jeannot
Posts: 1201
Joined: Jan. 2006
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| Quote (Daniel Smith @ Sep. 30 2007,16:15) | | Quote (carlsonjok @ Sep. 28 2007,06:11) | | Quote (Daniel Smith @ Sep. 28 2007,04:12) |
OH, And the city doesn't really count as "the wild" now does it? |
For whom? Certainly, it isn't the wild for humans inasmuch as it consolidates all sorts of things, like grocery stores and homes, for our convenience. But for feral cats, alas without currency to buy themselves a bag of Friskies or take out a mortgage, it is the wild. |
Well, cats and dogs rely on humans for their sustenance, therefore the cities (which have dumpsters, trash cans and gutters full of food scraps) don't really qualify as an environment of the type where natural selection was proposed to have done all of it's major work now does it?
So, let me rephrase this:
Remove humans from the world and what happens to dogs, cats and cultivated plants?
It is my contention that natural selection will reduce varieties. |
That's entirely possible in the case of domesticated animals like cats and dogs, who were subject to strong divergent selection. Such divergent selection is probably weaker in the wild.
But does that mean that selection hinders the emergence of new types? The answer is no.
It is demonstrated that natural selection helps speciation.
There are dozens of documented cases of ecological speciation.
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