John Platko wrote:Hmmmmm. It looks complicated. Very very complicated ....

http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/32/4/835.full

What do you expect?

It's obviously a specialist field, with a specialist focus, and needs to account for billions of organisms. It's not something you can sketch out on the back of a fag packet.

Spearthrower wrote:

John Platko wrote:Indeed. That's certainly one of the many fine points emphasized over and over again in Sapolsky's course. Scientific "hunches" often turn out to be wrong- with dire consequences for many along the way.

The only 'hunch' so far employed in this thread is yours, and it wasn't scientific, so this is irrelevant.

Scientific hunches are inferences, but science cannot stop at the hypothesis - it must needs check its contents against observation and experimentation.

Finally, while the drama of your sentence is certainly entertaining, it also appears to be fantasy. Would you care to supply a single example of a 'scientific hunch' which turned out to have 'dire consequences for many'?

Sure

John Platko wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

'It depends' doesn't mean 'we don't know' - it means exactly what it says: it depends on the species. So, if you want to calculate the sum total of speciation events across all life from year dot perfectly accurately, you're going to need to make independent calculations of all those hundreds of millions of species independently then combine the result.

I got that. It was the point of my comment.

No, you clearly didn't get that, or you wouldn't have taken 'it depends' to mean 'we don't know'. Note that I was talking specifically about the speciation of a species - it depends because it's the same format of question as 'how long is a piece of string'. Whereas, my post made it clear for you that, while it depends on the organism, it is not 'unknown'.

Ok. Then how long will it take for humans to speciate?

John Platko wrote: Where's the chart that shows the lower and upper probability bound for each species?

Why would there be a chart, Platko?

Ummmm because you say:

Whereas, my post made it clear for you that, while it depends on the organism, it is not 'unknown'.

Did you really read my post you're supposedly replying to?

John Platko wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:
Unless you are being paid to do that, or have an inordinate amount of time on your hands, I doubt anyone's going to be sufficiently motivated to arrive at perfect accuracy.

I'm not looking for perfection,....

Says you who just asked for a chart!

John Platko wrote:just something better than "see how fast flies speciaciate, extrapolating from there we have ...

And yet no one said that. I clearly used the fruit flies as an example of how speciation can be measured. I did not say that we extrapolate from fruit fly speciation.

John Platko wrote:Where are the numbers for the more complex species and how were they determined?

Before getting to that - what do you mean 'more complex'? It's a wooly notion. Do you mean 'bigger'? Do you mean 'possesses more active DNA'?

As for where the numbers are, you need to read relevant scientific journals.

For example:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24299412

Quantifying variation in speciation and extinction rates with clade data.
Paradis E, Tedesco PA, Hugueny B.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20525614

Heritability of extinction rates links diversification patterns in molecular phylogenies and fossils.
Rabosky DL.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2605086/

The speed of ecological speciation
ANDREW P. HENDRY,*† PATRIK NOSIL,‡ and LOREN H. RIESEBERG§

ummm. thanks but I beat you to it on my own here.

It would have saved a lot of time if these papers were referenced before I had to start asking questions- just saying.

As you mention in a following post, you're an 'outsider', so I can also suggest that when you look at a paper like this, scroll on down to the references - science builds on previous observations and data and needs to take those into account too.

So, for example, the last citation there has 73 papers referenced all with information pertaining to speciation rates and means of quantifying them.

But you can't expect a specific question to be specifically addressed in a single paper. If you want that to happen, you have to do it yourself, old chap! It's a monumental task considering there have been billions of species in Earth's history, and I doubt very much you'd really want to read a paper that did attempt to list each and every speciation event and the time it took - worse than all those begats in your book!

That's why I like the paper I cited- it was compiled from a ton of available papers.

John Platko wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:
However, we have plenty of lines of evidence which supply us with good ball park figures we can use to extrapolate.

Great! Please explain the whys and hows of speciation of high order creatures.

First, you'll need to explain to me what 'higher order creatures' means. Also, by 'hows' and 'whys' do you mean how speciation occurs, as in, what the forces are affecting it?

I withdraw my request. But thanks.

Oh, you want papers covering speciation in vertebrates? Here you go:

Adaptive Divergence And The Evolution Of Reproductive Isolation In The Wild: An Empirical Demonstration Using Introduced Sockeye Salmon by Andrew P. Hendry, Genetics, 112-113: 515-534 (2001)

Adaptive Evolution And Explosive Speciation: The Cichlid Fish Model by Thomas D. Kocher, Nature Reviews Genetics, 5: 288-298 (April 2004)

Chromosome Evolution, Phylogeny, And Speciation Of Rock Wallabies by G. B. Sharman, R. L. Close and G. M. Maynes, Australian Journal of Zoology, 37(2-4): 351-363 (1991)

Evolutionary Theory And Process Of Active Speciation And Adaptive Radiation In Subterranean Mole Rats, Spalax ehrenbergi Superspecies, In Israel by E. Nevo, Evolutionary Biology, 25: 1-125

Hybridisation And Adaptive Radiation by Ole Seehausen, TRENDS In Ecology & Evolution, 19(4): 198-207 (April 2004) [covers Cichlid fishes, along with dozens of other papers]

Sexual Selection, Reproductive Isolation And The Genic View Of Speciation by J. J. M. Van Alphen and Ole Seehausen, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 14: 874-875 (2001) [again covers Cichlid fishes]

Of more general importance, however, are the recent papers that have documented the existence of speciation genes, and probed their operation. Viz:

Speciation By Postzygotic Isolation: Forces, Genes And Molecules by H. Allen Orr and Daven C. Presgraves, Bioessays, 22(12): 1085-1094 (2000)

Speciation Genes by H. Allen Orr, John P. Masly and Daven C. Presgraves, Current Opinion in Genetics & Development, 14: 675-679 (2004)

The Evolutionary Genetics Of Speciation by Jerry A. Coyne and H. Allen Orr, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Part B, 353: 287-305 (1998)

The Genetic Basis Of Reproductive Isolation: Insights From Drosophila by H. Allen Orr, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 102 supplement 1: 6522-6526 (3rd May 2005)

The Genic View Of The Process Of Speciation by Chung-I Wu, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 14: 851-865 (2001)

The Phylogeny Of Closely Related Species As Revealed By The Genealogy Of A Speciation Gene, Odysseus by Chau-Ti Ting, Shun-Chern Tsaur and Chung-I Wu, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 97(10): 5313-5316 (9th May 2000)

The Population Genetics Of Speciation: The Evolution Of Hybrid Incompatibilities by H. Allen Orr, Genetics, 139: 1805-1813 (April 1995)

In the case of Cichlid fishes, there's also this paper on genes implicated in speciation:

Major Histocompatibility Complex Variation In Two Species Of Cichlid Fishes From Lake Malawi by Hideki Ono, Colm O'hUigin, Herbert Tichy and Jan Klein, Molecular and Evolutionary Biology, 10(5): 1060-1072 (1993)

Which also dovetails quite nicely with this paper:

Origin Of The Superflock Of Cichlid Fishes From Lake Victoria, East Africa by Erik Verheyen, Walter Salzburger, Jos Snoeks and Axel Meyer, Science, 300: 325-329 (11 April 2003)

That latter paper is the one in which the ancestor of the entire Lake Victoria Superflock was identified.

Calilasseia wrote:Oh, you want papers covering speciation in vertebrates? Here you go:

Adaptive Divergence And The Evolution Of Reproductive Isolation In The Wild: An Empirical Demonstration Using Introduced Sockeye Salmon by Andrew P. Hendry, Genetics, 112-113: 515-534 (2001)

Adaptive Evolution And Explosive Speciation: The Cichlid Fish Model by Thomas D. Kocher, Nature Reviews Genetics, 5: 288-298 (April 2004)

Chromosome Evolution, Phylogeny, And Speciation Of Rock Wallabies by G. B. Sharman, R. L. Close and G. M. Maynes, Australian Journal of Zoology, 37(2-4): 351-363 (1991)

Evolutionary Theory And Process Of Active Speciation And Adaptive Radiation In Subterranean Mole Rats, Spalax ehrenbergi Superspecies, In Israel by E. Nevo, Evolutionary Biology, 25: 1-125

Hybridisation And Adaptive Radiation by Ole Seehausen, TRENDS In Ecology & Evolution, 19(4): 198-207 (April 2004) [covers Cichlid fishes, along with dozens of other papers]

Sexual Selection, Reproductive Isolation And The Genic View Of Speciation by J. J. M. Van Alphen and Ole Seehausen, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 14: 874-875 (2001) [again covers Cichlid fishes]

Of more general importance, however, are the recent papers that have documented the existence of speciation genes, and probed their operation. Viz:

Speciation By Postzygotic Isolation: Forces, Genes And Molecules by H. Allen Orr and Daven C. Presgraves, Bioessays, 22(12): 1085-1094 (2000)

Speciation Genes by H. Allen Orr, John P. Masly and Daven C. Presgraves, Current Opinion in Genetics & Development, 14: 675-679 (2004)

The Evolutionary Genetics Of Speciation by Jerry A. Coyne and H. Allen Orr, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Part B, 353: 287-305 (1998)

The Genetic Basis Of Reproductive Isolation: Insights From Drosophila by H. Allen Orr, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 102 supplement 1: 6522-6526 (3rd May 2005)

The Genic View Of The Process Of Speciation by Chung-I Wu, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 14: 851-865 (2001)

The Phylogeny Of Closely Related Species As Revealed By The Genealogy Of A Speciation Gene, Odysseus by Chau-Ti Ting, Shun-Chern Tsaur and Chung-I Wu, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 97(10): 5313-5316 (9th May 2000)

The Population Genetics Of Speciation: The Evolution Of Hybrid Incompatibilities by H. Allen Orr, Genetics, 139: 1805-1813 (April 1995)

In the case of Cichlid fishes, there's also this paper on genes implicated in speciation:

Major Histocompatibility Complex Variation In Two Species Of Cichlid Fishes From Lake Malawi by Hideki Ono, Colm O'hUigin, Herbert Tichy and Jan Klein, Molecular and Evolutionary Biology, 10(5): 1060-1072 (1993)

Which also dovetails quite nicely with this paper:

Origin Of The Superflock Of Cichlid Fishes From Lake Victoria, East Africa by Erik Verheyen, Walter Salzburger, Jos Snoeks and Axel Meyer, Science, 300: 325-329 (11 April 2003)

That latter paper is the one in which the ancestor of the entire Lake Victoria Superflock was identified.

Thanks, I'm in the process of enhancing by biology education, which is weak, I'll get to your papers in due course.

John Platko wrote:Sure

Nope.
If you'd read the Wikipedia article, you'd understand why this does not constitute an example of what Spearthrower asked you to provide.

Sendraks wrote:

John Platko wrote:Sure

Nope.
If you'd read the Wikipedia article, you'd understand why this does not constitute an example of what Spearthrower asked you to provide.

Perhaps we interpret the article differently- that can happen.

james1v wrote:Ask a farmer.

I grew up on a farm. Is that close enough?