Horizontal gene transfer is what also makes viruses hard to study, tracing their evolutionary history can be QUITE difficult and often inaccurate.

I know hardly anything about immunology in other organisms besides humans- do we have more advanced immune systems or are others just understudied?

To clarify, this is when genes that control more than one trait are found to be beneficial to an organism in early life, but harmful as the progressively age.

I understand that extrinsic causes for diseases are based on outside factors such as exposure to infectious pathogens, trauma, or toxins and intrinsic causes generally develops within the patients own biome. Just because a disease may have an intrinsic cause does it necessarily mean it had to occur from predetermined genetics or can they be developed through these "windows of vulnerability" as mentioned earlier?

I've heard people can inherit similar microbiomes as their parents, if that's true I most definitely can understand the co-evolution .

Most "windows" I would guess would be during embryogenesis and early development; I hope they discuss these windows more.

Possibly, feel like that is a stretch though...

Similar concept to standing variation.

genotype able of producing more than one phenotype.

I feel that the knowledge of "anthrodependent" species would indicate that urbanization can rapidly alter the evolution of a species. Likely the result of organisms who could optimally adapt to changing anthropagenic conditions, but should that be considered a good thing?

Standing genetic variation would certainly speed up the evolutionary process.

The presence of non-native species can be attributed from human traveling, whether purposeful or accidental (insects, fungi, plants, etc.), or sometimes exotic pets are released into the wild. Many cases have been seen with snakes.

Which ones do we fall in? My money is on #3.

Have we even definitively done that? We have most certainly explored it since his published literature.

This is a strong hypothesis since we do know that genetic diversity almost always allows for a higher fitness.

We always infer the female's choice is dependent upon her desire to contribute the best genes to her offspring; this can only be theorized- we can't actually know their decision process, only the result being their choices.

Oh wow.. I keep jumping ahead.

Here is where it is important to make the distinction between sexual selection and natural selection. Are male peacocks an example of this?

Genes for a preference seem like they must exist since it can be viewed as "instinct", but how would you ever identify that gene?

Huh, when I think of sexual selection I often imagine intersexual selection. I feel both sides of the selection coin here have complexities, but I suppose intersexual selection is often the more complex.

To answer my own question, pretty sure intrasexual selection refers to male-male combat and intersexual selection refers to the female choice. I wish I could remember the example Dr. Reitsma gave, but there are some species with male mating choice exhibited.

I really hope they touch base on the idea of intra- and intersexual selection- I don't quite remember the difference between the two...

I feel anthropogenic sexual selection is especially complicated.

Most certainly strains the constraints around the BSC.

I feel the trend of cephalization in a species ends up always being a benefit. Some species have no need to adapt, but when cephalization occurs, does it ever end up not being advantageous?

Lots of niche "real-estate" .

I would assume this is inferring about the environmental conditions at the time to.

Likely a rapid change of environment to?

Is it arguable that they have "mastered" their current niche space and environmental conditions?

I think that depends on whether their offspring are completely fertile or not.

One thing I've always been unsure of, could you call the individuals of this phenomenon "variants", like Kolreuter, or "breeds"?

What about humans?

What exactly does 'sexual constitution' mean?

Physiologically distinct species.

I feel some ecology of this is if the individual cannot support themselves enough to survive why bother to expend the energy mating or carrying young? Fitness would already be low.

To what extent is he inferring? Behavioral? Stress or mal-nutrition?

I cannot think of a reason how it does.

I wish he could have known more about genetics, it would explain so much to him! Answer so many questions...

I am not surprised by this, there are so many reasons for two different species, in this case plants, to not be able to propagate, lead alone create fertile offspring. Even pollen grain size can be the first to prohibitory factor. Species that share the same genus, which already makes them pretty closely related, should not be remarkable that they create viable offspring.

I feel that this conclusion is the same today; however it is probably highly theorized to not be universal and more or less species dependent (successful mixing of genes and having the physiological similarities to carry [a] fetus[es]).

I'm trying to figure out exactly what he is saying, but I feel it's the first option (aboriginal parents).

Drawing from my experiences in conservation, Darwin is absolutely right, I know this to be so- I don't remember the name of the plant species given, but whatever kind of grass it was, the hybrid could reproduce over a generation or two, whereas the mule example was much simpler than that; mules are infertile.

Looks like I spoke too soon...

I wish I knew more details about the experiment, but was any inbreeding occurring among the hybrids?

I'm sure this attributed to doubtfulness in the field of evolutionary science where two well observant botanists came to two different conclusions; however I'm pretty sure they're both right in their own way: the variability of fertility being the tie.

I've never thought about fertility and sterility as a gradient, but I can see how it is- a magnitude of factors contribute. I think of a man being fertile, but baring slow swimming sperm as a result of factors summing up to a man who is in fact fertile but surely is not the most successful at it (contributing to fitness).

Further inferring to biological speciation.

What? Is he encroaching on the biological definition of a species? As in hybrid offspring being endowed with this infertility is what distinguishes the parents as two different species; needing to produce viable and fertile offspring...

Example: mules

*the trait of an individual being sterile, unable to reproduce

I'm assuming microorganisms fast generation times are the biggest contributor to this statement.

Lateral, or horizontal gene transfer, can occur in three different ways: transduction (incorporates viral or bacterial phages), transformation ("free-floating" plasmids are taken in by competent bacterial cells), and conjugation (involves a "sex" pilus between donor and recipient cell). I've never thought about horizontal gene transfer from an evolutionary history stand point, being that transformation and transduction are seemingly random I would believe it is quite difficult to understand the genetic origins of prokaryotes and archae.

The focus/collection of phenotypic databases seems way less privacy invasive than DNA sequences, but I feel the phenotypic data would be much more compelling when hand-in-hand with genotypic data compilation.

Is this alluding to people's "genetic privacy"? For example, some individuals fear of using a data bank such as ancestry.com for the possibility of incriminating them-self or another family member?

I wish they would elaborate more on this; for me, it is hard to imagine environmental conditions where either of these two diseases may have been advantageous. Not that it's not possible but it seems unlikely to me.

It astonished me last year when I learned linguistics were a big part in retracing evolutionary steps in anthropogenic links and culture!

I most certainly agree, in fact I know genetics has helped clear up many debates in species' evolutionary history; such as the correction between Homo neanderthalenis rather than what what originally named Homo sapien neanderthalenis.