My point is that the difference between anthropogenic selection and natural selection is an artificial one (sorry couldn't resist). And has zero meaningful qualitative differences in terms of the evolution.
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Surely natural selection results from the totality of environmental selection on the holobiont (😜) whereas anthropogenic (or Sciuridagenic) selection is a product of intelligent (?) preference for the fattest, rather than the fittest?
What is fitness in an anthropogenic environment? Corn still has to germinate, photosynthesize, interact with mycorrhizae... it's not like humans are the only factor. And since the population size of corn has increased 10,000 fold in the last few millennia, wouldn't you agree that's higher fitness?
Define anthropogenic environment? Are sidewalk weeds artificial selection? What about house sparrows? Moths that change color b/c of pollution? Any organisms adapting to changing growing seasons b/c of global warming? Where's the line that says "this is natural, so it counts"?
I agree with that in principle. However, I think you could say that artificial selection, by increasing qualities important for humans, is liable to decrease fitness important in non-human environments. 1/2
My small, cute, fluffy dog is highly adapted to her anthropogenic environment, but I always worry that a coyote will be on the loose and take her out one day. She has no defenses to aggression whatsoever! 2/2
And we've selected maize to the point at which it only thrives in our modified environments with our continuous intervention.
Take that intervention away, or throw in environmental change, and genetically-diverse populations of weeds (and coyotes) will show our creations what fitness really means.
But how is that different than any other kind of specialized selection? Throw a cactus in a swamp and it drowns. Put a cypress in the desert and it dies of drought. Things adapted to environ X often don’t do well in environ Y. Why does that make artificial selection different?
Agreed it doesn't (see earlier reply). I think the same thing applies all the way to species. Corn is a different species from teosinte, because as well as being divergently selected in mates assortatively, mostly because of mutualism with humans, and human husbandry.
ca. 1998 I had a revelation when after my explanation of what I thought species were in an undergrad lecture, a bright student asked: "well doesn't that mean dog breeds are different species?" And she was totally correct! THAT was exactly what Darwin was trying to argue in his book! 2/3
But how is that different than saying selection for adaptation to serpentine soils makes you badly adapted to non serpentine habitats? Totally true but we don’t make up a term for “serpentine selection”
True, in a way. We are of course very anthropocentric in our view of selection! By "natural" we mean "non-human-adapted." But "human-adapted," or "obligate human mutualists," expresses the same idea as "serpentine-adapted," I think.
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Or... southern leaf blight.
Take that intervention away, or throw in environmental change, and genetically-diverse populations of weeds (and coyotes) will show our creations what fitness really means.