Atahualpa Castillo-Morales, Jimena Monzón-Sandoval, Araxi O. Urrutia, and Humberto Gutiérrez Proc. R. Soc. B January 22, 2014 281 20132428; doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.2428 (open access)
Concluding sentence: “Based on our results, we propose that variations in GFS [Gene Family Size] associated with encephalization provided an evolutionary support for the specific cellular, physiological and developmental demands associated with increased brain size in mammals”
My comment: Re: “…the specific cellular, physiological and developmental demands associated with increased brain size in mammals.” Darwin’s ‘conditions of life’ suggested that these demands are met via nutrient uptake in species from microbes to man. Thus, nutrients that are naturally selected enable adaptations in brain size via ecological, social, neurogenic, and socio-cognitive niche construction in my model of natural selection and the physiology of reproduction.
Natural selection “If you have variation, differential reproduction, and heredity, you will have evolution by natural selection as an outcome. It is as simple as that.”
JK: The variation is nutrient availability and nutrients metabolize to species-specific pheromones that control reproduction and heredity. Evolution by natural selection cannot be the outcome if something is not first selected. Selection is always for nutrients. It is as simple as that.
Feierman argued: “It is very sad for me to see that when several different people on this group, all with doctorate degrees, tell you that you are not correct, you don’t consider that they might be telling you something helpful. Instead, you respond with arrogance and ignorance. I’ll add my voice to the other people on this group who have told you that you are not correct in terms of your understanding of what “variation” means in Darwinian biological evolution and what is doing the selecting. Variation is not nutrient availability and the something that is doing the selecting is not the individual organism. A feature of an educated person is to realize what they do not know. Sadly, you don’t know that you have an incorrect understanding Darwinian biological evolution.”
My comment: Feierman’s understanding of natural selection is represented here: “ I am absolutely certain that if you showed this statement to any professor of biology or genetics in any accredited university anywhere in the world that 100% of them would say that “Random mutations are the substrate upon which directional natural selection acts” is a correct and true statement.”
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I have a dream. In that dream no one (from the late Tinbergen to the late Dobzhansky) who has learned anything about biology in the past 40-50 years will say anything like what Feierman thinks they would say. Instead, Feierman is credited with being the last person to say it or to even secretly believe it. With Robert Karl Stonjek, Feierman is also credited for the academic suppression of ideas that led to a paradigm shift and accurate representations of how nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled adaptations led to increased brain size in mammals in conjunction with biophysical constraints that eliminate mutations from consideration in the context of adaptations. Please, if you have not yet done so, learn enough about biology to help make my dream come true.
