Hacker News Reader

Comment by 8ytecoder | Hacker News Reader

A mutation happens in one individual in one generation. Evolution happens when that mutation propagates through the population by reproduction. That itself takes many generations. Not to mention the fact that the mutation needs to be both advantageous and be recognized as such.

View on HN

Evolutionary bottle neck events don’t work in such a polite and calm fashion, and there have been many of them.

What happens is 90% of the population (or often more like 99.999%!) that don’t already happen to be carrying an advantageous mutation perish. Sometimes the whole species goes extinct if there is no such mutation already there.

The remainder, if there are any, then don’t have to worry about as much competition, and rapidly reproduce to fill the now mostly empty niche.

Sadly the gene has to give some advantage to its bearer to actually spread in the population. With only future benefits, i does not spread.

This is not true, it can spread. It's called neutral evolution.

It might also just as well disappear again. It's random after all, and when that happens we call it genetic drift. However, it's rare for a gene to be truly neutral.

> Evolution happens when that mutation propagates through the population by reproduction.

Evolution happens when the distribution of genes in one generation differs from the distribution of genes in the previous generation. It happens every generation without fail.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com