Arete

We can design clinical trials in which we can administer a placebo and no treatment at all. We can statistically analyze the results, repeat the experiment, apply probability values to the results, conduct meta-analyses of multiple trials, etc and so on. The placebo effect is a phenomenon which the existence of is verified by empirical, experimental evidence. No faith required.

hmm. Are you looking for primer design software, or sequence analysis software? You generally wouldn't report Tm/secondary structure on a whole sequence... Primer3 will do the former, I use Geneious (which has a free PC demo) to do the latter.

Did you actually read beyond the Daily Telegraph article? Reading a Daily Telegraph article and considering yourself informed on a Nature paper would be like reading the Pizza Hut menu and considering yourself informed on Italian cuisine...

Not the point you were trying to make, but yes, the above offers a pretty concise summation.

That sentence is a self contradiction that doesn't actually make sense. Except air moves up and down - http://en.wikipedia....eric_convection So ultimately you're dimissing he paper as "garbage" without actually reading it?

OK - re -read this sentence over a few times. "the surface temperature in the immediate vicinity of Texas’ wind farms had heated up, especially during the night hours, as the wind turbines pulled warmer air from the atmosphere down closer to the ground." The wind turbines move heat from high up, to down low. They move heat. Not create. Moving heat=/= making heat. There's a loss of heat in the upper atmosphere and extra heat at ground level. No extra heat. If I move a chair from my office to the hallway I don't make any chairs. There is still only one chair. There's an extra chair in the hallway, and one less in my office.

The population structure of all extant animals is unknown and different groups of humans use different terminology to describe variants below the level of species. Wikipedia is also not an authority on vertebrate diversity. As a concept, panmixia is a binary condition. Either all individuals in a given sample mate at random, or they don't. In reality, perfect panmixia doesn't exist, but using genetic tools we can evaluate significant deviations from the assumptions we make of panmictic populations. Humans are not panmicitc at all and cluster genetically according to geographic region http://pritch.bsd.uc...nbergEtAl02.pdf Sympatry refers to overlapping geographic distribution. If two populations occur in the same place, they are sympatric. Human populations in Asia are not sympatric with those in Europe. Migration occurs between these populations allowing for gene flow, but this is not the same as sympatry. Human populations are not sympatric or panmicitic: http://pritch.bsd.uc...nbergEtAl02.pdf http://www.sciencedi...002929707605746 Glad you're coming around to understanding that hybridization can occur between species It is an interesting field. One does not need to work on the level of meta-populations to conduct an evolutionary study. If the processes you are interested in happen at the population level that is the scale you work at. See population genetics, http://en.wikipedia....lation_genetics, phylogeography http://en.wikipedia..../Phylogeography landscape genetics http://webpages.icav...9/Papers/21.pdf etc. Generational overlap has already been discussed in this thread at length. in post #25, I tried to explain at length the separation of populations on the temporal scale. That was not the question in the OP. The question was "Is there any examples where the common ancestor of two or more derived species is still extant?" [paraphrased]. As was explained at length, the ancestral population of two derived species cannot co-exist with it descendants. Hence the wolves/dog ancestor being ancient wolves and not contemporary wolves. Similarly to any other group of interest - examine genetic loci under netural selection for deviations from the assumptions of panmixia. This is not true either. The "environment" in terms of natural selection, is any external factor which interacts with your genotype to influence your ability to pass genes on to the next generation. E.g. A child's genotype confers it a severe allergy to penicillin. It is prescribed penicillin, suffers a anaphylaxic reaction and dies. The deleterious components of its genotype were selected against by the environment. The ability to adapt the environment to better suit you does not eliminate selection by it - it simply changes the selection pressures.

In addition to what imatfaal said - art, morality and congregations all predate contemporary religiosity. I would say that all three are components of the fundamental human condition and do not need to be learned from religious authority.

For someone so attuned to logical fallacy you've pulled a rather blatant strawman here. No one is claiming that the concept of species is flawed or useless. It's especially useful for a diversity of studies. The original post asks a specific question about diversification - which is unequivocally a phenomenon which occurs amongst populations. Reciting the reasons why this occurs would be to simply recite the contents of your average first year evolution course. I've also already attempted to do the best I can via the medium of forum posts numerous times in this thread. Evolutionary significant unit prehaps? http://en.wikipedia....ignificant_Unit Genetic cluster? Clade? Flock/School/Herd/etc? Kin group? Race (ethnic, karyotypic, phenotypic) Colony? Any of the other categorizations used by the general public to define subsets of biological entities below the level of species used contiguously or otherwise by the general public or scientific community? As defined earlier, a species can be defined as a metapopulation. Are you familiar with the term Panmixia? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panmixia. A population of sexually reproducing organisms can be defined as a panmicitic group of organisms. If the sampled group of organisms is not panmictic (as can be demonstrated with test of Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium http://en.wikipedia....nberg_principle) it is comprised of more than one population. You have been provided with examples of how this assumption is false - hybridization occurs between species. Hybridization is a powerful force in evolution: http://en.wikipedia....ki/Hybrid_swarm http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/21448227 http://rstb.royalsoc.../1506/2971.full http://hydrodictyon....ization_Seminar Here's a study which may be of particular interest: http://bio.research....Hexagrammos.pdf "Hybridization and introgression are antagonistic to the process of speciation. If hybrids are viable and backcross, introgression will slow or prevent the evolution of reproductive isolation between populations. If species hybridize upon secondary contact, introgression will ultimately erode species boundaries. If hybridization is rampant and gene flow is high, the proportion of hybrids will approach values expected with random mating, and introgression will overcome species boundaries, homogenizing populations. Alternatively, if species are genetically distinct, the proportion of hybrids would be significantly less than expected with random mating, gene flow would be interrupted by selection against hybrids, and inviability or sterility of F 1 hybrids or backcrosses would be expected. Here, we investigate a system with characteristics expected by both of these opposing scenarios. Hybridization occurs between three species of reef fishes in the genus Hexagrammos at unexpected high frequencies in a zone of distributional overlap. Backcrossed individuals are detected, indicating F1 hybrids are viable and capable of reproducing. Yet, these species are genetically distinct at multiple loci. To study this apparent paradox, we estimate the relative proportions of hybrids, patterns of symmetry, inviability, and cytonuclear disequilibria using one mitochondrial and two nuclear markers. We invoke selection against hybrids, at various life history stages, in the maintenance of species boundaries in this system." And this one: http://www.nature.co...ature03800.html "Speciation in animals is almost always envisioned as the split of an existing lineage into an ancestral and a derived species. An alternative speciation route is homoploid hybrid speciation1 in which two ancestral taxa give rise to a third, derived, species by hybridization without a change in chromosome number. Although theoretically possible it has been regarded as rare1 and hence of little importance in animals. On the basis of molecular and chromosomal evidence, hybridization is the best explanation for the origin of a handful of extant diploid bisexual animal taxa2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Here we report the first case in which hybridization between two host-specific animals (tephritid fruitflies) is clearly associated with the shift to a new resource. Such a hybrid host shift presents an ecologically robust scenario for animal hybrid speciation because it offers a potential mechanism for reproductive isolation through differential adaptation to a new ecological niche7. The necessary conditions for this mechanism of speciation7 are common in parasitic animals, which represent much of animal diversity8. The frequency of homoploid hybrid speciation in animals may therefore be higher than previously assumed." Understanding the role of the population in evolution is a fundamental building block one must understand in order to make any sense of the theory. To not understand the role of populations, gene flow and standing genetic variation and selection in the processes of evolution is to not understand evolution. So my answer is, if one doesn't understand the importance of the population in the processes of evolution, one doe not understand the processes of evolution. No. groups of organisms exist in an infinite number of intermediate states between panmicitic populations and entirely diverged populations. There is no dichotomous set of two boxes into which all circumstances fit neatly, but infinite shades of grey between them. This leads to the boundary between taxonomic classifications being arbitrary. As an analogy, if you had a paint store, you might divide your paints into colors. This is very useful for a broad range of applications, as someone who wants to buy a shade of blue paint can go to the blue section, someone looking for representatives of all the major shades can easily select representatives from each, etc and so on. HOWEVER, you probably have a vast number of colors which have elements of other colors. There may be a thousand shades between green and blue. A which point you stop putting the bluey-greens in the blue section and start putting the greeny-blues in the green section is going to be arbitrary and subject to a set of conditions predetermined by you. Even if someone else applies the same conditions, they might draw the line between blue and green at a different point to you. The imprecision of species boundaries is not due to the process of defining them being "a best guess" or otherwise fundamentally inaccurate - the boundary is artificial in the sense that the things it delineates into neat clusters exist in a multitude of intermediate states between those classifications.

Nature hasn't given you a choice. The process of biological diversification happens at the level of the population. If you wish to study the process of speciation, the toolkit necessary is that of population genetics. And prehaps a dozen journals are dedicated to it (Evolution, Molecular Ecology, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Journal of Heredity, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, etc). This and even my own research would indicate that far from being impossible, it is imperative to work on the scale of the population.

Smoking pot increases your risk of cancer - particularly early onset testicular cancer in men, and each year of regular use increases your risk of lung cancer by ~8% (which is slightly more than regular tobacco use ): http://www.ersj.org..../31/2/280.short http://www.nature.com/nrc/journal/v9...l/nrc2617.html http://cat.inist.fr/...cpsidt=20028743

I am an evolutionary biologist who works on species delimitation and has published taxonomic revisions. I never said taxonomic classification was meaningless - I said it was arbitrary and I carefully stated that this was due to the process being continuous. The separation of organisms into a hierarchically classified taxonomic system is not due to the biological presence of systematically categorized biota - the diversification of biological organisms is a continuous, ongoing, dynamic process. the categories are there because it is easier for people, not because it is reflective of the processes from which biological entities diversify. For this reason, thinking of common ancestors as taxa/species is less constructive than thinking of them in terms of populations. The process of diversification happens to populations rather than species - because species is a categorization we humans imposed on biological entities to assist our understanding of differences between populations of organisms rather than being representative of a hard boundary that actually exists in nature.

What are your degrees in? BSc (Biology) MSc (Evolutionary Biology) MSc (Conservation Management) PhD (Evolutionary Biology) What are your interests? I'm a scuba divemaster. I ride BMX and mountain bikes. I have a rusty old car in a shed I like to cut my knuckles on and swear at. What are your job responsibilities? Postdoc on an NIH funded project working on parasite genomics. I do a fair bit of the analytical and bench based grunt work, most of the writing, some of the field collection. I am in on Saturday preparing conference abstracts and dealing with revisions on a MS from my PhD studies. I co-supervise 2 grad students and have a lab tech answerable directly to me and the PI Basically the PI meets with us once a week to maintain overall direction, but the day to day project management, formulation of actual papers and analytical expertise is me. Your location? Northeast USA. Your career plans? My wife is also a postdoc, so we have the two body problem. We're actively applying for junior faculty/tenure track jobs this season. What is the typical pay scale for what you do? Postdocs at my institution get $37-44 K p.a. One thing to remember when looking at grad schools and stipends is that 30K in NYC is very different to 30K in a middle of nowhere college town.

I'm less likely to doggedly argue a point, and considerably less formal.

"We started our research seeking men in their twenties who had never consumed pornography. We couldn't find any" "All test subjects said they supported gender equality and felt victimized by rhetoric demonizing pornography. “Pornography hasn't changed their perception of women or their relationship which they all want as harmonious and fulfilling as possible. Those who could not live out their fantasy in real life with their partner simply set aside the fantasy. The fantasy is broken in the real world and men don't want their partner to look like a porn star,” says Lajeunesse." http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca/udem-news/news-digest/are-the-effects-of-pornography-negligible.html

Diversification is a population process, which only makes sense in the context of populations. Species is an arbitrary and somewhat artifical system of categorizing a continuous process. I am repeating things I've already said:

We were - it was a nice brew pub but got crowded quick and they had too many of those god-awful flemish sour ales that taste like armpits We liked the Wolverine Brewing tap room out on Stadium - http://wolverinebeer.com/ Cheers!

I saved up and bought the pants AND the jacket . (mind you here pays better than when we were at UoM - recognize the jolly pumpkin)

I've got facial piercings and (non-facial) tattoos. I work as a postdoc in an Ivy league school . Mind you, I was hired sight unseen.. There's no hard and fast rules regarding clothing where I work, but I try to at least wear a collared shirt most days with a sweater when it's cold, always look clean and avoid the death metal band t-shirts/hoodies even if I play it in the lab. Private sector I'd probably have to try a little harder. Piercings can be done tastefully - I have 3/4" stretched earlobes adorned with rosewood plugs engraved with nautilus shells, which the head of department actually complimented me on. Before I went back to school I used to work as a zookeeper - uniforms take all the guesswork out of it. I got asked reasonably often how I got the job with my piercings/tattoos. My usual response "By being more qualified than the other applicants." As far as suits go - I'm built like a scarecrow but my wife tells me I look a bit of alright in most things done by Hugo Boss (pity about the price tags...).

I suspect Ophiolite was suggesting that the questions posed were difficult to answer given the available evidence, and as such your conclusion was speculatory/premature. See here: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html One of the key points fromt he article : ".... entomologist Joe Conlon, of the American Mosquito Control Association in Jacksonville, Florida. "If we eradicated them tomorrow, the ecosystems where they are active will hiccup and then get on with life. Something better or worse would take over." Mosquitoes have occupied their niche as a blood feeding parasite for more than 100 million years. Open an ecological niche up and more often than not something else will fill it. There's no knowing if that something else might make you wish for the mosquitoes again.

Ahhh... rainforests (aka "jungles") are the most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems on the planet. Thus an inordinate number of mammals both not only inhabit them, but are endemic to them. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070808132022.htm http://forestry.about.com/cs/rainforest/p/rforest_diversi.htm Wetlands (aka "swamps") also harbor huge levels of diversity. http://www.bgci.org/worldwide/article/0437/ http://www.iucn.org/iyb/?4662/World-Wetlands-Day They are also one of the most productive systems on the planet - playing functional roles in erosion control, flood prevention, water filtering an pollutant absorption, nurseries for commercially important marine species,etc. http://www.epa.gov/bioiweb1/aquatic/importance.html I'd strongly argue than intact, functioning wetland and rainforest ecosystems are far more valuable than the "terraformed" land that usually replaces them, both in therms of conservation value and provided ecosystem services.

If you can re-read post #25, it might become clearer - neither the in situ population, nor the divergent population ARE the ancestral population in your hypothetical. Both derive from it. The in situ population retains ancestral traits. This relates back to the example of the fish I posted in my initial response in post #3. The derivative populations display differing levels of phenotypic divergence from that ancestral state with some retaining a phenotype closer to the ancestral form than others, sure. This is rather unequivocal. None of them ARE the ancestral population which has long since expired. Again, as I thought I'd explained at length in post #25, you and your grandfather do not belong to the same homogenous population. Your generation is derived from his. If part of your family moved to Madagascar and part stayed where you are now, you would not say your grandfather's population remained while another population went to Madagascar. Both the remaining population and the derived (Madagascan) population are derived from your grandfather's population. Again, as I explained in post #25, the arbitrary inference of a species boundary between two temporally disjunct populations is irrelevant to the process, which occurs at the population level.

Things in fictional movies aren't necessarily realistic?

Ok, would you like to explain how a homogenous, interbreeding population of your great-great grandparents and a homogenous interbreeding population of your own generation can simultaneously exist? I had thought I'd provided a relatively comprehensive explanation of why ancestral populations and contemporary populations do not co-exist and thus would not consider it to be begging the question to make an inference based on that presumption.

I posted this in another thread explaining the same thing: reproductive isolation is not a hard criterion delimiting species: The evolutionary species concept is the most universally accepted species concept in biology today: http://sysbio.oxford...s=1&ssource=mfc - this concept allows for integrative/dynamic detection and delimitation of species, having defined them as metapopulations with independent evolutionary histories. A number of emergent delimitation methods are currently in various stages of development. There is no universal characteristic by which they are identified - which is a much better reflection of the reality of diversification than relying on a sole characteristic like reproductive isolation. http://www.pnas.org/...4/27/0913022107 http://sysbio.oxford...t/59/1/59.short etc. That said, genetic incompatitbilites generally restrict mating between distantly related species. Simply being able to physically mate with a distantly related species by no means confers an ability to hybridize with said species.