The full modern understanding of Evolutionary Theory

[NineBerry]

So over the last months I have spent quite some time on understanding how evolutionary theory has progressed in the past years.

I have learned quite a lot and had to find out the disturbing truth that what Dawkins and others around him as well as the public educational programs on the television present is a very much simplified view on evolution.

I have learned about multi-level-selection, the mostly neutral theory of evolution, the importance of drift vs natural selection, the importance of environment and random processes during gene expression and a lot of other stuff.

Mostly I have learned that modern evolutionary theory includes a lot of math that goes very much over my math abilities. (I forgot a lot of math knowledge in the last decades since I stopped university)

Have you had the same experience at some time? Understanding there is more to evolution than what is mostly discussed and understood?

[Sean Hayden]

Yar, picked up Logic of Chance, The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution a few years ago and had a similar experience.

[NineBerry]

Koonin sounds very interesting. Going to look into his work. Thank you

[pErvinalia]

I studied some evolution at university a thousand years ago. Haven't revisited it much at all, other than the odd Dawkins book.

[Brian Peacock]

Aye. It's a subject that is as wide as it is deep.

I'm pretty wide - but I'm not that deep.

[JimC]

Although there are many complexities in the processes of evolution, the essential part of evolution is still natural selection, at least as the only way of achieving adaptations for survival and reproductive success. And let's not forget the revolutionary nature of Dawkins concept of the selfish gene, still a vital facet of any understanding of genetics.

[NineBerry]

Found this great video by the Royal Institution showing a presentation by Jonathan Pettitt

[macdoc]

fuck you made my head hurt......I did learn a bunch

[NineBerry]

Although there are many complexities in the processes of evolution, the essential part of evolution is still natural selection, at least as the only way of achieving adaptations for survival and reproductive success.

That's of course true. Selection is the driving force behind adaptation to the environment. To me it seems that however too many people focus on this question (adaptation to the environment).

With especially small populations of complex beings (like the human race) a lot of variation that can be seen within those populations is actually not adaptation to the environment. Now oftentimes people always try to explain specific properties of parts of the population by searching for some selective advantage while the properties may just be a result of the natural variation that occurs within populations.

One example of many is homosexuality among humans. I see a lot of people asking the question how homosexuality can selected for. No one seems to consider that it can just be part of the naturally occurring variation among humans (based on genetic drift and developmental variation).

Also an observation: Many people (me included in the past) imagine natural selection to act on newly arriving mutations. While I have now understood that selection mainly acts on already existing variation that was established via drift.

[NineBerry]

Here is another great playlist of videos with far too few views.

Zach B. Hancock (a population geneticist) gives an overview over the full current understanding of evolution from the point of view of population genetics. (Altogether 5 to 6 hours and far too much mathematics for my liking)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfGvkvT ... anX2_Lxe08