More on the Evolution Requires Reduction in Genetic Diversity thread at EvC

Just a few more thoughts on the criticisms against me that showed up on my thread at EvC toward the end.

Speciation

I don't know why someone thought my whole point was how Speciation comes about, and I'm not up to going back to track down how that idea might have occurred, but I would have thought I'd made it clear that Speciation is just the possible end point of the processes I'm talking about, but that it's the processes themselves and the TREND to reduced genetic diversity that is my focus.  Speciation can be treated too much as a special case and get off on a tangent so I don't emphasize it.  The point I'm trying to make is that wherever a new phenotype is being developed in a new population you are going to get reduced genetic diversity. 

It also occurs to me that some may be confused about the word "phenotype" as I'm using it although again I've tried to be clear about that too.  I'm not talking about single traits in individuals when I use the term, although that is a correct use of the word, but about the development of a COLLECTIVE phenotype that comes to characterize a new population over time due to changed gene frequencies from the mother population, brought about by reproductive isolation from that mother population. 

I do believe Speciation is usually just the extreme end point of these processes but that could take me off my focus so I tend to avoid it, thinking it could be discussed later IF the main part of my argument ever gets fully communicated.

I know I explained the processes a number of times on that thread but when you have five or six people all misunderstanding you in their own peculiar ways, two or three of them so far out there's no way to guess where they're getting their odd notions, while at the same time acting as if they are nevertheless some kind of authority on your argument, it's easy to get scattered and fail to follow up on an important point. 

So I don't know if this makes anything clear or not about where Speciation stands in my argument, but there it is for now.

The American Curl

The other topic I want to try to clarify is the example of the American Curl cat which was apparently brought up as some kind of rebuttal to my argument.  This is a cat that has distinctive curled ears that showed up in an individual some thirty years ago and has been bred to preserve the trait ever since.   It hasn't been subjected to the selection processes that would bring about the reduced genetic diversity I'm talking about although supposedly it has been getting developed as a breed over the last thirty years.

But it hasn't.  It isn't developing as a breed.  All that has happened is that they've taken pains to preserve the trait itself, the curled ear that showed up in a single individual cat many years ago.  By continually breeding cats with that trait with other types of cats they preserve the trait while increasing the genetic diversity.  They need to do this because it would threaten the survival of the cats to allow the genetic diversity to be low, and with one individual as the founder of the breed it would be very low indeed. 

So this is NOT what I'm describing at all.  They are NOT developing a new collective phenotype in this way which is what I have been talking about.  They are merely trying to build up the genetic diversity by blending in a variety of cat breeds.  This way you do not get a new breed although you do preserve the trait.  You get a great number of cats with the curled ears, and a lot of different kinds of cats with that trait, different colors and markings, long hairs, short hairs and so on.  But you are not getting a distinctive American Curl Breed.  Yet.

That WOULD take selection and isolation which is what I'm talking about.  And from what was said I gather that is beginning now.  Perhaps they will get a number of distinctive breeds with the curled ear trait, but they won't get a true breed until it's been inbred over a number of generations, and producing that distinctive breed is what reduces the genetic diversity.

Just another way my argument was NOT getting understood.  Not that I would expect it to, but it's frustrating that people THINK they are getting it when they so clearly are not.

Oh one more point.  It was emphasized over and over that this trait must be a mutation because it is autosomal dominant but it wasn't explained why this has to be the case because the person making the point isn't interested in truth but only in trying to trip me up.  So eventually I'll have to study up on this and see if it's really true that it must be a mutation for this reason.

Later Update: 

Wow, the way they discuss me over there why on earth would I want to come back and subject myself to that level of abuse?  I put up with it far too long as it was.

Now one more thing.  I'm supposed to have misused the Speciation chart because I used it to prove my point when according to them it obviously proves me wrong.  Really can anybody read over there?  What did I use that chart for?  To illustrate the formation of species through the isolation of a small population from a larger population which is my main example,.  The claim about mutations is IRRELEVANT to that point.  Sheesh.