Re: Selection timescale
From: Tim Tyler (tim_at_tt1lock.org)
Date: 01/27/05
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Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 16:50:27 -0500 (EST)
Perplexed in Peoria <jimmenegay@sbcglobal.net> wrote or quoted:
> "Tim Tyler" <tim@tt1lock.org> wrote in message news:ct9ruu$ajj$1@darwin.ediacara.org...
> > Perplexed in Peoria <jimmenegay@sbcglobal.net> wrote or quoted:
> > There are pros- and cons- to measuring fitness in the long term.
> >
> > The cons are that it is difficult to do - it's at least possible
> > to count the number of offspring an organism has. Whether it
> > has any descendants a million years from now is a more difficult
> > question.
>
> Difficult question for theory. Impossible question if you want
> to make any kind of contact with empirical evidence. And while
> I'm not sure that NS in its entirity can be made refutable, It
> sure would be nice if at least some of what evolutionary
> biologists do could be real refutable empirical science. Aspects
> of the adaptationist program are refutable, for example, but
> only it we have a definition of fitness that permits measurement
> of fitness.
IMO, how you measure fitness is a terminological issue.
It might impact how people think and what ideas they have - but
the bottom line is that it doesn't really make any difference
to evolutionary theory, what it predicts or how easy it is to
test.
> > On the positive side, taking a longer term view has benefits:
> > It factors in parental care. Failure to do this leads to the
> > conclusion that having lots of offspring and failing to care
> > for them is a more effective strategy that it actually is.
> > It factors in things like elderly relatives resource contributions
> > to offspring when they die in the form of "inheritances".
>
> Edser's scheme of counting fitness only for fertile organisms
> also factors in parental care. But I don't think that factoring
> in parental care is a GOOD THING. The "right" explanation for
> parental care is Hamilton's kin selection theory, with some
> improvements from Trivers. If you build parental care into
> your fitness accounting rules, you just complicate things.
> Having lots of kids and not caring for them may not be an
> effective way of maximizing inclusive fitness. And the simplest
> way of defining inclusive fitness is to start from a "clean"
> definition of basic fitness.
IMO, the term "fitness" in biology when used to describe the fitness
of an organism /ought/, by default, to refer to some sort of inclusive
fitness.
Counting direct offspring is certainly easier to do - but unfortunately,
the results are often useless :-(
I don't much care how easy it is to define or describe the idea of
fitness - but I am concerned with whether what it defines serves as
a reasonable organism-level proxy mother nature's maximand.
-- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ tim@tt1lock.org Remove lock to reply.
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