Haldane's Dilemma

PRO calculates that Haldane's dilemma applies whether 300 or 43 is used. I did mention how this number means absolutely nothing in the previous round. It must be noted that this number stems directly from the substitution cost, where Intensity of Selection = Substitution cost/number of generations. Therefore, if I can show that the cost was wrong, this entire point will not matter. Haldane's entire argument would be rendered useless. Since this debate was over Haldane's Dilemma as a whole, as long as I can demonstrate the invalidity of Haldane's paper, this individual point should not matter.Additionally, it still may just be 1667 or 11000 differences that account for our descent, as I previously pointed out that only one major difference, the production of sialic acid, exists between us and other primates. This is only caused be 92 base pairs. My opponent only makes an argument from disbelief saying that it is not plausible without any scientific studies on significant genetic differences between humans and primates.It does not matter how fast mammals produce offspring, but how many they do. Orangutans, the primate used by my opponent, has the longest time-span between children of ALL great apes. Plus, since they mature at age 15 and live up to 40, this rate is certainly enough for the approx. reproductive rate of 2 I gave earlier. PRO does not reconcile this would the fact I mentioned earlier that Haldane accounts for a rate of only 1.1."The cost of substitution...plausible."I'm not even sure where PRO came up with this. I took the disputed quote straight from Haldane's paper. It is not the reproductive rate, it is the number times the number of generations needed for an allele to fixate. PRO completely ignored the second clause of my excerpt which stated "if carried out by natural selection based on juvenile deaths." "How in the world...population?"Let me explain this. I shouldn't have said faster, I should have said at a higher rate. If the population is low, yes, fixation can occur quicker. But there is also a MUCH higher chance that it never occurs. In a group of 10, where 2 carry a mutation, only those two have to die. In a group of 100, with 20 mutations, all 20 have to die. It is unlikely that a greater number would die, so that allele would spread much faster. Of course, these numbers are extremely exaggerated but the concept still applies. A larger population would be able to sustain more changes because it is, quite simply, larger. A wider gene pool would develop more mutations. More variation would occur in recombination. All of these factors would lead to a healthier gene pool with more room for development and sustained improvement. The cost is reduced by healthier fixation rates and more variations leading to more fixations. That's why genetic bottlenecks generally result in a species' decline."However, it's a non-sequitur...faster."That's the point, I'm not saying a SINGLE variant will fixate faster. MORE variants would fixate in the end, though.In the highlighted portion of my opponent's argument, he left out the crucial last phrase of Haldane's sentence. It reads, "the mean cost of selecting its descendants would be the same as that of selection for the three mutants in series, though the process may be quicker. Of course the total number of deaths would have to go up, it has to do with the size of the population being larger. The larger the population, the more mutations. More deaths would occur to account for it, but they would be in a shorter time span. If 100 organisms had to die, the deaths would happen faster in a constant population of 50 than in one of 10."only one beneficial mutation...antagonistic."One, this only deals with beneficial mutations. Like I said before, not all changes have to be good. Two, simultaneous substitutions don't have to be always antagonistic, as they can be tightly linked and not separate during recombination. In fact, most speciation occurs because of mutations on key genes that are tightly linked on chromosomes. This generates bigger changes that fixate faster. Three, many other studies have shown that simultaneous substitutions are quite common (sources 2, 3)."Haldane does not explicitly say he accounts for sexual recombination."This contradicts PROS prior assertion that "Haldane actually did account for recombination.""sexual recombination does not cause fixation to happen faster."First, as most mammals have about 2 kids per organism, or 4 per 'couple,' and population remains constant, recombination will not reduce the appearance in the gene pool. It will either stay constant or increase. In fact, since most beneficial changes occur in important genes (ones that control central cell functions, etc), and these genes appear at the center of the chromosome, a process known as hitch-hiking ensures they almost certainly will be carried on to the next generation. If the voters need more evidence on how recombination speeds up fixation and lowers the substitution cost, they can visit sources 4 and 5."Haldane's cost of substitution...neutral mutations"Haldane said, incorrectly, on genetic drift, "such events are not perhaps very frequent even on an evolutionary time scale"So he didn't account for drift."it's extraordinaryly unlikely...to get fixated"Correct, but recombination can. Hitchhiking allows neutral alleles to fixate as quickly as good alleles. A random change can occur in a central gene, but have no effect on the organism, and may approach fixation. This is not uncommon, since 1% of our nucleotides are inactive. That's 30000000. It's not a mathematical implausibility that some of these have changed and fixated due to recombination. "All that matters...population"My point here that huge variation exists even between humans. Considering that only two amino acids make up a difference between us and chimpanzees, a large number of our differences can easily be a result of random changes and mutations.ConclusionOver this debate, I have raised a number of objections to Haldane's argument. All that is required to discredit it entirely is one valid issue. Deciding whether any of my points was strong enough to do so is for the voters to decide. Over the course of the debate, my opponent has dismissed 6 of my arguments as irrelevant, hardly hesitating to justify. He has failed to properly address the following issues:1) Haldane's mistake in saying the environment underwent rapid changes in every part of the last 10 million years. He merely wrote it off by quoting Haldane saying that the conclusions are unaffected.2) Haldane's failure to address reproductive rates properly. He clarified (unnecessarily) what Haldane meant by reduced reproductive rates, then by citing a fact about chimpanzees.3) Haldane's failure to even mention the effects of sexual recombination in his argument. PRO argued that recombination would have a negative impact on fixation, without citing sources explaining why, when virtually the entire scientific community agrees that recombination speeds up fixation.4) Haldane's ignorance of the process of soft selection. Haldane incorrectly assumes that a beneficial gene in one organism would lower the fitness of others, and my opponent uses circular reasoning and argues for hard selection (natural selection in its most theoretical form) with a hypothetical scenario.I hope this and all prior arguments are enough to convince voters.Sourceshttp://en.wikipedia.org...http://www.sciencedaily.com... http://www.genetics.org...http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...http://www.genetics.org...http://www.gate.net...