eco-devo
a news feature in 'nature'
Nature 418, 578 - 579 (2002); doi:10.1038/418578a
and a review in 'developmental Biology'
REVIEW
Ecological Developmental Biology: Developmental
Biology Meets the Real World
Scott F. Gilbert
Developmental Biology 233, 1–12 (2001)
doi:10.1006/dbio.2001.0210, available online at
http://www.idealibrary.com
i actually don't know if you have seen Scott Gilberts latest talk, but he is pressing that we should use developmental biology instead of population biology to teach evolution. It was quite interesting although I might not agree with it in every detail.
+++So, when neutral characters change in populations this is still evolution, although no natural selection has taken place.+++
although it might be part of the evolutionary process but I wouldn't classify it as evolution since basically we just talking about change and not functional change. Although it is interesting aspect of evolution it doesn't quite shape the living world we see, accept possibly by providing an extra means of accumulatiing variation.
+++actually, we generally mean point mutations and insertion/deletions when we say mutation, but if you want to include duplications, unequal crossing over, polyploidy, etc. as mutations, then that's fine with me. I generally won't get into discussions about semantics.+++
i see your point now, and i guess for most people mutation is merely a point mutation, but i'm looking at it as a biologist and when i think of mutation i automatically think of all aspects of mutation. At least thats how they teach it to us. But i can see that you want to stress that mutations are not just a point mutations since most people are not that well informed (probably especially on an open forum.)
and for macrovolution: it is quite clear that there is macroevolution (otherwise there wouldn't be species), but the exact mechanisms might not be totally clear yet. But that's with most things in science. Don't worry about it. science would be quite boring if we had all the answers with every detail sorted out. In fact, we could stop doiing science.