Can species change without mutations?

Question

Can species change without mutations?

Answer 1

yes, research the peppered moth case, where the genes for both white and black display were both present, but the black genes were selected for so strongly that species diverged.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_mo...

Answer 2

Change itself is a form of mutation

Answer 3

Yes, as long as the population contains a variety of different expressions or alleles  for the various genes.

Answer 4

if you mean without random mutations and only combining of genes, then yes, but random mutations would probably help accelerate the process. alot of change aren't really random, that's how we can design our food and breed wolves into so many kinds of dogs and stuff. it's not random mutations it's calculated mixing, random mutations in these cases are actually undesirable.

Answer 5

Over time yes they can. This happens when a species moves to a different location or the location they are in changes. For example, if a group of frogs lived on the ground and had no predators then they would continue to live on the ground. However, if the frogs were suddenly threatened by enemies on the ground they would learn to climb trees. At first not all of the frogs would be good tree climbers, just like not all humans are great athletes. However, over time since only the frogs with climbing abilities would escape the predators they would produce offspring with the same genetic qualities. There would be an occasional offspring however that would be born unable to climb as well, like a blind wild animal that couldn't hunt or fend for itself, and that one frog would perish and leave only climbing frogs to reproduce. In this way a species can change slowly over time without mutations. This is also known as evolution. Hope this answers your question. Good luck!

Answer 6

If God wants them to change, they will change.

Answer 7

i really don't know but that's a really interesting question

Answer 8

Speciation does not require mutations.

Speciation can occur just from genetic variation and Natural Selection acting on that variation.

For example tigers and lions are different species, yet they can interbreed (producing ligers and tions). They are both descended from a big cat ancestor - by Natural Selection.

In fact Natural Selection weeds out mutations, which are often harmful.

It is claimed by evolutionists that mutations drive evolution, yet this cannot be so since mutations do not add new genetic information, and evolution requires a massive net increase in information.

There is a good article here about how the different human 'races' have come about - via NS.

http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/p...