how many turned into humans, or any other species for that matter?
Plenty
Darwin was Right | Evidence from observed speciation
Evolution: Watching Speciation Occur | Observations
One example of evolution at work is the case of the
hawthorn fly, Rhagoletis pomonella, also known as the apple maggot fly, which appears to be undergoing sympatric speciation. Different populations of hawthorn fly feed on different fruits. A distinct population emerged in North America in the 19th century some time after apples, a non-native species, were introduced. This apple-feeding population normally feeds only on apples and not on the historically preferred fruit of hawthorns. The current hawthorn feeding population does not normally feed on apples. Some evidence, such as the fact that six out of thirteen allozyme loci are different, that hawthorn flies mature later in the season and take longer to mature than apple flies; and that there is little evidence of interbreeding (researchers have documented a 4–6% hybridization rate) suggests that speciation is occurring.
The
London Underground mosquito is a species of mosquito in the genus Culex found in the London Underground. It evolved from the overground species Culex pipiens.
This mosquito, although first discovered in the London Underground system, has been found in underground systems around the world. It is suggested that it may have adapted to human-made underground systems since the last century from local above-ground Culex pipiens, although more recent evidence suggests that it is a southern mosquito variety related to Culex pipiens that has adapted to the warm underground spaces of northern cities.
The species have very different behaviours, are extremely difficult to mate, and with different allele frequency, consistent with genetic drift during a founder event. More specifically, this mosquito, Culex pipiens molestus, breeds all-year round, is cold intolerant, and bites rats, mice, and humans, in contrast to the above ground species Culex pipiens that is cold tolerant, hibernates in the winter, and bites only birds. When the two varieties were cross-bred the eggs were infertile suggesting reproductive isolation.
The fundamental results still stands: the genetic data indicate that the molestus form in the London Underground mosquito appeared to have a common ancestry, rather than the population at each station being related to the nearest above-ground population (i.e. the pipiens form). Byrne and Nichols' working hypothesis was that adaptation to the underground environment had occurred locally in London once only.
These widely separated populations are distinguished by very minor genetic differences, which suggest that the molestus form developed: a single mtDNA difference shared among the underground populations of ten Russian cities; a single fixed microsatellite difference in populations spanning Europe, Japan, Australia, the middle East and Atlantic islands.
Salsifies are one example where hybrid speciation has been observed. In the early 20th century, humans introduced three species of goatsbeard into North America. These species, the western salsify (Tragopogon dubius), the meadow salsify (Tragopogon pratensis), and the oyster plant (Tragopogon porrifolius), are now common weeds in urban wastelands. In the 1950s, botanists found two new species in the regions of Idaho and Washington, where the three already known species overlapped. One new species, Tragopogon miscellus, is a tetraploid hybrid of T. dubius and T. pratensis. The other new species, Tragopogon mirus, is also an allopolyploid, but its ancestors were T. dubius and T. porrifolius. These new species are usually referred to as "the Ownbey hybrids" after the botanist who first described them. The T. mirus population grows mainly by reproduction of its own members, but additional episodes of hybridization continue to add to the T. mirus population.
T. dubius and T. pratensis mated in Europe but were never able to hybridize. A study published in March 2011 found that when these two plants were introduced to North America in the 1920s, they mated and doubled the number of chromosomes in there hybrid Tragopogon miscellus allowing for a "reset" of its genes, which in turn, allows for greater genetic variation. Professor Doug Soltis of the University of Florida said, "We caught evolution in the act…New and diverse patterns of gene expression may allow the new species to rapidly adapt in new environments". This observable event of speciation through hybridization further advances the evidence for the common descent of organisms and the time frame in which the new species arose in its new environment. The hybridizations have been reproduced artificially in laboratories from 2004 to present day.
etc.
You may have more programming experience and expertise than I do, but I have a fair bit, in commercial applications as well as some gaming. We assign fitness functions, and the algorithm calculates the most efficient way to satisfy that fitness function. Dawkins quotes a program for designing efficient spider webs as an analogy for evolution... again the program is set a specific task, given specific parameters to adjust- and will perform that task, no more no less, it will give you nothing that was not specifically set as a goal in the first place.
For natural selection the fitness function is obvious. The number of offspring that reach adulthood. Dawkin is an amateur coder and his codes are terrible examples of actual genetic and evolutionary algorithms or the current codes used to simulate evolutionary responses in species.
Simulating evolution: how close do computer models come to reality?
A technical example
https://petrov.stanford.edu/pdfs/90.pdf
http://digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/61212/1/Hoban-2012-Computer simulations.pdf
Dawkins is not without his naive charm, but life, DNA, operates on complex (dare I use the word) information systems, as does the whole crux of the question today, like many biologists he is way out of his depth in this key area.
Who cares about Dawkins? He is a good popularizer and a good ethologist. One does not learn to do research in the many diverse fields of evolutionary biology by reading selfish gene.
It may seem so intuitively, but that's really an anthropomorphic bias:
As humans we can identify a .01% advantage in a design, an airline operater might well preserve this for a later accumulated savings in fuel. This decision requires forethought, purpose, desire, things found only in a conscious mind
Natural selection cannot make these forward looking decisions- and you'd have to argue this with Dawkins and Darwin if you disagree! it has no way to specifically preserve and save up insignificantly beneficial mutations for rainy days. Not only that, we could grant a raccoon a whopping 50% advantage in it's gestation period, and it's just as likely to get run over by a semi before reaching sexual maturity as the rest, so nature is at a huge disadvantage here
I provided you with a paper showing explicitly the mathematical proofs that unambiguously demonstrate that it (ie natural selection) can indeed select and fix small advantageous mutations in populations without requiring any foresight whatsoever. So your objection is what exactly?
ha ha, try replicating a particular random pile of bricks, versus a brick wall with a simple design and you will soon find out which is the more complicated task. But again we are getting into semantic weeds. The point is that if we see a brick wall next to a pile of the same number. Most of us don't have much trouble figuring out which is random and which was designed-
as 'HELP' in rocks on the deserted island, waves or intelligent agent?
And I don't take advice from a group who can't spell 'center' correctly!
I have no interest in intuitions bases on common sense that is a non-starter in science. The immense cohesive structures of hurricanes or thunderclouds form spontaneously through the accumulation of pressure and temperature variations definitively showing that awesome complex structures with power and function can form from simplicity without requiring any designer. Life is one such structure in the chemical realm.
Okay, and if I cite the 2nd law I'll be sure to cut and paste the same blurb.
In the meantime
Entropy
2 lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.
synonyms: deterioration, degeneration, crumbling, decline, degradation, decomposition, breaking down, collapse;
We've all seen a document that someone kept photocopying from the last generation, it's still functional, but it slowly deteriorates with entropy. when it comes time to regenerate them, sure you might select the 'fittest' of that generation to reproduce for the next generation, but this in no way denotes a fittER new generation (although perhaps someone at the complexity science campus would disagree!)
See, you once again invoked the second law by the backdoor by saying "detoriates with entropy". Let me say this once and for all
There is no law in science that says disorder increases with time. Sometimes it does and sometimes it does not. It may increase for the xerox machine case, but does not increase when storm cells form or fire is formed from hydrogen and oxygen to create ordered and more complex H2O molecules.
