What came first: the chicken or the egg?

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I think if they were sufficiently different that they would be avoided by the source species at mating that they might drive speciation. I'm more quantitative myself, so I don't deal with that area, but it seems reasonable. I'm probably just reinventing the wheel here.

The environmental pressure might be an apt explanation from the other side too: West-Eberhard opined a couple of years back that phenotypic shift from environmental modification led the process and that genes for this kind of developmental shift were 'followers' in establishing fixed genetic systems for the different types. Not sure how much I believe that one - no evidence for it - but it's possible. Not as valich appears to be proposing it though.
 
No, I like your allusion to a "phenotypic shift from environmental modification" and I wish you would elaborate on this concept more. If you read my thread I posted above, you know how much I agree on this point, albeit a differing emphasis. But your clarifications would probably help me refine my own hypothesis, and I openly admit that that's all it is - a speculative hypothesis. Nevertheless, I do think coevolution has a play in this. We all evolved from fish then amphibians then reptiles then mammals. Fish eggs lack sufficient calcium to make them hard like chicken eggs. Again, just a speculative hypothesis.
 
GeoffP said:
Just this: would alterations from fixed type be more or less likely in an extant oviparous sp. than in a vivparous, which presumably has more maternal instinct and certainly has more maternal investment than an oviparid. Some of that maternal investment might or should be contingent on the offspring resembling it, or at least the type norm for the species. A radically different offspring could be rejected. But in an r-selected oviparous species with little or no maternal post-partum input, it wouldn't matter that a few of the offspring were freaks; they wouldn't be disfavoured from the standpoint of post-partum/hatch maternal fitness contributions. So...there's be fewer disadvantages to being a 'hopeful monster' initially, or at least of being substantially different.

There are exceptions to the oviparious/viviparous thing: sharks, some snakes birds (witness the cuckoo, which is freakish compared to its nestmates, but gets fed anyway) but overall oviparous types tend to be r-selected with minimal care, so would hopeful monsters be more hopeful if they were from r-selecteds?

By support, I note that egg-layers have on average far, far more morphs than non-egg layers.

Geoff
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Excellent post and excellent observations.

I don't see how maternal instincts would have any sway, but an oviparous species would be more protected from environmental fluctuations and intuitively I would assume that should give it less morphs? What are your observations to the contrary?

There is no correlation in rejecting offspring if they don't resemble the adult form and this is obvious in virtually all eukaryotes - the basic embryo structure that radically changes its phenotype as it grows. Heck, even the ugliest human child is always loved by its mother.
 
West-Eberhard's hypothesis refers to phenotypic change resulting from environmental change or from mutation as a result of environmental variance. It proposes "genes as followers" in the design and resembles a local stage of Wrightian epistatic modification and spread - and of course, has little or no empirical evidence behind it.

My source is her 2003 book "Developmental plasticity and evolution" but I do not recommend it as I fall into the camp of quantitative genetic variance for plasticity espoused by de Jong, de Witt and Scheiner. I think it a little narrow minded to see such variance as mere skipping between alternate fixed (and potentially wildly unadaptive) states, especially since global physiological induction is probably variable rather than all-or-nothing.

Needlessly, I add that I refute Lamarckianism utterly. 'Permanent environmental' effects on genetic architecture are fine, so long as we refer to mutation at the level of the "nutsack" (i.e. progeny), as Spurious so eloquently implied.
 
valich said:
There is no correlation in rejecting offspring if they don't resemble the adult form and this is obvious in virtually all eukaryotes - the basic embryo structure that radically changes its phenotype as it grows. Heck, even the ugliest human child is always loved by its mother.
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Normally human children do not reproduce with their mothers. Although I suspect that in your lineage it may have happened.
 
What came first: the chicken or the egg?

During evolution, things can progress from simpler to complex. Natural selection by cross breeding between different species may also evolve new species, one might had been a chicken. :D
 
No, mostly the chicken soup.

Natural Sequence is, Parents first children afterwords.:D
 
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That's another possibility.

Personally, I believe one of the primordial omelettes spontaneously unscrambled itself into an egg, defying the laws of thermodynamics. The newly formed egg then gave rise to the first chicken, the beginning of a race that has survived for billions of years to date, and which, due to its inherited resistance to the second law, will undoubtedly continue to populate the universe for all eternity.
 
Can't it be converted into chicken instead of egg?

If we take a cell out of egg or chicken and grow/clone, will it become egg or chicken?
 
spuriousmonkey said:
Normally human children do not reproduce with their mothers. Although I suspect that in your lineage it may have happened.
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Spurious, I have no idea what you are talking about. Of course I came from my mother. Just what is it that you are trying to say? Please explain your hypothesis in respectable scientific terms as we are trying to have an intellectual discussion here on Sciforum: the "scientific community."

The insight that Geoffp provided was most admirable and it will require me to research his sources and contemplate the position before I can understand it completely and address it. Does this meet your expectations for a participant in this intellectual endeavor? Or what is your purpose?
 
valich said:
Spurious, I have no idea what you are talking about. Of course I came from my mother. Just what is it that you are trying to say? Please explain your hypothesis in respectable scientific terms as we are trying to have an intellectual discussion here on Sciforum: the "scientific community."

The insight that Geoffp provided was most admirable and it will require me to research his sources and contemplate the position before I can understand it completely and address it. Does this meet your expectations for a participant in this intellectual endeavor? Or what is your purpose?
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You say that mothers even love their ugliest offspring. I say that mothers do not reproduce with their offspring. How much of a dumb fuck can you be not to understand simple english. Such as the word 'with'.

So my theory was right I suppose. In your lineage it was probably common that mothers reproduced WITH their ugly offspring.
 
valich said:
I don't see how maternal instincts would have any sway, but an oviparous species would be more protected from environmental fluctuations and intuitively I would assume that should give it less morphs? What are your observations to the contrary?
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On the contrary, an ovipar (being usually a heterotherm) would be less protected from environmental fluctuation, since core body temperature and metabolism are externally regulated. Note ESD sex ratio in turtles and crocodilians. Anyway, this would present two variance components for modification of post-hatch phenotype prior to oviposition: E and GxE. Morph production could be invoked under the West-Eberhard (2003) model, with genetic fixation after the assumption of the novel morphotype (they call this GxE but it's clearly a staggered meta-populational process and not GxE at all; the 'developmental' issue should be subsumed under E), or one could GxE changes might be described as being quantitative, however: and this is my association at present (although some of my results could be interpreted in either direction, actually...ah well).

There is no correlation in rejecting offspring if they don't resemble the adult form and this is obvious in virtually all eukaryotes - the basic embryo structure that radically changes its phenotype as it grows. Heck, even the ugliest human child is always loved by its mother.
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Hmm. Well, I don't know. Paternal support might be minimized; a sire would be unwise to contribute to offspring that don't resemble it. However, I'm sure that there are exceptions to that also. But maternal interest might also decline for disfamilial offspring - don't human mothers prefer offspring that have interests and personalities similar to their own? An oviparous r-selected would not have any such preferences, having in fact no preferences or interest in any of their offspring. Many r-selected ovipars might be more expected to exhibit widely ranging morphs for the express reason that they have little control of environmental effects on their offspring phenotype (again, i.e. sex). Less control, no post-partum investment, numerous offspring (the 'shotgun strategy'): morphs.
 
spuriousmonkey said:
You say that mothers even love their ugliest offspring. I say that mothers do not reproduce with their offspring. How much of a dumb fuck can you be not to understand simple english. Such as the word 'with'.

So my theory was right I suppose. In your lineage it was probably common that mothers reproduced WITH their ugly offspring.
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Reexamine the logic behind your reasoning. Further, what is the reason for the sudden use of vulgarity? There is no way that anyone can ever convince me that you have a Ph.D. with a reply like that.
 
It's not a secret that I have a PhD. Just as it isn't a secret that you are a moron.

I think it is about time you stop raping science with your lack of knowledge and your arrogant psychological make-up which prevents you from seeing the obvious. You know shit about science. There isn't a single real scientist that gives you an ounce of credit. They all despise your methods and your vulgarities regarding the essence of science: the fact that you rape science in every single post you make but you project the aura you are the defender of science.

You are in fact the worst kind of person to defend science imaginable. You cannot connect two dots. You cannot see simple logic. You cannot see the value of simple sets of data. You are not capable of any scientific reasoning without falling into a pit of stupidity with every other thought you have.

But still you are covinced you know science. The fact that actual scientists (all of them) think you are wrong in almost everything you say will not deter you. You are worse that a religious nut. At least they don't hide behind the facade of science.

You are just fucking sad.

And what do you do when someone corrects again a stupidity. You question their scienfic merits. While the actual identity of this person is not a secret and his actual PhD has been linked in the past on this forum, as have some of his papers. You question a fact again.

You are a religious nut. You are a new breed of scientologist except that you are all alone and nobody has invented your church yet. A lonley git who thinks he knows the truth. You can't get anymore sad than that. If you weren't so annoying you would have my sympathies. But as it is I will just say with my PhD: have a lobotomy. You can't get much worse than this.
 
GeoffP said:
On the contrary, an ovipar (being usually a heterotherm) would be less protected from environmental fluctuation, since core body temperature and metabolism are externally regulated. Note ESD sex ratio in turtles and crocodilians. Anyway, this would present two variance components for modification of post-hatch phenotype prior to oviposition: E and GxE. Morph production could be invoked under the West-Eberhard (2003) model, with genetic fixation after the assumption of the novel morphotype (they call this GxE but it's clearly a staggered meta-populational process and not GxE at all; the 'developmental' issue should be subsumed under E), or one could GxE changes might be described as being quantitative, however: and this is my association at present (although some of my results could be interpreted in either direction, actually...ah well).



Hmm. Well, I don't know. Paternal support might be minimized; a sire would be unwise to contribute to offspring that don't resemble it. However, I'm sure that there are exceptions to that also. But maternal interest might also decline for disfamilial offspring - don't human mothers prefer offspring that have interests and personalities similar to their own? An oviparous r-selected would not have any such preferences, having in fact no preferences or interest in any of their offspring. Many r-selected ovipars might be more expected to exhibit widely ranging morphs for the express reason that they have little control of environmental effects on their offspring phenotype (again, i.e. sex). Less control, no post-partum investment, numerous offspring (the 'shotgun strategy'): morphs.
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No you are definitely not being subverted.

I think accumulationed diverse external environmental fluctuations far outway a singular temperature fluctuation factor: instant readaptations to all the new environmental factors previously unknown, i.e., learning how to live in the real world. I'm very sorry that I'm not familiar with the West-Eberhard model but I'll try to research it and get back to you on it.

If you talk about maternal instincts and embryo acceptance than you would have to limit the argument to only higher level mammals (Metatheria and Eutheria - primates, carnivora, etc.) and not aves. Although it is hypothesized that aves evolved from Diapsida (bird-like dinosaurs) but this is debateable (see the thread I just posted above). Normally a human mother would love their offspring - after nurturing it for nine months inside her womb - no matter what it came out like. How could you even refer to "interests and personalities similar to its own"? That would be 10-20 years down the road and still it wouldn't matter.

Less maternal control, no developmental influence on the phenotype, stable development in the controlled environment of the shell until it matures enough to be on its own.
 
Spurious, I have no interest in religion or scientology or whatever else you are talking about. And I really have no idea what you are talking about? I get up in the morning, go to work, go to school, and study science and research science as diligently as I can. That is my passion and my life. I have no time for ANYTHING else except to walk my dog. This is all I do with my life. Nothing else. Given that as a fact, can you offer any "constructive" suggestions as to how I can be more efficient at learning science?

You are NOT a Ph.D. Tell me what university dared confer a doctorate to you and I will contact them immediately. No Ph.D. from any respectable institution would behave as obnoxious and as anti-intellectual as you are doing right now.
 
valich said:
Spurious, I have no interest in religion or scientology or whatever else you are talking about. And I really have no idea what you are talking about? I get up in the morning, go to work, go to school, and study science and research science as diligently as I can. That is my passion and my life. I have no time for ANYTHING else except to walk my dog. This is all I do with my life. Nothing else. Given that as a fact, can you offer any "constructive" suggestions as to how I can be more efficient at learning science?

You are NOT a Ph.D. Tell me what university dared confer a doctorate to you and I will contact them immediately. No Ph.D. from any respectable institution would behave as obnoxious and as anti-intellectual as you are doing right now.
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reported to the moderators for unethical behaviour.
 
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