View Single Post
Old 01-27-2005, 12:11 PM   #18 (permalink)
CSflim
Sky Piercer
 
CSflim's Avatar
 
Location: Ireland
The real question that is being posed is, 'Is the level of selection pressure significantly high?'

To us in the developed world, it would seem that it is very low (‘selection pressure’ is strongly correlated with ‘death rate’). In order to debate about this, we need to consider the people who are not successful in passing on their genes (having children). The most common cases seem to be:

Personal choice: Is this a genetically controlled trait? Certainly not! However is there a genetic component that influences this decision? Perhaps; say, genes that result in independent thinking, and going against social norms. But it seems that people who choose not to have children form a very small subset of the people who show these much more general traits. Alternatively maybe there is no genetic component affecting the decision at all. Nature vs. nurture abounds.

Unfortunate Events: Victims of sheer bad luck and circumstances beyond their control who die before they pass on their genes, e.g. a car crash. There are no genes for good luck, so this will not be affected by evolution. I would also include deaths resulting from war in this category.

Disease: Most terminal diseases affect people only when they are older. So these will not significantly affect evolution. However diseases that strike young people also are significant. If there is a genetic predisposition towards these diseases then evolution will strive to reduce and/or remove this predisposition from the gene pool. However the speed of this depends entirely on how widespread the disease is. It will probably be very slow. In comparison the diseases themselves may be evolving if they are caused by viruses or bacteria, and they will do so at a much faster rate.

Impotence: It seems that impotence is covered by what I said in "Unfortunate events" and "Disease". As far as evolution is concerned, impotence is equivalent to death. If there is anything genetic that affects impotence, this could be selected for/against.

Failure to find a mate: This has been the situation most eluded to in this thread. The significance of sexual selection entirely depends on how many people there are who go through their life and fail to find a mate. It is not obvious that this number is significantly high. In such cases it is likely that it is a result of being "too picky", and so this trait may be selected against.
Much has been made of how intelligent/successful/beautiful people have a tendancy to mate with other intelligent/successful/beautiful people. But don't forget that unintelligent/unsuccessful/ugly people also mate with each other. So there is not necessarily a selection pressure due to this 'caste' system of mating. The idea of divergent evolution is ridiculous in this situation as 'intelligent', 'successful' and 'beautiful' are not nearly sharply enough defined and there is enough cross-breeding to keep the species together.
If being unintelligent, unsuccessful or ugly is in-of-itself hazardous to the health then this will effect natural selection directly rather than via sexual selection.


Have I missed out on any? In areas of the world where the death-rate is higher, then the selection pressure will also be higher, resulting in faster evolution. It has been suggested that a genetic resistance to AIDS among prostitutes has been evolved in Africa. (I can't find a reference for this, but I seem to remember reading it some time ago. Can anyone confirm this?).

It is too easy to merely shows ways we can evolve. In doing so, you must also show the ways that we die (childless).
__________________
CSflim is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360