I have read selfish gene—I think the metric is about relative frequency doesn’t work. A gene that reduced the population from 1 million to 10 but increased is abundance to 100% would max out that metric. If it made the entire species go extinct, what even does the metric say?
Obviously the common understanding is that is an evolutionary failure, but the metric disagrees. Not sure what kind of argument you would accept against your metric capturing the essence of evolution.
If you’ve read The Selfish Gene, then would you agree that under Dawkins’s notion of gene-level fitness, the genes composing a gene drive have high gene-level fitness? If not, why?
Not sure what kind of argument you would accept against your metric capturing the essence of evolution.
Always a good question to ask. TekhneMakre gives a good example of a situation where the two metrics disagree in this comment. Quoting:
Say you have a species. Say you have two genes, A and B.
Gene A has two effects:
A1. Organisms carrying gene A reproduce slightly MORE than organisms not carrying A.
A2. For every copy of A in the species, every organism in the species (carrier or not) reproduces slightly LESS than it would have if not for this copy of A.
Gene B has two effects, the reverse of A:
B1. Organisms carrying gene B reproduce slightly LESS than organisms not carrying B.
B2. For every copy of B in the species, every organism in the species (carrier or not) reproduces slightly MORE than it would have if not for this copy of B.
If the relative frequency metric captures the essence of evolution, then gene A should be successful and gene B should be unsuccessful. Conversely, the total-abundance metric you suggest implies that gene B should be successful while gene A should be unsuccessful.
So one argument that would change my mind is if your showed (eg. via simulation, or just by a convincing argument) that gene B becomes prevalent in this hypothetical scenario.
I have read selfish gene—I think the metric is about relative frequency doesn’t work. A gene that reduced the population from 1 million to 10 but increased is abundance to 100% would max out that metric. If it made the entire species go extinct, what even does the metric say?
Obviously the common understanding is that is an evolutionary failure, but the metric disagrees. Not sure what kind of argument you would accept against your metric capturing the essence of evolution.
If you’ve read The Selfish Gene, then would you agree that under Dawkins’s notion of gene-level fitness, the genes composing a gene drive have high gene-level fitness? If not, why?
Always a good question to ask. TekhneMakre gives a good example of a situation where the two metrics disagree in this comment. Quoting:
If the relative frequency metric captures the essence of evolution, then gene A should be successful and gene B should be unsuccessful. Conversely, the total-abundance metric you suggest implies that gene B should be successful while gene A should be unsuccessful.
So one argument that would change my mind is if your showed (eg. via simulation, or just by a convincing argument) that gene B becomes prevalent in this hypothetical scenario.
Yes thanks, that thread goes over it in more detail than I could.