Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uhccux!uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu!ronald
From: ronald@uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Ronald A. Amundson)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Further Evolving Eyebrows
Message-ID: <10174@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Date: 6 Nov 90 03:24:53 GMT
References: <1371@cluster.cs.su.oz.au> <2431@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu> <4278@lib.tmc.edu> <1990Nov4.012021.27368@umigw.miami.edu>
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In article <1990Nov4.012021.27368@umigw.miami.edu> jack@molbio.med.miami.edu (Jack Kramer) writes:

>
>I'm curious.  I thought there were only natural and artificial selection
>processes.  Why isn't sexual selection a natural process when it occurs
>in natural populations in the wild that are not under the control of
>human breeders?


Not that I approve of all of this Daily News style just-so-story-
mongering about "evolutionary explanations" of eyebrows, but it might
reduce FURTHER confusion to mention that "natural selection" is the
_name_ of an evolutionary process.  The fact that some other process
isn't _named_ "natural" doesn't mean that it's "unnatural."  Sexual
selection was distinguished from natural selection by Darwin, although
some people (including S.J. Gould, but I think he's mistaken) now
classify it as a form of natural selection.  Sexual selection adapts a
lineage of organisms to the environment of their intra-species
reproductive environment; natural selection (in D's original sense)
adapts a lineage of organisms (within a species) to their
outside-the-species environment.  

Politicians who are not Democrats may still believe in democracy.
Summer's Eve douches can be used in the winter.  Big Boy hamburgers
are not made out of ....

[Your correspondent wanders off towards the horizon, babbling softly
to himself ......]