Larry Moran wrote:
> On Thu, 20 May 2004 23:28:56 +0000 (UTC), 
> Phil Roberts, Jr.  wrote:
> 
>>John Wilkins wrote:
>>
>>>Phil Roberts, Jr.  wrote:
>>>
>>>R. A. Fisher did. He began his _The genetical theory of natural
>>>selection_ in 1930, which kicked off the Synthesis, with the words,
>>>"Natural Selection is not Evolution."
>>
>>Yes.  But with the exception of Gould, most theorists consider
>>natural selection to be the prime mover of evolution.  So for
>>me its always been a moot point.
> 
> 
> In terms of total amount of evolutionary change, random genetic
> drift is the main mechanism of evolution, by far. Almost all
> evolutionary biologists know this.
> 
Doesn't that depend on how you measure evolutionary change?  At the 
sequence level, I would agree (well, until someone shows me some 
evidence to the contrary).

At the phenotypic level, I would expect selection to be more important. 
  But I've not seen any actual quantitative evidence, and it's not clear 
to me how to measure this.  Over a short evolutionary time span a 
statistic comparing Qst and Fst could be used, I suppose, but I haven't 
seen any statistic (something else on my list of things to work on!).

Bob

-- 
Bob O'Hara

Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics
P.O. Box 4 (Yliopistonkatu 5)
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
Finland
Telephone: +358-9-191 23743
Mobile: +358 50 599 0540
Fax:  +358-9-191 22 779
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Journal of Negative Results - EEB: http://www.jnr-eeb.org
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