Steady application of microevolution results in, on the higher scale, the potential for spurts and stops in macroevolution. They might be useful concepts to discern between, might not. But they’re both the same mechanism – evolution. Just acting on different scales. Growth vs pubescent growth, you could tell apart by hormonal changes, whereas you wouldn’t be able to examine a species and say whether they’re busily macroevolving or microevolving; just that they’re evolving (and they will be, all the time, so long as they’re reproducing, have some variation and there are selective pressures present).

Mutation occurs at a more or less constant rate, but most of them will occur in non-coding DNA (some of which will have regulatory functions or uses we don’t know about, but much of which is truly junk) Within coding DNA many mutations will be masked by the redundancy of the codon to amino acid translation. Amino acid changes may not affect the structure of the protein protein. A protein can change without affecting its function, and a functional protein can sometimes be changed without adaptive consequences.

So that’s a lot of neutral mutations that won’t do a lot except generate a little bit of diversity in the genome. Then we get the ones that do something; some are deleterious and lost, some are advantageous in some way. Each within that advantageous set will have differing degrees of actual effect on the organism and hence different degrees of ‘novelty’ and adaptive value. Then there’s environmental factors – the degree of pressure on an organism won’t affect how often beneficial mutations occur but it’ll affect how quickly they spread.

So a constant tick rate of mutations will give you a relatively steady stream of minor changes, which might over long enough time frames effect substantial change in a species or cause speciation. Then every so not so often you get a mutation that’s something we later see to be big and noticeable and important, that offers sufficient benefit to sweep through a population and be the next “step forward”.

Steady microevolution, bursty macroevolution. Constant rate of mutation.

y’know what I miss? America’s benevolent scientific dominance.

Fortunato Posted:

y’know what I miss? America’s benevolent scientific dominance.

Blame televangelists.

BlooD FalCoN Posted:

Haha, this is hilarious. Log in to see images!

I met my first Creationist when having a discussion with some guys in high school about weird things people believe and I mentioned how there were people who thought that “the world was made 6000 years ago in 7 days”. Someone looked at me and with the most serious look on his face said “It was”. I turned around, shut up and was done for the day…

At this point in my life I cannot wrap my head around the concept of someone with a halfway decent education believing this and the supposed numbers of those who do in the States scares the ever-loving **** out of me.

Not believing that we evolved from inorganic materials in a long drawn out sequence that has been reproduced step by step in labs (individually, not all together and according to my college education) ok, no biggie. Saying God created life to evolve and gave us science to examine his creation? Sounds reasonable enough. But to believe in the literal meaning of the bible scares me ****less as it represents to me an utter denial of objective reality that cannot lead to any good.

Wherever I go I seem to find myself one creationist to have arguments with; in secondary there was Rosie, in sixth form Michael and now at uni there’s Mark. Only ever one at a time though…

I find it very strange that otherwise rational-seeming people are swayed to believing in superstition and magic, but I guess it’s a particularly potent meme or something.

Edit: I say “swayed”... I suppose in a lot of cases it’s that they’ve not swayed away from it. Makes a difference.

Poll the population of the US, and you get a minority of people saying they think evolution is real. A hefty percentage (though not an outright majority) believe that life, and the Earth, was created in its present form a relatively short time ago. The remainder is the “dunno” group.

That’s a very rare thing among wealthy/industrialised countries. Your public acceptance of the scientific facts ranks near the bottom of the table among western nations (Turkey is worse, but that’s about all)

Sergeant Cid Posted:

Actually, the 2004 Gallup poll showed that 51% of Americans believe in Evolution, whether it be Naturalistic or Theistic.

Ok, my facts are out of date. That’s encouraging… although theistic evolution is really only a small step in the right direction (and 51% still leaves room for a lot of full on deniers)

Given that the majority of religious people will fall into the middle of the bell curve and be fairly moderate believers, I guess that’s what you’d expect; acceptance of the idea of species changing (because otherwise you’re a loony young-earther) but sticking some god in there where it’s not needed (because otherwise you’re one of those baby-eating atheists)

That said, a moderate believer in America is still kind of a wack job when stood next to a moderate believer from Europe.

By 2004 the majority of people without land line telephones (those who would be part of a telephone survey) are the young employed people using cell phones only (you can get a land line subsidized extremely cheap in any state). Which, seems to me, would be more likely to include an atheistic bias. But now we’re just guessing at what the poll might say if others were asked, so a little silly and not provable by either of us.

I can’t deny that a larger percentage of US citizens is under educated than in other industrialized nations, what I wanted to point out was the phrase “you Americans seem to be about 10-15 years behind…” is a meaningless generalization. Who is it in other nations that is officially acknowledging scientific theory? The information is available, even taught to every child, we do have some real dumbbumes though. lol

Depends on the subject, man man. With the a priori, you can just sit and think about it.

i feel this might be relevant to this thread.