No, sexual selection does not determine which mutations occur. It’s merely a reinforcing feedback loop that is actually considered an example of how evolution can run off the rails, so to speak.
Sure females might by accident happen to pick a feature in males that might prove adaptive. Unfortunately for your argument it is not based on prediction, but is happenstance. Even were the “correct” feature choosen initially there is then the tendency of sexual selection to over select for the feature merely because other females find the feature attractive.
So it might be that slightly longer horns might be more adaptive in fighting off predators. However once females start mating with males based on horn lenght for the sake of horn length then they just keep getting longer to the point of detriment to the survival of the males. This is quite obviously a very bad example of prediction. Again, it’s all in retrospect, and if no mutations happen to occur in the direction of longer horns then no matter how much females want longer horns it isn’t happening.
Furthermore, sexual selection operates in reverse on the females and that’s why it also gets out of hand. Mutations that happen to drive females brains to desire longer horns even more will tend to make them more likely bear sons that are attractive to other females. No prediction here, just a run away process that ends up being limited by the ability of males to suffer under their oversize horns.
Notice that there is no mechanims here for the female preferences to invent new mutations for either longer horns or increased preference for longer horns. If a female happens to have an extra heavy fetish for long horns that was environmentally driven that cannot and will not cause any mutation that she could pass on to her offspring to make them have the same level of passion for long horns.
It’s the genes that build the female brain to prefer long horns in the first place, and not some inductive process in the brain that generated the preference. By definition there must be preexisting gene or the trait wouldn’t be heritable and by definition sexual selection could NOT occur.
The Balwin effect is merely the believe that socially passed behaviors can lead to fixation of genetic traits. Perfectly possible and again it has nothing to do with prediction. Genetic fixation could only occur given the random creation of the correct mutations, plus a static environment with regard to the trait in question. This really is no different than geneticially mediated behavioral changes driving changes in other traits and behavior.
Once plants took to growing on land by minor adaptations to say drying then selection pressures on other traits change. Traits like tall stems to overshadow competitors on land are selected for. That’s not predictive. The new selective pressures are merely the result of the change in habitat. The adaptation to drying didn’t “predict” that longer stems would be needed, nor did it generate the mutations for longer stems.
Likewise a behavioral change of say a fish hunting on land like the mud skipper will naturally lead to new selective pressures on other traits like, ability to withstand sun, or drying, or whatever. That doesn’t mean that the fish behaviorially deciding to hunt further ashore in any way predicted the need for the other traits, nor does it mean that it’s brain created new mutations that were stuffed back into the genome. It’s perfectly possible that the random process of mutations just never produces the proper mutations to allow that mud skipper to fully adapt to the land.
The mutations are the random guesses as to what might work and are entirely unintentional. In fact if you’ve read Dawkins there is selective pressure against mutation. Those random mistakes however allow natural selection to explore haphazardly through different body plans and sometimes things go in the right direction, and sometimes not.
Even if females liked males with bigger brains as evidenced by say singing. That doesn’t neccesarily mean that males spending lots of time singing, and females listening to that singing is predictive of anything. Big brains are just one more trait and it might be that the selective pressures in the environment are actually changing in a way that is selecting for smaller brains just as sexual selection is operating in the opposite direction. Rich food sources needed to supprot big brains might be decreasing over time as the habitat becomes more arid. In which case extinction is a likely outcome.
Which is another lesson I think you need to learn from biologists. You seem to believe in some kind of inherent “progress” to all this. That’s not the case. It’s perfectly possible for organisms to be subjected to selective pressures that move them to what most people would see as regression. That’s why there are so many “backwards” parasites from what are more “advanced” lineages. Often in animals that have brains that predict.
Many a species with a predictive brain has walked the path down specialization to extinction.
No, sexual selection does not determine which mutations occur. It’s merely a reinforcing feedback loop that is actually considered an example of how evolution can run off the rails, so to speak.
Sure females might by accident happen to pick a feature in males that might prove adaptive. Unfortunately for your argument it is not based on prediction, but is happenstance. Even were the “correct” feature choosen initially there is then the tendency of sexual selection to over select for the feature merely because other females find the feature attractive.
So it might be that slightly longer horns might be more adaptive in fighting off predators. However once females start mating with males based on horn lenght for the sake of horn length then they just keep getting longer to the point of detriment to the survival of the males. This is quite obviously a very bad example of prediction. Again, it’s all in retrospect, and if no mutations happen to occur in the direction of longer horns then no matter how much females want longer horns it isn’t happening.
Furthermore, sexual selection operates in reverse on the females and that’s why it also gets out of hand. Mutations that happen to drive females brains to desire longer horns even more will tend to make them more likely bear sons that are attractive to other females. No prediction here, just a run away process that ends up being limited by the ability of males to suffer under their oversize horns.
Notice that there is no mechanims here for the female preferences to invent new mutations for either longer horns or increased preference for longer horns. If a female happens to have an extra heavy fetish for long horns that was environmentally driven that cannot and will not cause any mutation that she could pass on to her offspring to make them have the same level of passion for long horns.
It’s the genes that build the female brain to prefer long horns in the first place, and not some inductive process in the brain that generated the preference. By definition there must be preexisting gene or the trait wouldn’t be heritable and by definition sexual selection could NOT occur.
The Balwin effect is merely the believe that socially passed behaviors can lead to fixation of genetic traits. Perfectly possible and again it has nothing to do with prediction. Genetic fixation could only occur given the random creation of the correct mutations, plus a static environment with regard to the trait in question. This really is no different than geneticially mediated behavioral changes driving changes in other traits and behavior.
Once plants took to growing on land by minor adaptations to say drying then selection pressures on other traits change. Traits like tall stems to overshadow competitors on land are selected for. That’s not predictive. The new selective pressures are merely the result of the change in habitat. The adaptation to drying didn’t “predict” that longer stems would be needed, nor did it generate the mutations for longer stems.
Likewise a behavioral change of say a fish hunting on land like the mud skipper will naturally lead to new selective pressures on other traits like, ability to withstand sun, or drying, or whatever. That doesn’t mean that the fish behaviorially deciding to hunt further ashore in any way predicted the need for the other traits, nor does it mean that it’s brain created new mutations that were stuffed back into the genome. It’s perfectly possible that the random process of mutations just never produces the proper mutations to allow that mud skipper to fully adapt to the land.
The mutations are the random guesses as to what might work and are entirely unintentional. In fact if you’ve read Dawkins there is selective pressure against mutation. Those random mistakes however allow natural selection to explore haphazardly through different body plans and sometimes things go in the right direction, and sometimes not.
Even if females liked males with bigger brains as evidenced by say singing. That doesn’t neccesarily mean that males spending lots of time singing, and females listening to that singing is predictive of anything. Big brains are just one more trait and it might be that the selective pressures in the environment are actually changing in a way that is selecting for smaller brains just as sexual selection is operating in the opposite direction. Rich food sources needed to supprot big brains might be decreasing over time as the habitat becomes more arid. In which case extinction is a likely outcome.
Which is another lesson I think you need to learn from biologists. You seem to believe in some kind of inherent “progress” to all this. That’s not the case. It’s perfectly possible for organisms to be subjected to selective pressures that move them to what most people would see as regression. That’s why there are so many “backwards” parasites from what are more “advanced” lineages. Often in animals that have brains that predict.
Many a species with a predictive brain has walked the path down specialization to extinction.