Wings

[Alex]

Dear friends;
I have been reading with interest the discussion on wings, and feel that the discussion is weighty, and Darwinian ideas are slung about with abandon. We have been studying Evolution for barely 100 years, and it has been going on for over a thousand million.
Lamarckian ideas have been coming back into vogue, as you will see biologists talking about a species being "forced" into an adaptation. This is clearly a Lamarckian concept. 
The Central Dogma says that mutation is not affected by outsid forces, but only by random mutations in the somatic cells. However it has been shown that mutation rates in many creatures is accellerated during stressful times This has been shown in Darwin's finches, and the mutations were not all deleterious.
To say most mutations are deleterious is not viewing the whole process. We cause mutations in cells by artificially applying chemicals, radiation etc., and then say they are mostly bad. However, it has been shown that some portions of some code strands are much more susceptible to mutation than others, and these can give rise to mutations that are not bad.
Wings may have developed as a response to difficult environmrntal times, not as a "random" event.
Perhaps it is time to take Lamarck out of the bone yard and dust him off and examine him thouroughly.
(An infinite number of monkeys notwithstanding.)
"The Hardy Weinberg theory works quite well for infinite populations. However, few populations are infinite, and some of them are small."
Dobzhansky (paraphrased)
Alex Netherton
Asheville NC
danetherton at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~danetherton
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