off of a new layer, here called protocol. The organisms aren't considered in an isolated way, the fitness is now made collectively, it's the species the most fitted not the organism, supporting a strict differentiation between organism and specie.

Recognizing this layer of species as a reality, and not just as a mere classification, we are able to frame Sexual and Natural Selection per interfaces. So we have for each interface:

• Concept/Protocol: Natural Selection;
• Protocol/Object: Sexual Selection.

This view is fundamental for any step further in the explanation of evolution.

Now we will take the concept induction a little further. We will try to construct a good metaphor for this induction idea.

The Electromagnetic Induction is a good example of Induction, where a systematic variation of a magnetic field results in an inducted electric current.

We know that the most efficient way to induce an electric current it's trough a solenoid, or a coil if you prefer. This solenoid is made of loops or turns, where the Inductance (the induced electric voltage) is proportional to the square of the number of loops, and some how to the coil radius.


Solenoid as a group of loops

Now we will construct our metaphor. I stress the word metaphor, to rest no doubts about this reasoning.

In this metaphor we have:

1. Magnetic field = Environmental Opportunity;
2. Solenoid = Species;
3. Loop = Organism;
4. Induction = Selection;
5. Loop Fitting = Sexual Fitting;
6. Alignment (torque vector) = Environmental Fitting.

In this example we will think in a species of birds and two differing environmental opportunities (small seeds in patch A, large seeds in patch B). This two differing environmental opportunities can result in two polymorphisms or in two species through a speciation process. This environmental opportunities need to be two previously unexplored opportunities, or else, they aren't opportunities at all.

Thinking in the Solenoid metaphor we have the following two scenarios:


1. Polymorphism as a single bended solenoid (specie)


2. Speciation as two straight solenoids (species)

We may argue that there is a Ultimate Limit State beyond which the species breaks up. The line of force comes from the opportunity that resembles a strong magnetic field.

This disruption is well described in the following images:


Simulated speciation with the punctual population split - in On the Origin of Species by Natural and Sexual Selection


Simulated speciation with the punctual mutational process - in An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection

"In this way, a polymorphism is reversible if, for any case, the associated opportunity ceases its effect. On the other hand, a speciation has its own kernel, ending the previous implication, that is, a speciation is not reversible if, for any case, the associated opportunity ceases its effect." - in An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection

In the same article sited before it's stated the following:

"However, there is one thing that I think as a wrong presumption. The presumption that the migration rate leads the speciation, because is another example of bad intuition. In the Fig. 3 of your article, where you correlate migration rate with sigma, there is a clear symmetry. This symmetry reveals a correlation between sigma and migration rate, with the first causing the last! Being so, migration rate is the consequence, and not the cause." - in An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection

Fig. 3. Effect of ecological parameters on the rate of speciation. - in On the Origin of Species by Natural and Sexual Selection

For the question, in which way it's Sexual Selection the mechanism of speciation? We may answer that Sex; Selects the Fitting of the Organism accordingly to the Fitting of the Specie, which in turn, Fits the Species to the Environmental Opportunity, or metaphorically saying, Inducts the Alignment of the Loop accordingly to the Alignment of the Solenoid, which in turn, Aligns the Solenoid to the Magnetic field. In other words, this opportunity is always expressed on Species, because there is always a significant population of Loops that retain its Fitting as Sexual Fitting.

By other words, Sexual Selection forces the integrity of the Species (Solenoid), not allowing any change by nothing else than an opportunity acting in an aggregated way, and it's exactly because of this aggregated way, that species, instead of polymorphisms, are reversible only by extinction.

So Sexual Selection isn't about diversity as many try to prove! Sexual Selection is about aggregated exploitation of existing opportunities. Sexual Selection doesn't support diversity by itself, Sexual Selection "accepts" aggregated diversity at the cost of an opportunistic exploitation.

For this aggregated diversity, we may even think in the premises of another kind of induction, the mathematical induction. Here we basically need two conditions:

1. The basis: One chosen organism within one given aggregated diversity represents an opportunistic exploitation;
2. The inductive step: An opportunistic exploitation by one organism within one given aggregated diversity, implies the same opportunistic exploitation by one other subsequent organism within the same aggregated diversity.

The previous conditions are needed to any specific diversity become dominant in an opportunistic niche.

"Mutation is the resource of information for any species, however, it has to be amplified by an Opportunistic Exploitation to be convergent at the Species level." - in An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection

The speciation skill forces the integrity of the species with the respective kernel, so we should expect long periods of stability and short periods of fast change (speciation). In general, we may conclude:

1. Prokaryotes - Phyletic gradualism;
2. Eukaryotes - Punctuated equilibrium.

This is probably one of the main reasons why transitional fossils tend to be missing links.

To be continued...

References:An Open Letter about Natural and Sexual Selection by Rui Monteiro - 2010
On the Origin of Species by Natural and Sexual Selection by G. Sander van Doorn, Pim Edelaar, Franz J. Weissing - 2009
The Truth about Species! - Part 1 (Why Sex)
The Truth about Species! - Part 2 (Cambrian Mystery)