"John Wilkins"  wrote in message
news:c7hmdm$i0l$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
[snip much]
> Population structure is not inherited, although allele
> frequency is sampled.  [snip]

> Species speciate differentially, a kind of sorting process, I grant you
> that, but *selection*? That requires hereditability at the level
> concerned (which doesn't happen for species, as new species are formed
> from demes, and they inherit demic allele ratios, perhaps, sometimes),
> and competition (of a population size large enough to overcome
> contingency). Selection is a subset of sorting, and not all sorting
> processes are selection processes. For example, you can sort pebbles by
> water action in a riverbed, but it is not selection.
>
> As Eldredge noted, species do not "moremake" in the
requisite manner to
> be subject to selection. They split, bud and become disrupted, but at
> the species level their properties are not inherited. The principle of
> parsimony suggests that if we can account for what happens in terms of a
> lower-level process (i.e., a population genetic process) then the higher
> level explanation is otiose.  [snip remainder]

I believe that your arguments don't apply to the kind of species-selection
that I describe in my latest response to Guy.  Population structure
can be heritable if that structure is an ESS.  Fluctuations from that
stable structure are repaired.

Furthermore, although the maintenance of that population structure
takes place using individual-level selection, I don't think that your
parsimony argument applies - the species and its gene frequencies
cannot be removed from the explanatory structure.
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