From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Fri Nov 19 1999 - 11:06:14 MST
>>He can
>>not find any down side to the mice at all but he speculates there must be
>>one someplace because otherwise evolution would already have found
>>this fix;
>
>This is debatable. As you all know, we are far from perfect organisms. Mice
>also have lots of room for improvement and we can't expect evolution to
>select them all. It can be argued in many ways the fact that p66 is no
>longer important (being an ancient gene that is no longer important, having
>another version that is more stable, etc.). Of course it can have some
>important function we can't easily detect, but the point is that I don't
>think we should assume evolution as a perfect and final process. The
>distribution in humans of the various types of cholesterol is an excellent
>example (if you're not aware, the most hazardous type of cholesterol is the
>most abundant and vice-versa).
--Joao Pedro de Magahaes
In further support of your comments, I'd add that evolution may select for
short-lived individuals in order to speed up the process. By analogy, a species
that reproduces every three months has the ability to adapt to a changing
environment more successfully than a species that takes three decades to
reproduce.
A short life span represents nature's way of increasing the clock rate, so to
speak, for a given population, thereby accelerating the rate of evolution and
adaptability for that population, and in turn, increasing its chances to thrive
as a species (although not so much as individuals).
l8tr.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:48 MST