Mike Rossander <[log in to unmask]> makes several excellent points. And I don not wish to debate the nature and process of evolution at all, but I must take issue with this:

>> But that is not evolution -- it is selective breeding
> Here, I think you are making a distinction without a difference.  Selective breeding is evolution.  Humans are part of the environment for bees.

I have never heard anyone state that selective breeding is a form of evolution. Selective breeding introduces a variety of procedures and criteria that simply do not exist in nature. For example, nature does not favor line breeding and in fact, tries to keep a large gene pool to prevent inbreeding. Inbreeding and hybridization are just two examples of human intervention.

Criteria such as color and shape, applied from everything from flowers, vegetables, to dog breeds etc., produce weird and wonderful varieties that probably never would have occurred and most likely never would have survived if they did occur.

Regardless whether or not selective breeding is a good thing or not (most people would agree that it is, having given us most of the domestic plants and animals we use), I simply do not see how it can be *equated* with evolution. I think, for better or worse, humankind parted ways with "Nature" several hundred years ago.


pb