I may be misunderstanding what you're suggesting by this but it seems that we're suggesting that a population becoming more similar (stabilizing) doesn't involve a change in the population. I understand the definition of evolution to be a change in the frequency of alleles within a population. In a simple example, if the initial population was 0.5 A and 0.5 a, and stabilizing selection caused the population to become 0.6 A and 0.4 a, then the population evolved (changed). If it become more similar and was then 0.7 A and 0.3 a, the population evolved further. My point is that evolution is not measured by the variability of the population but rather by the frequency of alleles in the population. If I misunderstood your point, my apologies. Todd Ryan *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html