Related Papers
American Zoologist
General Introduction to the Symposium on EvolutionaryDevelopmental Biology: Paradigms, Problems, and Prospects1Co-organized by Richard Burian, Scott Gilbert, Paula Mabee, and Billie Swalla
2000 •
Billie Swalla
How Development Directs Evolution Evolution: Lamarck versus Darwin
2013 •
Mae-Wan Ho
Almost 35 years ago, Ho and Saunders (1979) proposed the then outrageous idea that the intrinsic dynamics of developmental processes are the source of nonrandom variations that directs evolutionary change in the face of new environmental challenges; and the resulting evolutionary novelties are reinforced in successive generations through epigenetic mechanisms, independently of natural selection. Our proposal has held up well against subsequent research findings and is all the more relevant in view of the numerous molecular mechanisms discovered in epigenetic inheritance (Ho, 2009c, 2009d) that could transmit developmental novelties to subsequent generations. We have demonstrated how the nonlinear dynamics of living processes predict the major features of macroevolution such as “punctuated equilibria” (long period of stasis interrupted by abrupt changes); large changes from small critical disturbances, and discontinuous changes from continuously varying parameters; and why the macroevolution of form and function is decoupled from the microevolution of gene sequences. We showed that the same (nonrandom) developmental changes are repeatedly produced by specific environmental stimuli. Furthermore, we demonstrated how general mathematical models can account for all the developmental transformations experimentally produced, which can make strong evolutionary predictions and offer a natural taxonomy based on the predicted transformations. However, neither the epigenetic mechanisms nor the dynamics of developmental processes are taken into account in the recent studies on evolution and development. The totality of research findings gives no support to the neo- Darwinian theory of evolution by the natural selection of random genetic mutations, nor to any theory ascribing putative differences in human attributes predominantly to genes. The overwhelming determinants of health and behavior are social and environmental. Heredity is distributed over the seamless web of nested organism– environment interrelationships extending from the social and ecological to the genetic and epigenetic. Consequently, there is no separation between development and evolution, and the organism actively participates in shaping its own development as well as the evolutionary future of the entire ecological community of which it is part.
Evolution today (GGE Scudder, JL Raveal, …
Epigenetics, paleontology, and evolution
1981 •
Stan Rachootin
The Role of Epigenetics in Evolution: The Extended Synthesis.
Christina Richards
Evolutionary biology is currently experiencing an emergence of several research topics that transcend the boundaries of the Modern Synthesis, which was the last major conceptual integration in evolutionary biology. The Modern Synthesis used the concepts of population genetics to integrate Mendelian genetics with evolution by natural selection. Pigliucci identified several major areas of innovation that transcend the Modern Synthesis: epigenetics, evolvability, phenotypic plasticity, evolution on adaptive landscapes, evolutionary developmental biology, and systems biology. Integrating these new ideas with the Modern Synthesis will form a new conceptual framework of evolution, which they termed the Extended Synthesis, as it will extend, rather than refute, the Modern Synthesis. This subject has been the focus of much recent work, and an excellent description is provided in the book Evolution—The Extended Synthesis.
Journal of experimental zoology. Part B, Molecular and developmental evolution
What is the promise of developmental evolution? III. The crucible of developmental evolution
2003 •
Hans Larsson
Perspectives in biology and medicine
Reframing developmental biology and building evolutionary theory's new synthesis
2010 •
Alfred Tauber
Gilbert and Epel present a new approach to developmental biology: embryogenesis must be understood within the full context of the organism's environment. Instead of an insular embryo following a genetic blueprint, this revised program maintains that embryogenesis is subject to inputs from the environment that generate novel genetic variation with dynamic consequences for development. Beyond allelic variation of structural genes and of regulatory loci, plasticity-derived epigenetic variation completes the triad of the major types of variation required for evolution. Developmental biology and ecology, disciplines that have previously been regarded as distinct, are presented here as fully integrated under the rubric of "eco-devo," and from this perspective, which highlights how the environment not only selects variation, it helps construct it, another synthesis with evolutionary biology must also be made, "eco-evo-devo." This second integration has enormous impl...
Journal of Evolutionary Biology
The case for epigenetic inheritance in evolution
1998 •
James Griesemer
American Zoologist
Developmental Evolution as a Mechanistic Science: The Inference from Developmental Mechanisms to Evolutionary Processes1
2000 •
Manfred Laubichler, Gunter Wagner
How Development Changes Evolution: Conceptual and Historical Issues in Evolutionary Developmental Biology
2008 •
Stavros Ioannidis
Evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-Devo) is a new and rapidly developing field of biology which focuses on questions in the intersection of evolution and development and has been seen by many as a potential synthesis of these two fields. This synthesis is the topic of the books reviewed here. Integrating Evolution and Development (edited by Roger Sansom and Robert Brandon), is a collection of papers on conceptual issues in Evo-Devo, while From Embryology to Evo-Devo (edited by Manfred Laubichler and Jane Maienschein) is a history of the problem of the relations between ontogeny and phylogeny.
