Bird cultural adaptation

[RonO]

Parrots are learning from each other, and new behaviors are spreading in
the urban cockatoos. When I was in Sidney after the world animal
genetics conference in New Zealand I had taken the opportunity to visit
the land down under. I spent several days in Sydney, and went out into
the bush and saw platypus in the wild. Cockatoos were common in the
city, but I didn't see any foraging in trash cans. They would flock and
were perching on buildings and in trees all over the city. They were
noisy and not very friendly.

This paper identified a new behavior and how it is spreading. They are
even seeing different solutions to opening the trash cans, and these two
approaches have their own populations.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/australia-s-cockatoos-are-masters-dumpster-diving-and-now-they-re-learning-each-other

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6553/456

You may have to pay, I have a subscription.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

NBC article:
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/bird-brain-cockatoo-trick-australia-scientists-enthralled-rcna1500

Guardian link:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/23/cockatoos-in-sydney-learning-from-each-other-to-bin-dive-for-food-study-finds

[Dale]

a change in DNA is not the only source of new behavior?

what about epigenetics?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

what about a teacher from another specie?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism



--
Mystery? -> https://www.dalekelly.org/

[RonO]

Noone is claiming that this is a change in the DNA. It is a behavioral
change. No DNA change is required. What this type of cultural change
can do is allow existing variation and new genetic variation to be
selected by the new selection environment. Genetic variants that affect
beak shape or things like neck or leg muscles can be selected for or
against if they help or interfere with the new behavior of opening trash
cans. It can eventually change what the bird looks like if the behavior
becomes important enough for the species survival.

Ron Okimoto

[Dale]

it implies unpredictable mutations will happen?

[RonO]

No one knows how to keep them from happening. You have around 60 new
mutations that neither of your parents had. It happens every
generation. You inherited around half of the new mutations that your
parents had, and 1/4 of the new mutations that your grand parents had.

Ron Okimoto

[Dale]

reference?

[RonO]

Would you understand it? Are you going to deny it or learn something?

This is a recent review. It estimates around 50 single nucleotide
mutations and around 9 insertion/deletion in the 6 billion base-pairs in
a human cell (1.2 per hundred million base-pairs and 1.5 per billion,
respectively). The numbers you see kicked around are around 60 new
mutations per generation.

https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ggs/94/1/94_18-00015/_article

Most of these new mutations are lost because a lot of people don't have
children and each child only has 50% chance of inheriting any new
mutations that occurred in their parents, but it keeps happening. Even
with inbreeding you might inherit the same relatively new mutation from
both parents, but they both would still be relatively new mutations even
though they are the same mutation. Think about it, due to the way we
reproduce you have around 60 new mutations in your genome that your
parents did not have, but you inherited 60 new mutations new in your
parents and 60 more (1/4 from each) from your grand parents, so you have
180 new mutations that your great grand parents did not have. There
could be selection against some of the mutations, and on rare occasions
there is selection for a mutation. Mutations will keep accumulating in
a population until mutation selection balance is achieved. This is the
point where selection against the new mutations becomes equal to the
mutation rate. This is why species contain massive amounts of genetic
variation. I do not know of any species that is at mutation selection
balance at this time. Humans have about 1/5 the genetic variation found
in other species, due to a bottleneck we seem to have gone through in
our fairly recent past (probably within the last half million years).
So at this time we are accumulating new mutations at a rapid rate
because we are not close to mutation selection balance.

Ron Okimoto

[Robert Carnegie]

"each new mutation" is better.

Also, this conservation seems to be assuming that there is
a single human genetic norm, with any differences from Norm
being "mutations", and also ignoring that we get nearly every
gene, on every chromosome, twice - once from each parent -
and many mutations are invisible since a gene typically does
its, er, normal work on one chromosome when its duplicate
on the other chromosome is missing, or is different.

In practice, I think you're referring to mutations away from
the genes of your (n)-generation ancestors, but for different
values of n. And none of those ancestors were clones of
Norm, either.

[Dale]

On 7/25/2021 8:24 AM, RonO wrote:
> ... has 50% chance ...

a statistical assumption is involved?

[Dale]

On 7/25/2021 8:24 AM, RonO wrote:

> ... It estimates ...

to what probability?

t-test?

f-test?

[RonO]

On 7/25/2021 8:52 AM, Dale wrote:
> On 7/25/2021 8:24 AM, RonO wrote:
>> ... has 50% chance ...
>
> a statistical assumption is involved?
>

Do you realize what a stupid comment you have just made? What good does
it do for you?

REPOST of what you are snipping and running from:

END REPOST:

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Why would each new mutation be better and why did you put quote marks?

>
> Also, this conservation seems to be assuming that there is
> a single human genetic norm, with any differences from Norm
> being "mutations", and also ignoring that we get nearly every
> gene, on every chromosome, twice - once from each parent -
> and many mutations are invisible since a gene typically does
> its, er, normal work on one chromosome when its duplicate
> on the other chromosome is missing, or is different.

There was the sequence of the parents, and the new mutations found in
that sequence of the children.

There was no mention of ideal, just what existed before and what
mutations occurred.

>
> In practice, I think you're referring to mutations away from
> the genes of your (n)-generation ancestors, but for different
> values of n. And none of those ancestors were clones of
> Norm, either.

These are new mutations that were not in the DNA that was inherited by
their parents. These new mutations would occur during the cell
divisions leading up to the production of the sperm and egg of the parents.

There are enough individuals in the extant human population so that
every site in the human genome has been hit on the order of 100 times by
mutation just among the individuals that are now living. It is the
reason why species diverge in sequence once interbreeding stops, and why
a lineage will keep diverging from its common ancestral sequence that
was itself polymorphic. There have been multiple discussions on the
existence of the extant variation and how it gets distributed to the new
species that arise from the ancestral population. So TO has discussed
the fact that we have an average genome sequence in a species, but new
mutations that keep occurring means that there is a ton of genetic
variation segregating within any given species.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

On 7/25/2021 8:56 AM, Dale wrote:
> On 7/25/2021 8:24 AM, RonO wrote:
>> ... It estimates ...
>
> to what probability?
>
> t-test?
>
> f-test?
>
>

What a nut job. Do you need a respirator to breath? Snip and run
denial never accomplishes anything.

You could learn some biology and genetics, at least, enough to
understand what you attempting to comment on.

Do you have any idea of what point that you would be trying to make with
such a question?

Try to explain it in terms of the biology.

Ron Okimoto

[Robert Carnegie]

It is better to say "A child has only 50% chance
of inheriting each new mutation in their parents'
nucleus DNA". So if the parents have 10 new
!mutations between them, then the child receives
a random number out of those mutations, which is
most likely to be 5.

When you say "each child only has 50% chance of
inheriting any new mutations", that sounds like
a 50-50 chance of getting no inherited mutations.

That doesn't happen, because the process does
not "know" which nucleotides are mutations,
and which are Norm's.

My understanding is hazy but if I've got it right
that the inherited chromosome typically is read from
/both/ corresponding chromosomes from the parent
by taking a length from one or from the other, then
switching across, then as a subtlety, if /two/ mutations
are on the same chromosome of one parent and are
close together, then the expected "random" outcomes
are that you will most likely inherit both of them or
inherit neither of them; it is not "independent". This is
a deviation from the probabilities otherwise, where to
receive mutation A, or separate mutation B, or both of
A and B, or neither of them, are four equally likely
outcomes. Still, it is also not true to say that the random
event of receiving each mutation is always "independent".
It's "better" because it is closer to the actual expected
outcome.

[RonO]

Word usage. In context I was using "any" to mean it didn't matter which
new mutation that had a chance of being inherited. There was no
negative in the sentence to indicate "not any", but I see what you are
talking about.

Ron Okimoto

[Dale]

On 7/25/2021 10:35 AM, RonO wrote:
> On 7/25/2021 8:52 AM, Dale wrote:
>> On 7/25/2021 8:24 AM, RonO wrote:
>>> ... has 50% chance ...
>>
>> a statistical assumption is involved?
>>
>
> Do you realize what a stupid comment you have just made?  What good does
> it do for you?

statistical confidence is stupid?

[RonO]

On 7/25/2021 5:48 PM, Dale wrote:
> On 7/25/2021 10:35 AM, RonO wrote:
>> On 7/25/2021 8:52 AM, Dale wrote:
>>> On 7/25/2021 8:24 AM, RonO wrote:
>>>> ... has 50% chance ...
>>>
>>> a statistical assumption is involved?
>>>
>>
>> Do you realize what a stupid comment you have just made?  What good
>> does it do for you?
>
> statistical confidence is stupid?
>

No, you seem to be stupid. The basic biology doesn't need any
statistical confidence at this time. You would know that it is just a
fact, and expectation of sexual reproduction. That you would pretend to
not understand that fact would be really sad, but maybe sadder than not
pretending.

Snipping and running does not change reality.

REPOST of REPOST:

END REPOST of REPOST:

Ron Okimoto