It’s almost like having a third sex. In fact the winged males look far more like females than they look like wingless males.
That sounds like exactly the kind of situation Eliezer claims as the exception—the adaptation is present in the entire population, but only expressed in a subset based on the environmental conditions during development, because there’s a specific advantage to polymorphism.
There’s the whole phenomenon of frequent-dependent selection. Most people are familiar with this from blood types, and sickle-cell anaemia.
Those are single genes, not complex adaptations consisting of multiple mutually-dependant genes. Exactly the “froth” he describes.
Upvote: polymorphism doesn’t indicate an absence of complex genes in part of a species. Consider that a uterus is a complex adaptation, and that my male body does contain a set of genes for building a uterus. The genes may be switched off or repurposed in my body, but they still exist, and are presumably reactivated in my daughter (in combination with some genes from my wife).
Not sure why Tyler speaks as if a pseudo-three-sexed species offers new and different evidence we don’t get from our two-sexed species.
P.S. don’t females lack the Y chromosome though? My impression is that this is related to degradation of that chromosome, which makes it less important over the eons, so that maybe someday (if nature were to take its course) its only purpose will be to act as a signal of maleness that affects gene expression on other chomosomes.
That sounds like exactly the kind of situation Eliezer claims as the exception—the adaptation is present in the entire population, but only expressed in a subset based on the environmental conditions during development, because there’s a specific advantage to polymorphism.
Those are single genes, not complex adaptations consisting of multiple mutually-dependant genes. Exactly the “froth” he describes.
Upvote: polymorphism doesn’t indicate an absence of complex genes in part of a species. Consider that a uterus is a complex adaptation, and that my male body does contain a set of genes for building a uterus. The genes may be switched off or repurposed in my body, but they still exist, and are presumably reactivated in my daughter (in combination with some genes from my wife).
Not sure why Tyler speaks as if a pseudo-three-sexed species offers new and different evidence we don’t get from our two-sexed species.
P.S. don’t females lack the Y chromosome though? My impression is that this is related to degradation of that chromosome, which makes it less important over the eons, so that maybe someday (if nature were to take its course) its only purpose will be to act as a signal of maleness that affects gene expression on other chomosomes.