Sunday, May 27, 2018

The Surprising Origins of Evolutionary Complexity

Seems that Natural Selection isn't all there is when it comes to Evolutionary Complexity. Not a surprise for those who realize other Selections... It's a big step to place at the same level Sexual Selection an Natural Selection as engines of Evolutionary Complexity!

  • Conventional wisdom holds that complex structures evolve from simpler ones, step-by-step, through a gradual evolutionary process, with Darwinian selection favoring intermediate forms along the way.
  • But recently some scholars have proposed that complexity can arise by other means—as a side effect, for instance—even without natural selection to promote it.
  • Studies suggest that random mutations that individually have no effect on an organism can fuel the emergence of complexity in a process known as constructive neutral evolution. 
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-surprising-origins-of-evolutionary-complexity/ 

The Mutational Meltdown in Asexual Populations

When Sexual Selection doesn't apply and Natural Selection is all there is!

Loss of fitness due to the accumulation of deleterious mutations appears to be inevitable in small, obligately asexual populations, as these are incapable of reconstituting highly fit genotypes by recombination or back mutation. The cumulative buildup of such mutations is expected to lead to an eventual reduction in population size, and this facilitates the chance accumulation of future mutations. This synergistic interaction between population size reduction and mutation accumulation leads to an extinction process known as the mutational meltdown, and provides a powerful explanation for the rarity of obligate asexuality. We give an overview of the theory of the mutational meltdown, showing how the process depends on the demographic properties of a population, the properties of mutations, and the relationship between fitness and number of mutations incurred. 
The Mutational Meltdown in Asexual Populations
M. Lynch  R. Bürger  D. Butcher  W. Gabriel

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

The Guardians of the Species | Jazmina Saavedra

Ignorance is a bless, mainly in the domain of Species. Clearly, differences between species determine if one Organism ends up in a School or a Slaughterhouse, but what isn't so clear is that differences in the same Species have similar consequences.

To understand this reality we need to realize that Natural and Sexual Selection are Interfaces in a three layers evolutionary scheme. Natural Selection is the interface Environment/Species while Sexual Selection is the interface Species/Organism.

Natural Selection is the interface Environment/Species while Sexual Selection is the interface Species/Organism.

Sexual Selection means that when it comes to Species, not all Organisms are equal, something that at the eyes of Human Species means that not all Humans are equally Human, and so, they may be treated as livestock for slaughter. The means that Species has at its dispose are Human Guardians that trough their conformity to the Species Blueprint are granted the right to attack those otherwise nonconforming to that same Blueprint. As I previously write in Overdominance: The Good, the Bad and the Untermensch:
Unfortunately Species are very picky and ruthless against non conformity, it has successfully been managing its "guardians" against it. So, in the so called civilized world, and despite being very civilized, the species guardians do their work as they do in Africa. And is not difficult to have news of some of them, now named Bullies.
Besides avoiding the Species genetic contagion by nonconforming organisms, these Guardians exist also to censor the otherwise evident failures of the Species itself. It's imperative that those failures or nonconformities become hidden from the social environment, so that their perception doesn't collide with the benign view of Humanity granted that failures are placed on Organisms instead the Species. This way the discomfort remains limited to levels compatible with religious views of Humanity, useful not only to the Ubermench, but mainly, to the Species' genetic fitness.

The religious view of Humanity is the main purpose of these Guardians, they do the dirty work of all alike in order to preserve a romanticized perception much needed to the legitimization of the Ubermench and its devotion (DEVOTION: As natural as "Believing in God").

A Guardian of the Species doing its work

However, this task of being a Guardian of the Species is not enforced on a particular organism, is the result of a Will, the Will of the Species, that guaranties a minimum needed percentage of Guardians "eruptions" in the conformist population. To avoid wasting good quality organisms, not only the task of being a Guardian has to switch hands, but also, it shouldn't stick to a single conformist organism, so, it's imperative that the previously Guardian of the Species shows regret after their successful work not only to avoid being wasted but also to avoid any perception of the Species' invisible hand.

In the end is up to the Untermench to exit the scene and accept all apologies in the name of an harmonious conformist club!

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