17 hours ago, BusaDave9 said:

Thanks, that was interesting but to be honest I haven't really done any research beyond reading what you've posted. Maybe I'll find time after work.

My thesis is that natural selection does not affect modern human evolution as much as with wild animals. You want examples? If I found few examples of human evolution due to natural selection and lots of examples of animal evolution would that be what you want?

I'm just interested in the conversation. I see lots of people surviving even with major genetic deficiencies such as blindness and deafness. I believe animals with these same problems would never reach reproductive age.

I realize people with genetic disability "also contribute to the width of the gene pool in other respects". That's true but they also pass on blindness and deafness.

If, which you have not so far established, such blind and deaf people reproduce as much as the average, that would imply that blindness and deafness are no longer very relevant to Darwinian “fitness” in humans. But other traits might be, such as those @CharonY and I have mentioned. So it would not be evidence that natural selection has ceased to operate, just that the selection criteria are different from those in wild animals.

However it could equally well be that such blind and deaf people in fact do reproduce less, or even that they selectively abort foetuses in which the defect is present, to avoid having to raise disabled children. So it seems to me we would need some evidence about their rate of reproduction before any conclusion such as the one you are trying to draw could be reached.

10 hours ago, BusaDave9 said:

Good points. Let me answer. Animals do selectively go after specific prey, eliminating them wherever they can find them. You talk about "genocide on continental scales" but only humans populate every country in the world.

When some animals try to kill every one of a specific species, do you call that genocide?
Sure you were talking about genocide within the human race. Many animals try to kill off an entire species whenever they encounter them. But you don't call it genocide when a species tries to kill another species.

I provided examples of intraspecies conflict, and you respond with wildly inaccurate speculations on interspecific 'genocide'. Seems like a diversion tactic rather than argument in good faith.

10 hours ago, BusaDave9 said:

Again you are lying. You put it in quotes so I searched to see if I misspoke. No, I never said that.

If you lie, lie, lie. Don't be surprised if I don't notice if you eventually do tell the truth. I will be ignoring your posts from here on out.

And when you're cornered by argument in good faith, you lash out and yell 'infamy!'. You're not POTUS are you?

One matter that has not received an airing is the nature of 'Natural Selection'.

One important factor is the timescale considered, and whether that time scale is relative to the total time length of evolution of the species being compared, and whether the periods are concurrent or not.

Another important factor is that neither natural selection nor evolution itself proceed at a constant even time rate. Both are jerky in manifestation.

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

If, which you have not so far established, such blind and deaf people reproduce as much as the average, that would imply that blindness and deafness are no longer very relevant to Darwinian “fitness” in humans.

Do blind and deaf people reproduce less than the average person? I don't know. But when we compare humans to wild animals, I'd think it would be very rare for another large mammal to make it to reproductive age if they were blind or deaf.

I find biologists believe that natural selection in the presence of mutations is the largest driving factor in animal evolution.

On the other hand, no one want to speculate if natural selection is the largest driving factor in human evolution. I can understand that.

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

But other traits might be, such as those @CharonY and I have mentioned. So it would not be evidence that natural selection has ceased to operate, just that the selection criteria are different from those in wild animals.

If other traits are evolving in humans that may be much of the reason it's hard to speculate if natural selection is less prominent in humans as compared to wild animals.

But I must remind people that I am NOT saying natural selection has ceased to operate in humans.

From what training I've had in this area, I would say there is a minimum bar to reach on several concepts. If someone started looking at this 12 years ago (as the OP did, per @swansont ) then I would see them as needing to reach that bar.

Start with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium: it's a null model for evo bio. A baseline with which to compare RW data. Its principle is stating that a population's allele and genotype frequencies will remain constant from generation to generation in the absence of evolutionary influences. There are five assumptions of HW, and in the RW at least one is always violated - the OP can look these up.

Then you move on to what evolutionary influences will violate the null model. A basic awareness of these ones -- genetic drift, mate choice, assortative mating, natural selection, sexual selection, mutation, gene flow, meiotic drive, genetic hitchhiking, population bottleneck, founder effect, inbreeding and outbreeding depression -- is very helpful. So... it's complicated. And each species violates HW in different ways. As several members are striving to point out. ( I find meiotic drive to be especially subversive of ordinary assumptions about how the mechanism of evolution is working )

And with humans, you have so many of those "violators" at work, and some rippling down through complex economic pathways you don't find in other species. One can imagine scenarios where, say, meat/dairy becomes so expensive to produce (feed crop degradation, mass spread of prions, arable land loss, cultural changes on acceptable livestock practices, etc) that large human populations must switch to beans. So this could change selective pressures on those with strong genetic predispositions to intolerance of legumes like soy, other beans, and peanuts. It wouldn't necessarily kill people (we're good at improvising and adapting), but it could cause sufficient "failures to thrive" to reduce fertility levels in the most susceptible subpopulations.

Edited 8 hours ago8 hr by TheVat

On 6/20/2026 at 12:36 AM, BusaDave9 said:

The main cause of evolution in animals is natural selection. Mutations cause variation but natural selection causes certain traits to be passed on to the future generations. That's how it works for wild animals but what drives evolution in humans?

You made this claim ( claim emboldened by me ) at the very beginning and I have to thank you for this thread because it caused me to look much further into a subject I had only passing acquaintance with.
I have found out much about the subject I did not know as a result.

so +1 for that.

However I must challenge you original claim by asking.

If you are claiming that the Laws of Natural Selection are the most important Laws in Evolution then are you saying that they are more important than

The Laws of Mechanics

The other Laws of Physics

The Laws of Chemistry

The Laws of Probability

The Laws of Geometry.

If so which of these Laws are you claiming can be transcended by Evolution ?

Edited 7 hours ago7 hr by studiot

13 hours ago, BusaDave9 said:

Again you are lying. You put it in quotes so I searched to see if I misspoke. No, I never said that.

If you lie, lie, lie. Don't be surprised if I don't notice if you eventually do tell the truth. I will be ignoring your posts from here on out.

Reading comprehension. I said I should have said "selective pressures in human evolution has stopped". You cannot find it because I wrote "human evolution". Hence the 'should have said'. That being said, as swansont pointed out, there was a bit of that sentiment throughout, which I honestly wasn't paying too much attention. Especially as attempts at explaining evolutionary basics kept being ignored.

2 hours ago, studiot said:

Another important factor is that neither natural selection nor evolution itself proceed at a constant even time rate. Both are jerky in manifestation.

This is definitely true for evolution, but I am thinking that it also depends a lot on how we measure selective pressures. Traditionally that is expressed as a selection coefficient and the rate is kind of baked in as it is indicated as a reduction in fitness (i.e.. Darwinian fitness (W)= 1-s). When we use molecular markers often things like the rate between non-synonymous mutations to synonymous mutations. So essentially the selection is expressed as a ratio of what we expect to happen in the absence of selective pressure relative to what we see, which kind of eliminates the speed as an element. There are more sophisticated measures like molecular clocking, but I don't think that this within the scope of this discussion.

2 hours ago, TheVat said:

Start with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium: it's a null model for evo bio. A baseline with which to compare RW data. Its principle is stating that a population's allele and genotype frequencies will remain constant from generation to generation in the absence of evolutionary influences. There are five assumptions of HW, and in the RW at least one is always violated - the OP can look these up.

Ignoring that part at the very onset of the discussion already pointed to a degree of learning resistance.

16 minutes ago, CharonY said:

This is definitely true for evolution, but I am thinking that it also depends a lot on how we measure selective pressures. Traditionally that is expressed as a selection coefficient and the rate is kind of baked in as it is indicated as a reduction in fitness (i.e.. Darwinian fitness (W)= 1-s). When we use molecular markers often things like the rate between non-synonymous mutations to synonymous mutations. So essentially the selection is expressed as a ratio of what we expect to happen in the absence of selective pressure relative to what we see, which kind of eliminates the speed as an element. There are more sophisticated measures like molecular clocking, but I don't think that this within the scope of this discussion.

Thank you for the response. Like most members I remain unsure as to the scope of the discussion as the OP reverts to repetition every time he is challenged.

One of the fascinating things about evolution I have found out in my reading around is that it cannot even be said to have a direction.

Another point I saw neglected was the way certain equilibria are beneficial not to a species but rather species that prey on them ("prey" used in the broad sense of feeding upon). In a world with many large predators, an environment change and adaptive response which caused (low tech) humans to proliferate could invoke a Lotka-Volterra modeling where it was the big predators (call them "manflesh-loving supertigers") which had a better environment for themselves but the humans not so much. Humans would suffer more and their numbers fall back to previous densities.

And every cycle their adaption caused their numbers to rise, the larger predator population would come pouncing to bring them down. This has actually happened with iron fertilization experiments where the hypothesis was that increased phytoplankton would sequester more carbon: there was a short bloom in phytoplankton, which was quickly consumed by other organisms (such as small fish or zooplankton) and that limited the effect of Fe enrichment mainly to increased predator density, which in turn limited the carbon sequestration. This is as predicted by the equilibrium population densities of the Lotka–Volterra predator-prey model.

(my super tiger scenario, of course, could also bring in the Dual Inheritance theory, where you have a human gene-culture coevolutionary response where our particular species would have a benefit from being able to culturally develop novel adaptations... moving away from a Lotka-Volterra equilibrium model to some unique set of cultural innovations which turns the table on the super tigers and erases the "free buffet!" benefit they were enjoying.)

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

a degree of learning resistance

You misspelling boring time wasting trollishness

4 hours ago, TheVat said:

that large human populations must switch to beans. So this could change selective pressures on those with strong genetic predispositions to intolerance of legumes like soy, other beans, and peanuts. It wouldn't necessarily kill people (we're good at improvising and adapting), but it could cause sufficient "failures to thrive" to reduce fertility levels in the most susceptible

That's for sure.
Trying to 'reproduce' when you have a bad case of gas ( from eating beans ) can be embarrassing, kills the mood, and causes failure 😄 .

46 minutes ago, MigL said:

That's for sure.
Trying to 'reproduce' when you have a bad case of gas ( from eating beans ) can be embarrassing, kills the mood, and causes failure 😄 .

Haha! Knew there was a joke built into that example. You might be onto a new and groundbreaking (or ground-shaking, at least?) evolutionary theory. Call it the MigL-Eastwood Gas/Romance Equilibrium. Too little gas means insufficient complementary protein and lowered fertility, too much gas means diminished mating behavior. Expressed as a pair of nonlinear differential equations...

Here is an interesting story of a creature that changed colour from white to black and back to white again.

Darwin's Moth or the peppered Moth.

Peppered Moth and natural selection

The Peppered Moth is widespread in Britain and Ireland and frequently found in ordinary back gardens, yet its amazing story has made it famous all over the world. It is one of the best known examples