Darwinbots Forum
General => Off Topic => Topic started by: Houshalter on February 20, 2010, 12:08:57 PM
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I recently dicovered that there are supposedly two types of evolution. Anti-evolutionists use these to dispute evolution. Now I know both of these are technically outdated terms and that even if they weren't we've observed both of them in real life. But have you ever seen Macro evolution in Darwinbots. I've seen the bots tweak their behaviours but I've never seen them radically change them or add brand new behaviours. By the way, Micro evolution is just an organism changing slightly while macro evolution is an organism becoming an entirely new species. In sexually reroducing organisms this usaually means it can now longer produce viable offspring with the species it diverged from.
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Could you explain the difference between those two?
I think the only people who use the term are creationists.
I think macro-evolution and micro-evolution are the same. The only difference is the time-span.
I've seen bots develop new behaviors, I've not sure where the line is of tweaking behavior and radically change them.
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Heres the wikipedia pages:
Microevolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microevolution)
Macroevolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroevolution)
At a genetic level their the same so, as I said they are outdated terms most biologists don't use. Its really only used in evolution vs creationism debates, where creationists claim no one has ever seen a reptile give birth to a mammal. Of course if a reptile did give birth to a mammal it would disprove evolution. Maybe I should go hide my snog (snake/dog)....
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The forking of two species is classed as macro evolution isn't it, if you were to put it into context of darwinbots and put the same original species (some zerobot) and give it diffrent evolutionary pressures (two diffrent people running two diffrent sims with diffrent veggies and setting) then chances are they would diverge and thus one species would be diffrent from the other thus species forking ie. macroevolution. I'm pretty sure something similar to this has happend in Darwinbots, though unlikely in the same simulation as genrally the enviromental pressure is the same throughout the sim because of thier limited size, perhaps if you wanted to encourage macro evolution you could get a large sim divide it with a large shape, let the species evolve independently and like the joining of continents or migration of a species take away the shape, you can then again fission it and recombine itand for a more realism you would adjust the enviroment maybhe by placing new plants in certain zones or kill every member of a species in a zone like a disease. This is the kind of thing that drives macroevolution on Earth and so why not in Darwinbots?
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Micro evolution is used by creationists. Since even they cannot deny breeding and have to allow for this they call it micro evolution. ''Of course you can breed an dane and a pekinese, but that is just micro evolution. They are still the same species. Nobody has ever seen macro evolution, species B coming forth from species A. Therefore God exists''
It is an attempt to force discontinuity on a continuous phenomenon. If you want to get confused about evolution and the term species look up ring species
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Incidentally, this has a lot to do with why something like sex in Darwinbots is so hard. If you only allow breeding between "species" it begs the question of how you define species. If you allow breeding between any individuals, you end up with veggies with strictly animal DNA.
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In reality, you can mix any two species dna, but they will die or be sterile. Maybe you should have a similiar thing in darwinbots where you just randomly mix basepairs and if they are to different, the offspring will die. Notice I said basepairs, not genes. If you mix genes you could still get a working bot, but you also have love bots and how do you mix to different genes that are similiar without throwing away a gene.
Anyways, ask any creationist and they will define macro-evolution as an increase in "information".
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In reality genes of a ''sub'' species co-evolve until the point where mixing with the other population breaks up co-evolved genes and replaces them with alien combinations that have reduced chance of survival (of fertilization, survival or reproduction). If we want to simulate in DB we would have to define genes and compare BP wise, not allowing reproduction or cross over if less than x% of bp match.