phillip smith  wrote in
news:buf7c3$12vp$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org: 

> Evolution has been described as changes in gene frequencies. I have
> myself espoused this point of view. I am beginning to have some
> doubts. The gene centered view of selection with coefficients for each
> allele where the differences of genomic back ground are supposed to
> average out and the frequency of the gene changes because of the mean
> selective advantage it confers to individuals bearing that allele.
> Please ignore genetic drift for the purpose of this argument. Does any
> one know of any theoretical discussion of this assertion.
> I can think of three confounding factors for such as argument.
> 1) Epistatic interactions between the rest of the genome on the
> coefficent of selection are unknown and perhaps unknowable

Exactly what difference does this make? When a tiger is chasing Joe and 
Fred, and Fred is slower, the tiger is not going to go after Joe instead 
because the gene that makes Joe faster has epistatic interactions. 

> 2) selection events are insufficiently  uniform. I.e every individuals
> death is a unique event

The question in general is not death, it is life. Many are born, few 
survive. This is one of the key principles of evolution. 

> 3) the combination of the above prevents the normalisation of the data
> to quantify the effect of a particular allele at a particular locus.
 
> I would have though fisher and others may have dealt with these issues
> any one know of any investigations in to this area

Others have responded to this point.


But perhaps evolution is better thought of as changes in phenotype. We 
typically say that horseshoe crabs are "unchanged" after millions of 
years, even though their gene frequencies today are almost certainly  
significantly different from their gene frequencies  millions of years 
ago. 


Yours,

Bill Morse
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