Why size matters: Saltationism, creativity, and the reign of the DiNOs

Debates on “gradualism” in evolutionary biology address the size distribution of evolutionary changes.  The classical Darwinian position, better described as “infinitesimalism”, holds that evolutionary change is smooth in the sense of being composed of an abundance of infinitesimals (not one infinitesimal at a time, but a blending flow of infinitesimals).   The alternative is that evolution sometimes involves “saltations” or jumps, i.e., distinctive and discrete steps.  The dispute between these two positions has been a subject of acrimony at various times in the 20th century, with several minor skirmishes, and a larger battle with at least one genuine casualty (image).

Walter Frank Rafael Weldon (public domain image from wikipedia). Legend has it that Weldon ignored an advancing illness and worked himself to death trying to disprove the relevance of Mendelism in natural inheritance.

Walter Frank Rafael Weldon (public domain image from wikipedia).  Weldon ignored an advancing illness and worked himself to death (1906) poring over breeding records in an attempt to cast doubt on discrete inheritance.  Along with Pearson and other “biometricians”, Weldon held to Darwin’s non-Mendelian view combining gradual hereditary fluctuations with blending inheritance.

Today, over a decade into the 21st century, we have abundant evidence for saltations, yet the term is virtually unknown, and we still seem to invoke selection under the assumption of gradualism.  Are we saltationists, or not?  I’m going to offer 3 answers below.

But first, we need to review why the issue is important for evolutionary theory.

(more…)

When “Darwinian adaptation” is neither

Getting stuff right

Early in the evolution of the Sequence Ontology, it was noted (by gadflies like myself) that SO asserts the relationship of mRNA to gene to be the “part of” relationship.  This is obviously wrong.  An RNA molecule is not part of a DNA molecule.   Saying that mRNA is part of a gene is like saying that a CD with some audio chapters from a book is part of that book.

Ontologies are supposed to support formal reasoning: errors in representation will lead inevitably to erroneous results.  For instance, if we are reasoning about the chemical composition of a cell using mRNA part_of gene as a constraint, we would conclude falsely that the mass of DNA must always be at least as much as the mass of mRNA, because the mass of a thing is always at least as great as the mass of some specified parts.

(more…)