If evolution is real, how come people never die from eating the

>>9166341
Eating the fruit from a plant doesn't kill the plant. Infact, whatever eats the fruit usually is helping spread the seeds by pooping them out somewhere else

>>9166351
That has nothing to do with my question. Poisonous fruit and undeniably exist, if they could mutate to produce a toxin in their evolutionary history why couldn't a normally safe plant eaten by humans mutate to produce a toxin as well.

>>9166341
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/horrific-tales-of-potatoes-that-caused-mass-sickness-and-even-death-3162870/

>>9166367
They probably could, it just wouldn't be very evolutionary viable since plants with fruits that are safe to eat probably rely of animals to spread seeds for reproduction. So when it did happen, it wasn't really that advantgeous.

>>9166371
This wasn't the result of a mutation. Literally any potato could do this.

>>9166382
I'm not talking about the plant spreading, I mean one cultivated plant mutating to produce a poison and then killing someone(because how would they know this particular one was toxic?) It doesn't have to be evolutionarily viable, it just has to happen once and thus natural selection won't apply.

>>9166341

How do you think poisonous vs non-poisonous plants both came to be in the first place?

>>9166397
First of all, mutations happen on a very long term scale. It is a multistep process. Usually not just suddenly toxic fruit at the flip of the switch.

Two, most toxins that develop aren't super fatal, and most people eating wild plants don't eat nearly enough to die from it unless they are stranded and have no other food source to replace what they vomit up.

Third, most plants that are selectively grown for their fruits by humans are extremely well controlled, quickly weeding out producers that don't yield exactly what we want (typically non-toxic stuff) before shipping out massive quantities.

Fourth when plants with such properties do pop up, they are done away with instead of kept. Which IS natural selection. Only the plants with the most opportune properties for their environment, humans, survive. All else die.

>>9166613

Also another thing. Someone might have reproduced and passed on a gene already so even if the original organism with the mutation dies because of it it can still be passed on. Hence why we age.

>>9166341
The plants we eat are domesticated. We selectively breed them to have certain traits.

Otherwise there is no selection pressure on the plant to start having a poison to protect itself. Because of how DNA reproduces and is altered the likelihood that a fruit plant would suddenly mutate to release a toxin is incredibly unlikely.

There are many buffers that dictate how and the frequency with which the structure of something's DNA changes. You have to know about mutation specifically to understand that it is easy for a plant to have a large cluster of berries as an anomaly because it has the genes to make berries, however, for a plant to mutate so that it grows a new appendage and uproots itself to move elsewhere is next to impossible.

>>9166613
That would imply that random alterations of genetic material in plants to produce toxicity would have no effect on the food chain, as the people or animals eating it would grow immune along the way. Since it would have no bearing on the survivability of the species such a thing could, indeed must happen in the natural world according to Neo-Darwinian theory. So are there any examples of it happening and if not, why not?

>>9166769
Historically is is definitely possible that a population of plants at some point developed toxic fruits over time. If this trait did not inhibit the lineage from out-competing other individuals of the same/other species that do not exhibit this trait, the lineage would go extinct. It is incredibly difficult to piece together the traits of extinct lineage, particularly plants, as the only methods we have are hard-to-find fossils.

Plants tend to produce toxins in order to reduce herbivory. These usually occur within non-fruit plant tissues. These have evolutionary merit because it allows the plants to resist insects or other herbivorous organisms from feeding on the plant to the extent that it cannot reproduce and spread its genes.

I suggest you look into the literature to find some answers for yourself. Here are two good review articles.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anurag_Agrawal5/publication/6699231_Macroevolution_of_plant_defense_strategies/links/0c96051ba5f2d56b8d000000.pdf
^Done by Agrawal at Cornell University. One of the most productive scholars of evolutionary theory in the context of plant-herbivore interactions.

http://ebd10.ebd.csic.es/pdfs/Jordano95_AmNat.pdf
^A publication/review paper discussing the literature on seed dispersal, particularly through fleshy fruits. Dated but still a good reference.

>>9166769
If a randomly mutated trait has no bearing on the survivability of the species, then that species would survive or die at random. The problem in the modern world, is that the impact of humans is far too widespread. We selectively breed, and sometimes genetically alter species so that they produce something we want, specifically targeting against traits or species that are harmful to humans.

And fuck if you really what to be spoon fed, some species of mushrooms are poisonous to humans, others are not.