Slimebeast said:
Sqrl said:
Slimebeast said:
^That's the point, highwaystar101. We know mutation rate and evolution/change is extremely high in bacteria, yet they don't seem to be able to take the fundamental - many would say inevitable - step to become multicellular organisms. |
You do realize that bacteria is asexual right? This means that unlike sexual multicellular organisms they do not procreate and the effect is that the bacteria they create through binary fission are identical to them with the only exception being possible mutations. The original bacteria and any future bacteria it produces are not guaranteed to have the new trait or any new trait.
It is extremely easy for asexual populations to take divergent evolutionary paths and truly needs no special explanation because statistically they are not just capable of diverging with one path changing and the other staying static, but it is in fact highly likely. Only in scenarios where an evolutionary path becomes untenable for survival in the environment would it actually die off, meaning that all sorts of divergent paths with little or even no actual advantage could stick around for long periods of time (this is why bacteria come in different "strains". It is because it is extremely easy for them to diverge given their fairly unique characteristics).
Even then in the case of bacteria the older versions typically do not die out completely but become dormant or find other ways of surviving until conditions become more hospitable. They are a particularly resilient brand of life and their resiliency combined with their asexual reproduction explains fully, clearly, and without any inconsistency why they are capable of having highly adaptive populations while also having extremely stable populations.
I understand that many have objections to evolution but I don't think there is a very strong case to be made on the subject of bacterial evolution as it is a very well understood area both scientifically and statistically. If what you were suggesting had some credence it would be a simple matter of formulating a mathematical proof to disprove macro-evolution using the statistical improbabilities you're claim. There has certainly been plenty of intelligent and capable individuals who could have done this and would love to have done it as they could make an absolutely massive name for themselves, yet they have not. This area of statistics and probability is not even a particularly difficult area and I have a hard time believing such a contentious topic has not been examined from this angle thoroughly.
If however I'm wrong on that and this has not been explored I would encourage you to produce such a proof as a simple course in statistics and probability would be more than sufficient to do so.
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I may have to look deeper into this asexual thing, but from a first glance gene recombination, while being important, shouldnt really be a statistical difference maker for driving evolution. It's just one of many factors. Actually your notation raises anther question - why havent bacteria evolved sexual reproduction?
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Seriously dude, are you even paying attention? A lot of them DO sexually reproduce (though not in the way you would think of sexual reproduction normally-more along the lines of genetic recombination with the help of plasmids and various other means). And a lot of bacteria DID eventually evolve into organisms that sexually reproduce. Where do you think we came from?
And there are plenty of advantages to asexual reproduction. It takes less time, it doesn't require a mate, it can typically happen much faster, and it takes less resources to do. Not to mention it works very nicely if you are a single-celled organism. You are assuming that bacteria that don't sexually reproduce HAVE A NEED to sexually reproduce. Traits are not favored through unnatural selection if they don't benefit a species. Thus, many bacteria have been extremely successful using asexual reproduction and never selected in the direction of sexual reproduction.
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