Donald Forsdyke  wrote:

> "Michael Ragland"  wrote in message
> news:bbt56n$1sor$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> >
> > Random Genetic Drift
> > Copyright © 1993-1997 by Laurence Moran
> > [Last Update: January 22, 1993]
> >
> > [moderator's note: I hope Larry doesn't mind the inclusion of his
> > entire (and copyrighted) document; Mr. Ragland's comments are, as
> > usual, at the end of the whole thing. Any followups should be
> > edited for space, okay? - JAH]
> >
> >  The two most important mechanisms of evolution are natural selection
> > and genetic drift. Most people have a reasonable understanding of
> > natural selection but they don't realize that drift is also important.
> > The anti- evolutionists, in particular, concentrate their attack on
> > natural selection not realizing that there is much more to evolution.
> > Darwin didn't know about genetic drift, this is one of the reasons why
> > modern evolutionary biologists are no longer "Darwinists". (When
> > anti-evolutionists equate evolution with Darwinism you know that they
> > have not done their homework!)
> 
> In Belgium, polymath Delboeuf wrote about what we would now call genetic
> drift at least as early as 1877. Darwin died in 1882. How do we know that
> Darwin did not know about genetic drift?
> See:http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/gulick.htm
> 
Is there documentary evidence that he did? I do not know all his
letters, but I don't recall him or any of the Darwinians discussing
anything like it until, of all people, Weismann, said something about
it:

"... there are very variable species and very constant species, and it
is obvious that colonies which are founded by a very variable species
can hardly ever remain exactly identical with the ancestral species; and
that several of them will turn out differently, even granting that the
conditions of life be exactly the same, for no colony will contain all
the variants of the species in the same proportion, but at most only a
few of them, and the result of mingling these must ultimately result in
the development of a somewhat different form in each colonial area."
p286 in

Weismann, August. 1904. The evolution theory. Translated by J. A.
Thompson and M. R. Thompson. 2 vols. London: Edward Arnold.

which is so far as I can tell the founder effect via stochastic sampling
of the alleles of peripheral populations.

-- 
John Wilkins
"And this is a damnable doctrine" - Charles Darwin, Autobiography
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