Posted by: Randy
« on: February 23, 2007, 12:16:43 PM »Quote
"Significant genetic drift" is different from "noticeable genetic differences"
There are noticeable genetic differences between descendants of Eastern European Jews and Jews in general and other Eastern Europeans. )Prevalence of gene linked to Tay-Sachs, for example).
The more homogeneous the Eater worlds are, the more even slight differences would stand out.
But how long have they been distinct? Certainly much longer than 100 years.
Also, did these "original" jewish populations all come from a common, genetically equal source? I seriously doubt it.
When looking at the eaters at the time of the break up, each population (home hive) was on the order of billions of individuals. Given the way they typically operate, likely all of these populations would have (statistically) identical genetic makeups - at the start of the 100 year period.
All you would have a chance to detect after 100 years of divergence, given normal natural selection processes, would be cultural differences. And corpses are notoriously hard to get to talk...
Even if you allow for very aggresive selection to different criteria on each home world, it is extremely unlikely to be able to genetically detect any differences in the time frame of 100 years. The only kinds of things that would be detectable would be missing population members (eg one population has no blonds, the other has no red heads). And given how little is known about the eaters, it would be almost impossible to find such differences.
Consider my supporting evidence (based on 10 years of genetics research). I could find genetic differences between populations of test creatures only by using _extreme_ selection processes. These processes would likely wipe out the entire bug population before finding any such differences. I frequently used processes that gave 1 survivor in 10^12 individuals. Adding all the eater home hives together, this would give something like 1 survivor per 4 home hives...
(if you want to check the kinds of stuff I did, google linda reha-krantz and T4 - you will find some of my work there...)