Talk:Selection

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Contents

[edit] Article should be merged

with Natural selection ?

[edit] Comment on the chart

In the chart, "natural selection" is subdivided into two subcategories: ecological selection and sexual selection. Shouldn't a third subcategory be added: kin selection? EPM 17:31, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ecological selection

I'm not satisfied with ecological selection. I think the selection page etc over-represent ecological selection as a category, and incorrectly classify sexual selection as a sub-category of natural selection. IMHO, natural selection and sexual selection are thought of as two distinct processes by practitioners within the field, with natural selection occupying the position in the figure in selection that is currently occupied by ecological selection. At least, some references should be added to selection and ecological selection to support the views presented and some historical information should be added to trace the change from Darwin's view to the one presented here. Pete.Hurd 19:47, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

And I'm not really satisfied with artificial selection! As I've said over on the natural selection page I feel artificial selection is a special case of natural selection i.e. a subset (as long as we are talking about biological entities differentially reproducing). Sober seems to agree...

Artificial selection is not selection that takes places outside of nature, but selection that occurs within a particular niche found in nature. The [Waddington] experiment involved the interaction of members of one species with members of another. The fact that one of those species happens to have been Homo sapiens sapiens does not affect the point. Artificial selection is a variety of natural selection; the relation is one of set inclusion, not disjointness.

— Axel147 00:35, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Agree - one could/shoud rather distinguish between interspecific/between-species selection (ecological selection as usually understood + some cases of artificial selection, such as domestication of horses vs non-domestication of zebras) and interspecific/within-species selection (sexual + kin + most artificial selection). The former is more relevant in a macroevolutionary context, while the latter is more of a factor in speciation and adaptation on the species level (although in eusocial hymenopterans, it is of considerable macroevolutionary importance too). The evolutionary significance is that the former pits unconnected gene-pools against each other and the latter occurs within the same gene pool. darwin inintially started with studying artificial selection, and then (in "Origin of Species") expanded his view on interspecific selection, whereas Wallace directly discussed the latter.
Of course a clean line cannot be always drawn as evolution is an ongoing process. But most cases of evolution yielding to selective forces can be clearly attributed to one or the other being predominant. For example, the showy plumage of some male birds of paradise could of course not evolve beyond a point where it was detrimental to their survival (in Megaceros, changing climate and thus vegetation actually shifted the balance so that a sexually-selected character became detrimental to their survival). But the initial evolution of an exaggerated sexual trait was in both cases driven by intraspecific selection.
Indeed, the article should be somehow fused with Natural selection. Probably best merged into it (be aware that this will involve a fair amount of redirect-checking if in the course of this "selection" becomes a pure disambig page). "Selection" is the general term for any process of choosing and discarding from a set of possibilities. "Natural selection" is when this process occurs in nature. The point above about the "nature vs humans" division being artificial is very correct indeed. Evolutionarily, humans putting out food for their Old German Owl pigeons in their cage is just the same as Angraecum sesquipedale evolving a longer and even longer spur in its flowers, which it could because there was already Xanthopan morgani to "run-away" with: provision of a food resource under conditions where it is accessible to a part of a gene pool, bearing a particular character, that otherwise would have been in dire straits.
It does not need intelligence for evolution to work; centuries of a loose "best-fit" trial-and-error just do the job as well as human planning does (arguably better in fact, because it gets to try out more options), and from the evolutionary perspective of the lineages selected upon, it is all the same - they either thrive or fail. And the pigeon fancier's taste of what constitutes a desirable breed is in fact co-evolution between the humans who like a particular sort of pigeon and those strange birds which are thus able to thrive though they'd soon die outside human care. Dysmorodrepanis 15:42, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] The unit of selection

It seems to me as if no distinction is made between selection on the genetic level or on the level of individuals. I think this is important because Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection seems to be dubious. The reason seems to be that the mean fitness is determined as mean over the set of genes, assuming that a gene may have a fitness of its own.

On the other hand, if we assume that the selection of individuals rules the enrichment of genes in a large population and determines the mean fitness over the set of individuals we may for instance get the theorem of gaussian adaptation leading to quite different properties of evolution.

Kjells 11:06, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps some reference to the Unit of selection article would help. Pete.Hurd 16:42, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Se for instance: Dawkins, R. The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 1976.

More references may be found on my web site:

http://www.evolution-in-a-nutshell.se Kjells 10:23, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge from evolutionary pressure

I've suggested evolutionary pressure be merged into this article. This one is quite short itself, and evolutionary pressure is no more than a stub. Any arguments in favour of keeping it separate? If it can be developed more there's always the possibility of splitting it off in future. Richard001 01:33, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

  • Disagree. I believe that the Evolutionary Pressure article deserves to be extended and a seperate entity from the main article on selection.Zisimos (talk) 20:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] disambiguate from selection in computing

[1] (I'm not sure how to link to wikipages with parentheses) discusses "focus" in computing. "Selection" is related to "focus" in subtle ways and should be discussed in Wikipedia. Recommend disambiguation page under "selection" which, for now, can link to focus (computing) page. Rokahn (talk) 19:00, 10 February 2008 (UTC)Rokahn