IN
Message-Id: <9401120726.AA14965 at net.bio.net>
fiddick at lifesci.ucsb.edu (Laurence Fiddick) writes
"you definately could measure an organism's success as you claim. in
fact if
i were inclined to measure an organism's success that's probably how i'd
go
about it. however, i'm not so inclined. my interests are in explaining
adaption and organismal success is a misleading piece of information in
that
pursuit. if you reconsider what you've written i'm sure you'll want to
amend
what you say anyways, i.e. whose gene's are you talking about anyways?
by your
formulation the organism that is ravaged by viruses and other pathogens
thereby
producing a large number of genes is more successful than the organism
that is
resistant to infection. i've no doubt you can tidy that up, but the
question
still remains, which genes? you completely whitewash intragenomic
conflict.
nuclear genes and cytoplasmic genes have dissimilar interests. granted,
from
the organisms point of view your formulation of success is unaffected,
but
you pay the cost of being unable to explain the adaptations that may
(and i
would add, "have") result from this conflict. anyways, the original
question
was which is the best measure of biological success, not organismal
success.
for me, i'll interpret 'biological' as meaning 'genetic'.
the level of analysis aside, there still is the matter of what 'success'
means.
here i'll simply make several logical leaps (and no doubt invalid ones
at that)
and simply say that all human usage of the word 'success' reduce to
'fitness'
(except in cases were the use of success is analogical, where the
analogy is
to situations where talk of fitness is meaningful), and fitness is best
viewed
copies. further, from the gene's pov 'relative' means relative to other
genes
period. higher order categories of organism, species, genus, phyla, are
all
irrelevant. even humans and ants can share the same genes."
James replies:
My "cost" which is outlined in your group selectionist outline is a fallacy;
any adaptation an organism holds which would be due to the physical reality
of conflict between two traits, whether those traits be nuclear vs. cytoplasmic
DNA or some other pair of parts of a whole organism (say, size and flight
mechanisms), if called a biological success, can only be attributed to
the individual for the serendipity of having those conflicting traits; that
is, the traits could not have conflicted without the organism, so the credit
goes to the whole rather to its parts.
So far as the ravages of diseases, an organsm who fails to thrust copies of
most of its genes for the sake of a few cannot be labelled a success, for the
ravages of time will see to the relatively quick erasure of any evidence of
its existence, and success must be linked to persistance, however one
defines it.
And yes, ants and humans may carry homologous DNA sequences, but we know that
only for one ultimate reason: humans and extant ant species currently exist;
there existance may be looked on as evidence for success (although time will
change this for both groups), and therefore if those homologous genes have
anything to do with the success of either lineage, that success cannot be
explained entirely by those few homologous genes, but rather to the wholes
which are individuals and of which homologous genes are but a part.
