[FRIAM] gene-culture coevolution

[uǝlƃ ☤>$]

Sorry for jumping in inappropriately. It's not even clear to me what y'all are arguing about. But one thing I triggered on is the distinction between, say, an antibody-based immune response (learned immunity) versus snake avoidance (learned behavior). They both seem to me like *behaviors*. Is the prairie dog immunity an innate (not learned) immunity?

A second trigger is that snake avoidance may well be useful for some other (still under pressure) advantage. So, even if we can identify that behavior as having emerged as snake avoidance, maybe it's no longer "snake avoidance". Maybe now it's "spider avoidance" or "lizard avoidance" or not even an avoidance at all ... maybe it makes them cluster in some way that facilitates the finding of food or mates.

But, overall, it seems like Nick's "singing my tune" to some extent in that there are no crisp distinctions between traits. Any fuzzy trait that does appear will likely serve multiple functions (polyphenism) and any thing selected for will likely have multiple ways in which it could be "implemented" (robustness).

The oversimplified Darwinian evolution we see in, say, agent-based models, is unlikely to capture the milieu of the coevolutionary, very messy world. Along those same lines, here's a somewhat related essay:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/09/human-genome-genes-genetic-code

On 6/9/21 11:58 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> For now, I'll comment only on your  */[NST===>It’s important that we focus on the facts of this matter because they are SO counter intuitive: in the parts of the intermountain west were rattlesnakes have no longer exist (and have not for thousands of years) the prairie dogs have lost their venom resistance but retained their behavioral avoidance.  <===nst]/*
> 
> Why do you assume that evolution will act exactly the same, with the same timeframes, on different traits? There is a strong evolutionary "force" to develop antidotes for poisonous snakes, those that don't acquire it are removed from the gene pool very fast - they die. But if there are no poisonous snakes anymore, the evolutionary force is very weak indeed. Both those that lose and retain the trait will stay in the gene pool. So the fact that one trait is lost and another not, says exactly NOTHING. (Well apart from that one is lost and another not, but it does not even hint about the validity or not Darwinian evolution).
> 
> Let's get back to the scientific process:
> a) All science is fallible
> b) Accept the science giving the best explanations of the observed phenomena.
> c) If better science comes up, update the science.
> 
> For now, Darwinian evolution offers the best explanation of the above observed prairie dogs traits. 
> 
> Come up with a better conjecture and explain it, If the explanation is better than Darwinian evolution, I'll be happy to accept it. In the meantime I'll accept Darwinian evolution as the best current science for explaining the above prairie dog traits.
> 

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☤>$ uǝlƃ