Re: genetic variation is purely random, right?


"John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e0761q$1kqp$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
JE:-
Richard De C Studdert (An unpublished Australian researcher) maintained
that
stress can pre-select out sperm cells within the genital tract of both the
male and female mouse producing what he termed "transmission ratio
distortion" (TRD). Some of his books are available online:

http://books.idealo.com/160R12C28L83K0-Science-Evolution-General.html

I only know of one book of his. The one I have. And it was published by
Expostion Press, Smithtown, NY. This publisher (or agent?) might have folded
and the rights
bought by Behrman House Publishing.



Studdert has always maintained that the data he collected over many years
verifies a significant correlation between significantly distorted
Mendelian
common mouse coat color genes and an applied stress acting on either
parent.
Studdert experimentally applied contradictory stressors to mouse parents
using Han's Selye's pioneering concept of Eustress (too much of a good
thing) Vs Distress (too much of a bad thing).

From my point of view I am not sure that you are as right "as can be", or
that you have
optimally represented and not obscured the "potential virtue" of these two
concepts.

1. Too much of good (eu)stress => exhaustion ~= a detrimental stress that if
not ceasing
will become as deadly as any distress caused by any distressor that does not
desist; yet
it may OR MAY NOT become a subjectively painful, nor altogether objectively
painful (or
typically distressing as evidenced as far as possible by physiological,
hormonal,
neurologically, and visibly emotional, signs or markers) experience.

2. [This comment contains a to me even more important call to be careful
about what we mean with these concepts.] Too much distress, is as you
describe it, too much of a bad thing.
However, "too much distress" is also a description of a maladaptive
reaction - by definition!

And, as we all 'ought to' know, many adverse environmental challenges that
stimulate a sensory or motivational *overload* are handled *automatically*
[here i.e. independently of whatever the patterns of brain activity are
that generate, and that in principle can be used to define, our levels and
contents of "conscious awareness" - or, EPTly put, how we "pay and
transiently focus actention"] by highly specific synaptic hibernation (i.e.
the neural "gating" of signals on their way to generate self-defeating
distress reactions).

[This part of the EPT picture of what is going on within actention selection
systems is also the most overlooked aspect of our psychobiology and our
average genophenotype's naturally selected evolutionary origin.]

<snip>

Here is a short sample from Studdert's book that might (as I see it!)
provide a peek at one past source of your (John Edser's) ideological
inspiration:

From The Stress Theory of Evolution, by Richard de C Studdert:

SELECTION
It never ceases to amaze people what small margins of survival value
are sufficient to select the fittest. But for anyone conversant with
the exponential growth curve and the amount of
evolutionary time available, it should not amaze.
For instance, if one better adapted offspring born every 1,000 years
can be attributed to trait A over trait B, then trait B will disappear in
an evolutionary flash. Because of this elimination of
the ever-so-slightly less-fit species and the impossibility of two
species being and remaining exactly equal in survival value,
for any significant period we get the principle of
"one species only per niche." This is a basic rule of ecology
that we must always respect.
The thing being selected is the trait, determined not usually
by a gene but more often by a combination of genes. Individuals
who possess adaptive traits are selected in, while individuals who
possess maladaptive traits are selected out -- that is, culled.
Except for preselection, selection occurs at the individual
level always, but selection is often much more severe in certain
groups within a species, thus constituting apparent group selection.

/End quote

P


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Relevant Pages

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