Speciation

Ok so I said I was going to edit that post, but I didn't get around to it. I'm just going to make a new one.

So yeah about speciation. As biologists, we learn that a single species can evolve into multiple species through a variety of mechanisms. Easily cited examples of speciation involve a geographic separation of groups of organisms. Different selective pressures in different areas result in more than one species. Simple enough. There is a concept known as "sympatric speciation" which is NOT widely accepted among biologists. Simply put, organisms can speciate without a geographic separation--but some other mechanism is driving the divergence. It could be a small niche within a larger population. It could be a pre-mating strategy. In 1987 an article was published in PNAS talking about mole rats in Israel. They looked at four different chromosomal species (same organism--different total number of chromosomes). Each had different mating calls. For the most part, females preferred the calls of the males with the same number of chromosomes as their own. Except the females with 2n= 60. This was the last group of mole rats to diverge (most recent). They still didn't care too much. The conclusion was that the call differentiation happened first and it resulted in a "speciation" (in this case--subspeciation).

I feel this is sort of what is going on with humans. We are free to breed (or not) with whomever we choose. To some of us, "calls" made by right-wing conservatives are not appealing--in fact they are repulsive. I'm sure they same can be said for women on the far right (about men with far left leanings). But its more than that. I hear the words coming out of the mouths of conservatives and ... well I understand the actual words. I mean taking each word individually, I know what they mean. Based on the reaction of like-minded folk around these people, however, I don't think they mean the same thing to them as they do to me. Does that make sense?

Take an issue with which I was involved recently here in Flagstaff. The train goes right through the center of town about once every eight minutes or so. There are 5 at-grade crossings in town at which the train operator must blast the horn. The town decided they wanted to silence the train. To do so requires that alternate safey measures be installed at all the crossings. So to make a long story short, in Flag, the Eastside of town is known as the "bad" part of town. The eastside is where I live. The city council decided to completely silence the downtown crossings--but to install "wayside" horns on the eastside crossings. So we on the eastside will actually get a horn that sounds for a longer period of time than the current train--but its stationary so you don't get the doppler effect. So while I was involved with this issue I heard folks say that this resolution was "fair" to both eastside folks and downtown folks. My definition of fair means equal or free from bias. I don't think leaving a horn in one neighborhood and allowing the other neighborhood to get total quiet qualifies as "fair" by that definition. But the people saying it were adamant. So the only conclusion I could come to is that they must have a different definition. We are using the same words but there are different meanings depending on your genetics. I think I should write the Liberal to Conservative dictionary.