Is 1- natural selection or 2- mutation (chance variation) that is mostly driving the emergence of evolutionary innovations? This is a classical question in EB, but I’m wondering what is the actual viewpoint of the community. - ThreadSky

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gillesfischer.bsky.social • 89 days ago

Is
1- natural selection
or
2- mutation (chance variation)
that is mostly driving the emergence of evolutionary innovations?

This is a classical question in EB, but I’m wondering what is the actual viewpoint of the community.

Comments

gillesfischer.bsky.social•88 days ago

I cannot help thinking that if you put two identical populations with large standing genetic diversity in two different selective environments, you’ll end up with very different solutions, so selection might be more important after all

doubtscience.bsky.social•86 days ago

I cannot help thinking why you are even asking such a question! Did you pass Evolution 101 as a student?

gillesfischer.bsky.social•88 days ago

Of course it’s both but the key word in the question is “mostly”. I’d like to answer that mutation is quantitatively more important than selection (think of the parallel lines in Lenski’s experiment) but…

doubtscience.bsky.social•86 days ago

Neither. It is recombination (like domain shuffling and fusion) and horizontal gene transfer. These processes allow for genuine novelty without mutation (actual dna changes).

stelkens.bsky.social•89 days ago

Just happened to chat with @fcocubillosr.bsky.social. He says mutation, I say selection! :) It's the old debate between neutralists and adaptationists, no? Mutations happen all the time, good, bad, and neutral. But it takes selection to drive up their frequency. It's both!

fcocubillosr.bsky.social•89 days ago

There is no selection without mutations. But your questions is ‘what drives….’ And that would be selection. Although I am skeptical about the term ‘Neutral mutations’, is that for real or is it because we are unable to detect/determine their fitness impact?

doubtscience.bsky.social•83 days ago

More interesting is selection without adaptation: compensatory mutations. Please read: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S002251939690168X?via%3Dihub

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