This chapter contains sections titled: The Domains of Microevolution and Macroevolution Changing Meanings of Macroevolution An Expanding Hierarchy of Selection Origins of Novelty Mass Extinctions Is Evolution Uniformitarian? Conclusions Postscript: Counterpoint References.

The marine ecosystem is governed by a multitude of environmental cycles, all of which are linked to the periodical recurrence of the sun or the moon. In accordance with these cycles, marine species exhibit a variety of biological rhythms, ranging from circadian and circatidal rhythms to circalunar and seasonal rhythms. However, our current molecular understanding of biological rhythms and clocks is largely restricted to solar‐controlled circadian and seasonal rhythms in land model species. Here, we discuss the (...) first molecular data emerging for circalunar and circatidal rhythms and present selected species suitable for further molecular analyses. We argue that a re‐focus on marine species will be crucial to understand the principles, interactions and evolution of rhythms that govern a broad range of eukaryotes, including ourselves. (shrink)

The Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA provided opportunities for women to conduct research in the late 19th and early 20th century at a time when many barriers existed to their pursuit of a scientific career. One woman who benefited from the welcoming environment at the MBL was Mary Jane Hogue. Her remarkable career as an experimental biologist spanned over 55 years. Hogue was born into a Quaker family in 1883 and received her undergraduate degree from Goucher (...) College. She went to Germany to obtain an advanced degree, and her research at the University of Würzburg with Theodor Boveri resulted in her Ph.D.. Although her research interests included experimental embryology, and the use of tissue culture to study a variety of cell types, she is considered foremost a protozoologist. Her extraordinary demonstration of chromidia in the life history of a new species of Flabellula associated with diseased oyster beds is as important as it is ignored. We discuss Hogue’s career path and her science to highlight the importance of an informal network of teachers, research advisors, and other women scientists at the MBL all of whom contributed to her success as a woman scientist. (shrink)

this requirement for adaptations. Emergent characters are always potential adaptations. Not all selection processes produce adaptations, however. The key issue, in delineating a selection process, is the relationship between a character and fitness. The emergent character approach is more restrictive than alternative schemas that delineate selection..

Until the last years of his life, Charles Darwin had actually never read Aristotle. The sole reference he makes to his naturalist forebear in _On the Origin of Species_ came in an addition to the fourth edition, published in 1866, in which he mistakenly refers to Aristotle’s summation of Empedocles’ position at _Physica_ II 8, as Aristotle’s own, and notes that ‘we see here the principle of natural selection shadowed forth’ (while disputing the specific scientific point Aristotle – though (...) actually Empedocles – was supposedly making). So when his friend William Ogle, a minor scientist and physician, and an evangelist Christian, published a translation of Aristotle’s _De partibus animalium_ in 1882 and sent a copy to Darwin, he was able to declare that he felt “some self-importance in thus being a kind of formal introducer of the father of Naturalists [Aristotle] to his great modern successor [Darwin].” Ogle, who despite his religious inclinations was nevertheless a strong proponent of Darwin’s theories, did not agree with Aristotle’s scientific theories – not least because Aristotle’s teleological model of animal development, which had been adopted as a model by many post-classical Christian scientists and theologians for centuries, was dealt a serious blow by Darwin’s theory of natural selection. So it is perhaps surprising to see Ogle produce a translation of one of Aristotle’s major biological treatises. By looking at key passages of Aristotle and Ogle’s translation, this paper will examine the reasons for Ogle’s curious choice to publish his work, setting it into the wider scientific, and Darwinian, context of late-nineteenth century Britain, and explaining how Aristotle the teleologist was used by Ogle to re-enforce Darwin’s position as a modern natural historian. (shrink)

Introduction. The article raises the problem of eugenics as a direction of scientific thought and practice of improving the human species. The modern advances in reproductive medicine, the development of biology, the emergence of methods for editing the human genome have updated the debate around eugenics. The aim of the work is a comprehensive study of the discourse and practice of eugenics in the period of the 19th — 21st centuries. This aim involves solving a number of tasks: 1) (...) analysis of the historical context and prerequisites for the eugenics emergence; 2) the study of the institutionalization and practical implementation of its ideas in Western countries in the period until the end of World War II; 3) research on the position of eugenics after the war and the transition of discussions to the mainstream of genetics, bioethics, transhumanism; 4) study of the modern discourse of eugenics, ethical issues and the degree of government intervention in population reproduction. Methods. The author uses the historical-retrospective method, which makes it possible to comprehensively consider the context of the emergence and development of eugenics, the comparative method (when comparing the characteristic features of the «old» (authoritarian, forced) and «new» (democratic, based on personal choice) eugenics), the institutional approach ( when identifying the main institutions involved in the development, dissemination, implementation of the ideas of eugenics) and a discursive approach (to study modern discussions about the «new» eugenics and related ethical problems). Scientific novelty of the research. A comprehensive study of eugenics has been carried out, a connection has been established between the «old» and «new» eugenics, and their similarities and differences have been investigated. Results. The need to distinguish eugenics as a theory of human selection and as a practice has been proven, and the latter, depending on the political, cultural and socio-economic situation in the country, can take a variety of forms: from counseling and preventive measures to racial cleansing. It was found that population growth, urbanization, mass migration, instability in society, combined with the ideas of modernism about social order by the forces of science and technology, contributed to the spread of eugenics ideas in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. After the Nuremberg trials, the concept under study temporarily dropped out of scientific discourse. The article examines in detail the socio-economic and other preconditions that contributed to the revival of interest in eugenics in the 60s of XX century and at the present stage. It is shown that today part of the discussion has shifted to the mainstream of genetics, bioethics and transhumanism. Conclusions. It has been established that discussions about eugenics run up against the problem of breeding control, which means that they raise the question of who should perform selection, how, what are its criteria. The ethical aspects of introducing control are complicated by the fact that perceptions of the «norm» and the degree of permitted interference depend on the particular society. (shrink)

This paper offers a paleobiological perspective on the debate concerning the possible use of biotechnology to bring back extinct species. One lesson from paleobiology is that extinction selectivity matters in addition to extinction rates and extinction magnitude. Combining some of Darwin’s insights about artificial selection with the theory of species selection that paleobiologists developed in the 1970s and 1980s provides a useful context for thinking about de-extinction. Using recent work on the prioritization of candidate species (...) for de-extinction as a test case, the paper argues that de-extinction would be a form of artificial species selection in which humans influence which species persist vs. go extinct. This points to a serious gap in our ethical theory: Much work has been done to clarify the value of biological diversity, but we also need theoretical guidance for decisions that amount to species sorting, and that will shape the macroevolutionary future. (shrink)

Biologists, historians of biology, and philosophers of biology often ask what is it to be an individual, really. This book does not answer that question. Instead, it answers a much more interesting one: How do biologists individuate individuals? In answering that question, the authors explore why biologists individuate individuals, in what ways, and for what purposes. The cross-disciplinary, dialogical approach to answering metaphysical questions that is pursued in the volume may seem strange to metaphysicians who are not biologically focused, but (...) it is adroitly achieved by the editors. Scott Lidgard (a paleontologist and marine ecologist) and Lynn K. Nyhart (a historian of biology) orchestrate a dialogue among historians of biology, philosophers of biology, and practicing biologists over 10 chapters. These are followed by three reflective commentaries written to frame the different disciplinary perspectives and to highlight the historical, biological, and philosophical themes across the chapters. The result is a volume—in structure and in content—that has much to be generously commended. Biological individuality is a hotly discussed topic, but it is also part of a series of long-standing arguments within both the history and philosophy of biology (HPB) and metaphysics. Notable and fervent debates have centered on evolution and the units of selection, predominantly on Michael T. Ghiselin’s and David L. Hull’s notion of species as individuals, Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Darwinian individuals, and Ellen Clarke’s individuating mechanisms. Lately, it has encompassed non-Darwinian individuals, symbiotic associations like Thomas Pradeu’s immunological individuals, and John Dupré and Maureen A. O’Malley’s metabolic individuals.2 The present volume is curated in a way to introduce the reader to new research in HPB that articulates these debates as well as to introduce and engage in the study of further notions of biological individuality. But its aim is more than an introduction. As the subtitle suggests, it is also intended to give the reader insight into the working together of biologists, historians of biology, and philosophers of biology in figuring out how the notion of biological individuality is instantiated. As such, the problem-centered dialogue that results does more than talk through biological individuality. It shows how the different and often divergent goals of the authors’ disciplines shape not only how they think about individuality but how they communicate this thinking in reciprocal collaboration with others in different disciplines. … cont’d…. (shrink)

A number of theories about the origins of musicality have incorporated biological and social perspectives. Darwin argued that musicality evolved by sexual selection, functioning as a courtship display in reproductive partner choice. Darwin did not regard musicality as a sexually dimorphic trait, paralleling evidence that both sexes produce and enjoy music. A novel research strand examines the effect of musicality on sexual attraction by acknowledging the importance of facial attractiveness. We previously demonstrated that music varying in emotional content increases (...) the perceived attractiveness and dating desirability of opposite-sex faces only in females, compared to a silent control condition. Here, we built upon this approach by presenting the person depicted (target) as the performer of the music (prime), thus establishing a direct link. We hypothesized that musical priming would increase sexual attraction, with high-arousing music inducing the largest effect. Musical primes (25 s, piano solo music) varied in arousal and pleasantness, and targets were photos of other-sex faces of average attractiveness and with neutral expressions (2 s). Participants were 35 females and 23 males (heterosexual psychology students, single, and no hormonal contraception use) matched for musical background, mood, and liking for the music used in the experiment. After musical priming, females’ ratings of attractiveness and dating desirability increased significantly. In males, only dating desirability was significantly increased by musical priming. No specific effects of music-induced pleasantness and arousal were observed. Our results, together with other recent empirical evidence, corroborate the sexual selection hypothesis for the evolution of human musicality. (shrink)

Recent research into human origins has largely focused on deducing past events and processes from current patterns of genetic variation. Some human genes possess unexpectedly low diversity, seemingly resulting from events of the late Pleistocene. Such anomalies have previously been ascribed to population bottlenecks or selection on genes. For four species of matrilineal whale, evidence suggests that cultural evolution may have reduced the diversity of genes which have similar transmission characteristics to selective cultural traits, through a process (...) called cultural hitchhiking. Cultural evolution is characteristic of human societies and so should be considered as a potential determinant of human genetic diversity. A stochastic simulation of gene and cultural dynamics in an array of hunter-gatherer tribes shows that cultural selection has the potential to severely reduce genetic diversity if: inter-tribe gene flows are reasonably low (<~0.6-15 genes/tribe/generation); cultural evolution changes fitness by >~0.3-3%/generation; and fitness is changed more by cultural innovation within a tribe than cultural assimilation from neighboring tribes. Thus cultural hitchhiking may explain low diversity and short coalescence times in mitochondrial and, especially, Y-linked human genes. (shrink)

Despite the triumphant rhetoric of mechanistic materialism, current biology has no shortage of unsolved fundamental problems. In 1981, seeking a way forward, Rupert Sheldrake proposed the hypothesis of “formative causation” as a unifying organizing principle of life. Expanding the concept of morphogenetic fields, Sheldrake posited a spatio‐temporal connection termed “morphic resonance” whereby the more often a self‐organizing process takes place, the easier it will be for it to take place in the future. After initial acclaim, his project was quickly met (...) with dogmatic skepticism, dismissed as scientific heresy, and ultimately ignored. Forty years later, the experimental implications of his ideas remain largely untested. Visionary or not, Sheldrake's case illustrates the conceptual resistance of the scientific enterprise to revise its own deepest theoretical commitments. Beyond career‐building selection pressures, young researchers need to be presented with the major questions in their field and encouraged to entertain radically alternative points of view. Science is what scientists make of it. (shrink)

I first visited the Galápagos Islands in June 1998, and little was as I expected. Rather than craggy barrens covered with scrub, lush foliage beautified many islands. Rather than flourishing coastal habitats, surface water temperatures were well above normal, and throughout the archipelago dead or dying sea lions, sea birds, and marine iguanas littered the shores. All of this was the result of increased rainfall and the disruption of the normal upwelling in waters surrounding the archipelago caused by the (...) 1997–1998 El Niño event. When I visited Galápagos again, in February 1999, the islands were suffering one of the driest periods on record, and terrestrial vegetation had died back; but the cool, nourishing upwelling had resumed, and the marine environment was thriving.A “study in contrasts” aptly describes the two extremes in environmental conditions in the Galápagos Islands in 1998 and 1999 and, as Edward Larson captures beautifully in this book, many aspects of their history. Indeed, a theme that emerges in Larson's historical account of the Galápagos is one of irony. Compare Herman Melville's characterization of the islands as “an archipelago of aridities, without inhabitant, history, or hope of either in all time to come” , with modern biologists' and eco‐tourists' view of the Galápagos as “hallowed ground” and “enchanting”; the view of Galápagos as a place where one can so easily see Creation with the view that is is a place where one can so easily see evolution ; the popular belief that Darwin used Galápagos finches as the basis of his theory of natural selection with the reality that a complete picture of Galápagos finch evolution didn't emerge until it was unveiled in 1947 by David Lack, who renamed “Galápagos finches” “Darwin's finches”; the treatment of Galápagos as a land of plenty from which early sailors, buccaneers, and greedy naturalists removed tens of thousands of tortoises with its current status as a land in which a single tortoise named Lonesome George is an icon for conservation worldwide; and its small stature in terms of geographical size with its monumental stature in terms of impact on the history of biological science.Expanding on the last contrast, Larson offers the following insight from Robert Bowman: “No area on Earth of comparable size has inspired more fundamental changes in Man's perspective of himself and his environment than the Galápagos Islands” . As such, the comprehensive history of the place provided by Larson is well justified. It is also fascinating, and Larson tells the tale well—concisely, occasionally with wit, and always with inclusive documentation. The text is divided into three parts, the first covering the period from the discovery of the New World, including Galápagos in 1535, to Darwin's legendary visit in 1835 and the subsequent publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859; the second, the explosion of interest in the archipelago by American and European naturalists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; and the third, the remarkable transformation of the Galápagos between World War II, during which it served as a military base for the United States, to the present. Following and cited in the text are sixty‐three pages of notes, a veritable gold mine of references to classic and obscure published material that demonstrate both how thoroughly Larson researched the topic and how persistently this small archipelago has pervaded scientific, governmental, religious, and public thought.This book is more than a historical account of scientific exploration in Galápagos; it is also a dramatic story of the history of Galápagos in human thought. By incorporating thoughts and findings of nearly every famous, infamous, and forgettable player in Galápagos exploration in roughly chronological order and in the context of prevailing social or scientific mores, Larson provides an extraordinary glimpse into human nature. Regarding the evolution of human thought in conceptualizing organic evolution, Larson demonstrates that spiritual concerns or other constraints prevent some individuals from progressing intellectually, others eagerly abandon all tradition to embrace new concepts, and still others find middle ground. As noted poignantly, no less than ironically, by Larson, creation science, not evolution, is taught in Galápagos schools, and this once‐pristine archipelago is now bustling with humans and the predictable problems that accompany us. The history of Galápagos, both in terms of its ultimate fate and its influence on human thought, is not finished. The sequel to Evolution's Workshop may be equally intriguing. (shrink)

In recent years, the research field of the evolution of art has witnessed contributions from a wide range of disciplines across the "three cultures". In this thesis, I make both a critical review of existing explanations, and try to do elucidate the evolution of art by employing insights, methods and concepts from different disciplines. First, I critically evaluate the evidentiary criteria from standard evolutionary psychology some accounts employ to demonstrate that art qualifies as a human biological adaptation. I argue that (...) these criteria do not suffice to make that claim. Furthermore, I make the case for a cultural evolutionary approach to the arts. One commonly used evidentiary criterion for art as adaptation is the “tight fit” between artnbsp;human cognition, which is interpreted as suggesting that cognition has undergone selection to produce and appreciate art. However, disentangling cultural and genetic evolution allows formulating thenbsp;hypothesis that art has evolved culturally to match human cognition. Second, I observe that in ancient and modern hunter gatherer societies, artistic activities are virtually alwaysnbsp;with ritual. I discuss what this implies for the adaptive significance of art. Specifically, if the arts have culturally evolved in function of ritualistic purposes, their adaptive value has depended on the adaptiveness of ritual. Third, because architecture is characterized by the combination of utilitarian and aesthetic aspects, it is particularly interesting from an evolutionary perspective and therefore I devote special attention to it. Employing the cross-species comparative approach, I investigate two main purposes human architecture has in common with nonhuman animal constructions: protection andnbsp;Based on the phylogenetic approach I establish that protection may have been the primary function of building aptitudes in humannbsp;and that building was later co-opted for signaling purposes. Subsequently, I comparatively evaluate thenbsp;of signaling models in the cultural evolution of architectural aesthetics. Furthermore I combine insights from environmental psychology, niche construction and cultural evolution theory to develop the hypothesis that a function of religious monumental architecture may have been to support nbsp;or even to galvanize nbsp;social learning. Finally, I connect the account I developed to the cognitive science of religion. I complement the frequently held view that religious monumental architecture is a costly signal with the mechanism of sensory exploitation. I attempt to demonstrate that by exploiting thenbsp;response of awe in religious followers, religious monumental architecture promotes and regulates prosocial behavior and creates in them an openness to adopt supernatural beliefs. Fourth, I dealnbsp;the evolution of visual art, paying again special attention to cultural evolution andnbsp;explanatory value of sensory exploitation. I assert that the relatively late appearance of figurative art in the course of human evolution may be attributed to an increase in the number of social learning opportunities within and between human populations at that time. I support this assertion with archaeological data that indicate overall population growth and increased population densities at that time. These demographic changes, I argue, have allowed the retention and accumulation of innovations required for figurative art making. Contrary to previous accounts, I furthermore aim to show that this process doesnbsp;require figurative art to have served adaptive purposes. Employing sensory exploitation, I establish that figurative art could have evolved by exploiting pre-existing biases of evolved psychology. The dominant themes of upper Paleolithic and late stone age figurative art, animals and humans, seem to support this contention. Fifth, I present a number of experimental studies I conducted to verify whether contemporary art experts would have socially learned to resist exploitation of evolved psychology. One aspect ofrsquo;s exploitative power may be that it elicits aesthetic pleasure by pushing “pleasure buttons” that evolved for other purposes. Consequently, spectators may trade-off rewards from indulging in art and biological activities, resulting in less effort being allocated to reproduction. I contend that, while the generalnbsp; may indeed be exploited, experts, who are typically being exposed to high doses of art, may have socially learned to resist exploitation by selectively preferring art from prestigious art contexts. The latter would be in line with the claim that prestige bias may trump content biases of evolved psychology. The results of three experimental studies supportnbsp;contention. I find that laypeople's art appreciation is positively affected by a content bias for attractive faces, mediated by aesthetic pleasure, whereas experts' appreciation is positively affected by prestige and mediated by admiration for the artist. Moreover, experts confer lower appreciation to attractive compared to moderately attractive content, which is consistentnbsp;the contention that expertise and the use of prestige are associatednbsp;resistance against beautiful content that exploits evolved preferences. This research thus suggests that expertise moderates content and context biases, which may be of relevance to an ongoing debate about their relative importance as drivers of cultural evolution. In addition, this study provides a tentative but novel explanation for the fact, famously established by philosopher Arthur Danto, that beauty lost its central position in Western art during the 20th century. However my findings cannot exclude alternative explanations for the fact that art expert appreciation deviates from evolved aesthetic preferences. Further research may experimentally assess the role of prestige bias and resistance as drivers of this deviation versus other, previously suggested, potential processes. For example, preferences of experts may deviate on account of the fact that art serves as a badge of elite group membership and thus expert art appreciation as a means to distinguish oneself from the masses. Alternatively, art experts may seek intellectual challenges instead of pushing pleasure buttons. Future research may experimentally verify the respective roles of these different hypothesized mechanisms. In addition, it may be investigated how insights from sexual selection research may help elucidating the different processes at play in cultural evolution and particularly in the cultural evolution of art appreciation, given the commonalities between sexual selection and cultural selection models. (shrink)

While 4E approaches to cognition are increasingly introduced in educational contexts, little has been said about how 4E commitments can inform pedagogy aimed at fostering ethical competencies. Here, we evaluate a 4E-inspired ethics exercise that we developed at a technical university to enliven the moral imagination of engineering students. Our students participated in an interactive tinkering workshop, during which they materially redesigned a healthcare artifact. The aim of the workshop was twofold. Firstly, we wanted students to experience how material choices (...) at the levels of design and functionality can enable morally significant reimaginings of the affordances commonly associated with existing artifacts. We term this type of reimagining world-directed moral imagination. Secondly, through the design process, we wanted students to robustly place themselves in the lived embodied perspectives of (potential) users of their selected artifacts. We term this person-directed moral imagination. While student testimonies about the exercise indicate that both their world-directed and person-directed moral imagination were enlivened, we note that the fostering of robust person-directed moral imagination proved challenging. Using 4E insights, we diagnose this challenge and ask how it might be overcome. To this end, we engage extensively with a recent 4E-informed critique of person-directed moral imagination, raised by Clavel Vázquez and Clavel-Vázquez (2023). They argue that person-directed moral imagination is profoundly limited, if not fundamentally misguided, particularly when exercised in contexts marked by emphatic embodied situated difference between the imaginer and the imagined. Building upon insights from both the 4E field and testimonies from critical disability studies, we argue that, while their critique is valuable, it ultimately goes too far. We conclude that a 4E approach can take on board recent 4E warnings regarding the limits of person-directed moral imagination while contributing positively to the development of moral imagination in engineering ethics education. (shrink)

This article by Pat Moloney discusses two visions about the medieval concept labeled as “the edenic discourse” and its relation with the Hobbesian concept of “the nature state”. These visions are: First: Christian Tradition in which The Garden of Eden was an historical moment for mankind, a moment of harmony and innocence: God began creation, and He set Adam as centre of it and king of all species; Adam possessed wisdom, virtue, sinless life and the power of naming all (...) species. Moloney discusses the main versions of this vision, represented by some authors from medieval times, the origin of edenic vision, until contemporary authors. This work is based in Genesis. Second: Discussing the second vision Moloney deals with a vision opposite to the latter, represented by Thomas Hobbes. The article explains the hobbesian analysis about “the nature state” concept, expounded by Hobbes mainly in Leviathan and De Cive. Moloney explains the opposition between these visions, the edenic and the hobbesian discourses, and uses language and sovereignty concepts as the main line of his exposition. (shrink)

Apoptotic pathways have always been regarded as a key‐player in preserving tissue and organ homeostasis. Excessive activation or resistance to activation of cell death signaling may indeed be responsible for several mechanisms of disease, including malignancy and chronic degenerative diseases. Therefore, targeting apoptotic factors gained more and more attention in the scientific community and novel strategies emerged aimed at selectively blocking or stimulating cell death signaling. This is also the case for the TMEM219 death receptor, which is activated by a (...) circulating ligand, the Insulin‐like growth factor binding protein 3 (IGFBP3) and induces a caspase‐8‐dependent apoptosis of the target cells. Interestingly, stimulation of the IGFBP3/TMEM219 axis exerts an anti‐proliferative effect, while blockade of the TMEM219 deleterious signal protects TMEM219‐expressing cells of the endocrine pancreas, lung, and intestine from damage and death. Here, we summarize the most updated reports on the role of the IGFBP3/TMEM219 apoptotic axis in disease conditions, including intestinal disorders and diabetes, and we describe the advancements in designing and testing novel TMEM219‐based targeting approaches in emerging potential clinical applications. (shrink)

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species is unquestionably one of the chief landmarks in biology. The Origin (as it is widely known) was literally only an abstract of the manuscript Darwin had originally intended to complete and publish as the formal presentation of his views on evolution. Compared with the Origin, his original long manuscript work on Natural Selection, which is presented here and made available for the first time in printed form, has more abundant examples and (...) illustrations of Darwin's argument, plus an extensive citation of sources. (shrink)

William Keith Brooks was an American zoologist at Johns Hopkins University from 1876 until his death in 1908. Over the course of his career, Brooks staunchly defended Darwinism, arguing for the centrality of natural selection in evolutionary theory at a time when alternative theories, such as neo-Lamarckism, grew prominent in American biology. In his book The Law of Heredity, Brooks addressed problems raised by Darwin’s theory of pangenesis. In modifying and developing Darwin’s pangenesis, Brooks proposed a new theory of (...) heredity that sought to avoid the pitfalls of Darwin’s hypothesis. In so doing he strengthened Darwin’s theory of natural selection by undermining arguments for the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In later attacks on neo-Lamarckism, Brooks consistently defended Darwin’s theory of natural selection on logical grounds, continued to challenge the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, and argued that natural selection best explained a wide range of adaptations. Finally, he critiqued Galton’s statistical view of heredity and argued that Galton had resurrected an outmoded typological concept of species, one which Darwin and other naturalists had shown to be incorrect. Brooks’s ideas resemble the “biological species concept” of the twentieth century, as developed by evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr and others. The late-nineteenth century was not a period of total “eclipse” of Darwinism, as biologists and historians have hitherto seen it. Although the “Modern Synthesis” refers to the reconciliation of post-Mendelian genetics with evolution by natural selection, we might adjust our understanding of how the synthesis developed by seeing it as the culmination of a longer discussion that extends back to the late-nineteenth century. (shrink)

Many marine invertebrates have the ability to combine tissues with conspecifics and form chimeras. This ability is usually accompanied by the presence of a polymorphic self/non-self recognition system that allows integration of closely related individuals, but blocks interactions between those more distantly related. The presence of a discriminatory allorecognition system suggests that there are costs and benefits to chimerism that are correlated to relatedness, but the nature of these costs and benefits is still poorly understood. Interestingly, allorecognition is found (...) throughout the animal kingdom, with examples in nearly all the multicellular phyla; however, the role of allorecognition in these different species is not always clear. In addition, the molecular mechanisms underlying allorecognition in different species are not related, suggesting a unique origin for each species. This brings up the question as to whether there is a universal need for self/non-self recognition processes among the metazoa, or if these systems evolve in response to different selective pressures. We are studying allorecognition and chimerism in the colonial ascidian, Botryllus schlosseri. Allorecognition takes place at the tips of the extracorporeal vasculature, and can result in a parabiosis, or a rejection reaction that blocks vascular fusion. Fusion has both hypothesized benefits as well as well-documented costs. This article will focus on characterizing the costs and benefits of fusion and chimerism in Botryllus, and put them into the broader context of the role of allorecognition in the metazoa. (shrink)

Familiarity with Charles Darwin's treatise on evolution is essential to every well-educated individual. One of the most important books ever published--and a continuing source of controversy, a century and a half later--this classic of science is reproduced in a facsimile of the critically acclaimed first edition.

Hierarchical expansions of the theory of natural selection exist in two distinct bodies of thought in evolutionary biology, the group selection and the species selection traditions. Both traditions share the point of view that the principles of natural selection apply at levels of biological organization above the level of the individual organism. This leads them both to considermultilevel selection situations, where selection is occurring simultaneously at more than one level. Impeding unification of the (...) theoretical approaches of the multilevel selection traditions are the different goals of investigators in the different subdisciplines and the different types of data potentially available for analysis. We identify two alternative approaches to multilevel situations, which we termmultilevel selection [1] andmultilevel selection [2]. Of interest in the former case are the effects of group membership onindividual fitnesses, and in the latter the tendencies for the groups themselves to go extinct or to found new groups (i.e., group fitnesses). We argue that: neither represents the entire multilevel selection process; both are aspects of any multilevel selection situation; and both are legitimate approaches, suitable for answering different questions. Using this formalism, we show that: multilevel selection [2] does not require emergent group properties in order to provide an explanatory mechanism of evolutionary change; multilevel selection [1] is usually more appropriate for neontological group selection studies; and species selection is most fruitfully considered from the point of view of multilevel selection [2]. Finally we argue that the effect hypothesis of macroevolution, requiring, in selection among species, both the absence of group effects on organismic fitness (multilevel selection [1]), and the direct determination of species fitnesses by those of organisms, is untestable with paleontological data. Furthermore, the conditions for the effect hypothesis to hold are extremely restrictive and unlikely to apply to the vast majority of situations encountered in nature. (shrink)

Sound is an inherent component of the environment that provides conditions and information necessary for many animal activities. Soniferous species require specific acoustic and physical conditions suitable for their signals to be transmitted, received, and effectively interpreted to successfully identify and utilize resources in their environment and interact with conspecifics and other heterospecific organisms. We propose the Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis to explain how the acoustic environment influences habitat selection of sound-dependent species. We postulate that sound-dependent species (...) select and occupy habitats with unique acoustic characteristics that are essential to their functional needs and conducive to the threshold of sound frequency they produce and detect. These acoustic habitats are based on the composition of biophony, geophony, and technophony in the soundscape and on the biosemiotics mechanisms described in the eco-field hypothesis. The Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis initiates questions of habitat selection that go beyond the physical attributes of the environment by applying ecoacoustics theory. We outline the theoretical basis of the Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis and provide examples from the literature to support its assumptions. The concept of acoustic habitats has been documented in the literature for many years but here, we accurately and extensively define acoustic habitat and we put this concept into a unified theory. We also include perspectives on how the Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis can stimulate a paradigm shift in conservation strategies for threatened and endangered species. (shrink)

Entrenched biases in favour of large, charismatic mammals, towards predators, towards terrestrial animals and towards species that have cultural importance can influence the selection of candidate species for de-extinction research. Often, the species with the highest existence value will also be the ones that raise the most serious animal welfare concerns.

In late September 1838, Darwin read Malthus's Essay on Population, which left him with “a theory by which to work.”115 Yet he waited some twenty years to publish his discovery in the Origin of Species. Those interested in the fine grain of Darwin's development have been curious about this delay. One recent explanation has his hand stayed by fear of reaction to the materialist implications of linking man with animals. “Darwin sensed,” according to Howard Gruber, “that some would (...) object to seeing rudiments of human mentality in animals, while others would recoil at the idea of remnants of animality in man.”116 With this link closed, Darwin hung the materialist chain around his own neck, where it rested most uncomfortably. Stephen Gould, supporting Gruber's argument, finds evidence for this reconstruction in Darwin's M and N notebooks, whichinclude many statements showing that he espoused but feared to expose something he perceived as far more heretical than evolution itself: philosophical materialism-the postulate that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. No notion could be more upsetting to the deepest traditions of Western thought than the statement that mind-however complex and powerful-is simply a product of brain.117The proferred hypothesis suggests, then, that Darwin was acutely sensible of the social consequences of equating men with animals and therefore mind with brian, and that he thus shied from publically revealing his views until the intellectual climate became more tolerant.The history I have examined makes this hypothesis implausible. Even if Darwin warily explored the implications of his emerging theory in his notebooks, his subsequent study of Fleming, Wells, Brougham, and Kirby should have quieted any trepidation. If these natural theologians did not flinch at seeing human reason prefigured in the mind of a worm, should Darwin have? Moreover, he recognized in his M notebook that the thesis of evolutionary continuity between men and animals did not require an explicit avowal of his conviction that brain was the agent of thought.118 And in any case, his materialism was of a rather benign sort; at least he so expressed it in an annotation in Abercrombie's Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers (1838): “By materialism I mean, merely the intimate connection of thought with form of brain — like kind of attraction with nature of element.”119 This belief would have held little terror for British intellectuals, who were quite familiar — some even comfortable-with Locke's anti-Cartesian argument that there was nothing contradictory in supposing God could make matter to think.120 Finally, even if the intellectual atmosphere of early nineteenth-century Britain were inhospitable to Darwin's brand of materialism, there is little reason to believe he breathed a different air at mid-century while preparing his manuscript.That Darwin should not have feared suspicions of materialism, of course, does not mean that he did not. But I think there were other, more persistent sources of anxiety that kept him from rushing to publish: namely, the several conceptual obstacles he had to overcome if his theory of evolution by natural selection were to be made scientifically acceptable. Prominent among these were the problems surrounding his changing notions of instinct.The inertia of his older ideas about instinct at first made it hard for Darwin to gauge how far the theory of natural selection might be applied to behavior. By the early 1840s he finally felt ready to meet the challenge of the natural theologians by providing a naturalistic explanation for the wonderful instincts of animals. In his “Essays” of 1842 and 1844 one sort of instinct is, however, not considered-that of neuter insects. Yet Darwin seems to have appreciated the difficulties such instincts entailed at least by 1843, when he read Kirby and Spence. He simply required time to work out a solution to a problem he initially perceived as “fatal to my whole theory.” Even while writing the “Species Book” in the summer of 1857, he was still juggling several possible solutions compatible with natural selection. It was only a short time before he actually turned to work on the Origin of Species that he appears to have settled on a single explanation for the difficulties posed by the instincts of worker bees and ants. The force of his theory of community selection snapped the last critical support of the creationist hypothesis and, conveniently enough, also fractured the generalized Lamarckian account of the evolution of behavior. These results were worth waiting for. (shrink)

Important marine mammal areas (IMMAs)—‘discrete habitat areas, important for one or more marine mammal species, that have the potential to be delineated and managed for conservation’ (IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force 2018, p. 3)—were introduced in 2014 by the IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force to support marine mammal and wider ocean conservation. IMMAs provide decision-makers with a user-friendly, actionable tool to inform them of the whereabouts of habitat important for (...) class='Hi'>marine mammal survival. However, in view of their non-prescriptive, evidence-based and biocentric nature, the conservation effectiveness of IMMAs is strictly dependent on politicians’ willingness to make use of them. It has been the customary task of advocacy non-governmental organisations to lobby decision-makers to stimulate respect for environmental law, but the scientific community is increasingly joining this effort. Scientists can effectively strengthen a healthy relationship between scientific objectivity and political advocacy without damaging the credibility of conservation science. Thus, those undertaking the identification of IMMAs can be among those responsible for strongly advocating the implementation of IMMAs and other conservation initiatives. (shrink)

This article addresses the emergence of human personality in evolution. The mechanisms of natural and sexual selection developed by Darwin are not sufficient to explain the sense of self. Therefore we attempt to trace the evolutionary process back to a form of selection termed “emotional selection.” This involves reconstructing selection out of subjective qualities and showing how emotions enable human forms of life that are relevant for the cultural level of cooperation that marks our species. (...) We see a paradigm shift in the concept of emotional selection that binds emotion and evolution closer together, thus closing the explanatory gap between classical ethology and modern evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

In On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin put forward his theory of natural selection. Conventionally, Darwin's argument for this theory has been understood as based on an analogy with artificial selection. But there has been no consensus on how, exactly, this analogical argument is supposed to work – and some suspicion too that analogical arguments on the whole are embarrassingly weak. Drawing on new insights into the history of analogical argumentation from the ancient Greeks onward, as (...) well as on in-depth studies of Darwin's public and private writings, this book offers an original perspective on Darwin's argument, restoring to view the intellectual traditions which Darwin took for granted in arguing as he did. From this perspective come new appreciations not only of Darwin's argument but of the metaphors based on it, the range of wider traditions the argument touched upon, and its legacies for science after the Origin. (shrink)

What can the actions of stockbreeders, as they select the best individuals for breeding, teach us about how new species of wild animals and plants come into being? Charles Darwin raised this question in his famous, even notorious, Origin of Species (1859). Darwin's answer - his argument by analogy from artificial to natural selection - is the subject of our book. We aim to clarify what kind of argument it is, how it works, and why Darwin gave (...) it such prominence. As we explain more fully in our Introduction, we believe that the argument becomes much more intelligible when set, contextually, in a story stretching from classical Greek mathematics to modern evolutionary genetics: a long story, and a broad one too, encompassing everything from Darwin's earliest notebook theorising on the births and deaths of species, to agrarian capitalism as a distinctive form of economic life, to shifting Western reflections on art-nature relations. (shrink)

Important marine mammal areas (IMMAs)—‘discrete habitat areas, important for one or more marine mammal species, that have the potential to be delineated and managed for conservation’ (IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force 2018, p. 3)—were introduced in 2014 by the IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force to support marine mammal and wider ocean conservation. IMMAs provide decision-makers with a user-friendly, actionable tool to inform them of the whereabouts of habitat important for (...) class='Hi'>marine mammal survival. However, in view of their non-prescriptive, evidence-based and biocentric nature, the conservation effectiveness of IMMAs is strictly dependent on politicians’ willingness to make use of them. It has been the customary task of advocacy non-governmental organisations to lobby decision-makers to stimulate respect for environmental law, but the scientific community is increasingly joining this effort. Scientists can effectively strengthen a healthy relationship between scientific objectivity and political advocacy without damaging the credibility of conservation science. Thus, those undertaking the identification of IMMAs can be among those responsible for strongly advocating the implementation of IMMAs and other conservation initiatives. (shrink)

Human behavior is the joint product of (i) contingencies of survival responsible for natural selection, and (ii) contingencies of reinforcement responsible for the repertoires of individuals, including (iii) the special contingencies maintained by an evolved social environment. Selection by consequences is a causal mode found only in living things, or in machines made by living things. It was first recognized in natural selection: Reproduction, a first consequence, led to the evolution of cells, organs, and organisms reproducing themselves (...) under increasingly diverse conditions. The behavior functioned well, however, only under conditions similar to those under which it was selected.Reproduction under a wider range of consequences became possible with the evolution of processes through which organisms acquired behavior appropriate to novel environments. One of these, operant conditioning, is a second kind of selection by consequences: New responses could be strengthened by events which followed them. When the selecting consequences are the same, operant conditioning and natural selection work together redundantly. But because a species which quickly acquires behavior appropriate to an environment has less need for an innate repertoire, operant conditioning could replace as well as supplement the natural selection of behavior.Social behavior is within easy range of natural selection, because other members are one of the most stable features of the environment of a species. The human species presumably became more social when its vocal musculature came under operant control. Verbal behavior greatly increased the importance of a third kind of selection by consequences, the evolution of social environments or cultures. The effect on the group, and not the reinforcing consequences for individual members, is responsible for the evolution of culture. (shrink)

This book is divided in two parts, the first of which shows how, beyond paleontology and systematics, macroevolutionary theories apply key insights from ecology and biogeography, developmental biology, biophysics, molecular phylogenetics, and even the sociocultural sciences to explain evolution in deep time. In the second part, the phenomenon of macroevolution is examined with the help of real life-history case studies on the evolution of eukaryotic sex, the formation of anatomical form and body-plans, extinction and speciation events of marine invertebrates, (...) hominin evolution and species conservation ethics. The book brings together leading experts, who explain pivotal concepts such as Punctuated Equilibria, Stasis, Developmental Constraints, Adaptive Radiations, Habitat Tracking, Turnovers, (Mass) Extinctions, Species Sorting, Major Transitions, Trends, and Hierarchies – key premises that allow macroevolutionary epistemic frameworks to transcend microevolutionary theories that focus on genetic variation, selection, migration and fitness. Along the way, the contributing authors review ongoing debates and current scientific challenges; detail new and fascinating scientific tools and techniques that allow us to cross the classic borders between disciplines; demonstrate how their theories make it possible to extend the Modern Synthesis; present guidelines on how the macroevolutionary field could be further developed; and provide a rich view of just how it was that life evolved across time and space. In short, this book is a must-read for active scholars and, because the technical aspects are fully explained, it is also accessible for non-specialists. Understanding evolution requires a solid grasp of above-population phenomena. Species are real biological individuals, and abiotic factors impact the future course of evolution. Beyond observation, when the explanation of macroevolution is the goal, we need both evidence and theory that enable us to explain and interpret how life evolves at the grand scale. (shrink)

Inter-species variation in colour perception poses a serious problem for the view that colours are mind-independent properties. Given that colour perception varies so drastically across species, which species perceives colours as they really are? In this paper, I argue that all do. Specifically, I argue that members of different species perceive properties that are determinates of different, mutually compatible, determinables. This is an instance of a general selectionist strategy for dealing with cases of perceptual variation. According (...) to selectionist views, objects simultaneously instantiate a plurality of colours, all of them genuinely mind-independent, and subjects select from amongst this plurality which colours they perceive. I contrast selectionist views with relationalist views that deny the mind-independence of colour, and consider some general objections to this strategy. (shrink)

Two kinds of factors set the tempo and direction of organic and cultural evolution, those external to biotic evolutionary process, such as changes in the earth’s physical and chemical environments, and those internal to it, such as the time required for chance factors to lead lineages across adaptive valleys to a new niche space (Valentine 1985). The relative importance of these two sorts of processes is widely debated. Valentine (1973) argued that marine invertebrate diversity patterns responded to seafloor spreading (...) as this process generated more or less niche space. He suggested that natural selection is a powerful force and that earth’s biota are in near equilibrium with the niches available on the geological time scale. Walker and Valentine (1984) modeled the evolution of species assuming a logistic speciation rate limited by internal factors and a diversity-independent death rate caused by ongoing environmental change. Fitting this model to the observed evolution of shelled marine invertebrates suggests that the lag between extinctions and the evolution of new species leaves perhaps 30% of ecological niches unfilled. In this model, the biota lag environmental change by perhaps a few million years. However, as Valentine (1985) notes, if adaptive landscapes have whole suites of niches protected by deep maladaptive valleys, the waiting time for some pioneering species to cross the divide may be very long, generating the rare events that set new body plans and generate major adaptive radiations. Eldredge and Gould (1972) and Gould (2002) championed the idea that internal processes such as genetic and developmental constraints, coupled with the complexity of the adaptive landscape, resulted in a highly historically contingent evolutionary process. On Gould’s account, most of the history of life had to do not with a relatively close tracking of a changing environment but with the halting evolutionary exploration a deeply fissured niche space, mostly by rapid bursts of evolution as a fissure was crossed, followed by long periods of stasis.. (shrink)

Transmissible cancers are elusive and understudied parasitic life forms caused by malignant clonal cells (nine lineages are known so far). They emerge by completing sequential steps that include breaking cell cooperation, evade anti‐cancer defences and shedding cells to infect new hosts. Transmissible cancers impair host fitness, and their importance as selective force is likely largely underestimated. It is, therefore, crucial to determine how common they might be in the wild. Here, we draw a parallel between the steps required for a (...) transmissible cancer to emerge and the steps required for an intelligent civilisation to emerge in the Milky Way using a modified Drake equation. Using numerical analyses, we estimate the potential number of extant marine and bivalve species in which transmissible cancers might exist. Our results suggest that transmissible cancers are more common than expected, and that new lineages can be found by screening a large number of species. (shrink)

Introduction A Brief Conceptual Framework for Biology PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING NATURE 1. The Antecedents of Scientific Thought Animism, Totemism, and Shamanism The Paleolithic View Mesopotamia Egypt 2. Aristotle and the Greek View of Nature The Science of Animal Biology The Parts of Animals The Classification of Animals The Aristotelian System Basic Questions 3. Those Rational Greeks? Theophrastus and the Science of Botany The Roman Pliny Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine Erasistratus Galen of Pergamum The Greek Miracle 4. The Judeo-Christian Worldview (...) The Bishop of Hippo Scholastic Thought Islamic Science Books on Beasts Antecedents of a Revolution 5. The Revival of Science Andreas Vesalius and the Study of Structure William Harvey and the Study of Function Sir Francis Bacon’s Great Instauration Induction, Hypothesis, Deduction The Very Small--Animalcules Robert Hooke and the Discovery of Cells 6. Figur’d Stones and Plastick Virtue Marine Life on Mountain Tops? Figured Stones of Unknown Creatures Baron Cuvier Quarries of the Paris Basin Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism William Smith and the Geological Column Understanding Nature in 1850 PART TWO: THE GROWTH OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 7. The Paradigm of Evolution First Questions The Paradigm of Natural Theology First Answers 8. Testing Darwins Hypotheses Have Life Forms Changed over Time? Do Species Evolve into Different Species over Time? Has There Been Time Enough for Evolution? Is Natural Selection the Mechanism of Change? The Genetic Basis of Natural Selection Accounting for the Diversity of Life 9. In the Light of Evolution Comparative Anatomy Embryonic Development Classification Microstructure Molecular Processes 10. Life over Time The Origin of Life The Rise of Multicelled Organisms What Is a Phylum? Burgess Shale Metazoans Early Evolution of the Vertebrates The Age of Dinosaurs Birds, Mammals, and Flowering Plants The Rancho La Brea Tar Pits Human Evolution The Role of Extinction in Evolution PART THREE: CLASSICAL GENETICS 11. Pangenesis What Is the Question? Hippocrates and Aristotle The Darwinian Answer Assembling the Data Formulating the Hypothesis by Induction Galton’s Rabbits 12. The Cell Theory The Discovery of Cells: Robert Hooke Schwann and Cells in Animals Gametes as Cells Omnis cellula e cellula? The Technology of Cell Research 13. The Hypothesis of Chromosomal Continuity The Ephemeral Nucleus Schneider, Flemming, and Cell Division The Chromosomes and inheritance Gamete Formation Fertilization 14. Mendel and the Birth of Genetics Model for Monohybrid Crosses Model for Dihybrid Crosses Mendel’s Laws Initial Opposition to Mendelism 15. Genetics + Cytology: 1900-1910 Sutton’s Model The Cytological Basis of Mendel’s Laws Boveri and Abnormal Chromosome Sets Variations in Mendelian Ratios The Discovery of Sex Chromosomes 16. The Genetics of the Fruit Fly Morgan’s First Hypothesis Morgan’s Second Hypothesis The Fly Room Linkage and Crossing-Over The Cytological Proof of Crossing-Over Mapping the Chromosomes The Final Proof The Determinants of Sex The Conceptual Foundations of Classical Genetics 17. The Structure and Function of Genes One Gene, One Enzyme The Substance of Inheritance The Watson-Crick Model of DNA Genes and the Synthesis of Proteins The Genetic Code PART FOUR: THE ENIGMA OF DEVELOPMENT 18. First Principles The Peripatetic Stagirite The Death and Rebirth of Scientific Thought Harvey and Malpighi A Two-Millennial Summing Up Preformation versus Epigenesis 19. The Century of Discovery Von Baer’s Discovery of the Mammalian Ovum Darwin’s Contribution to Embryology Haeckel and Recapitulation 20. Descriptive Embryology Germ Layers The External Development of the Amphibian Embryo The Internal Development of the Amphibian Embryo 21. The Dawn of Analytical Embryology His, Roux, and Mosaic Development Driesch and Regulative Development Novelty in Development Cell Lineage Nucleus or Cytoplasm? Fin de Siècle 22. Interactions during Development Amphibian Organizers Secondary Organizers The Reacting Tissue The Chemical Nature of the Organizer Putting It All Together Conclusion Further Reading References Illustration Credits Index. (shrink)

The permutation of basic atoms—nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and phosphorus―into the biomolecules DNA and RNA, subsequently evolved in cells and brains, defining the origin of life and intelligence, remains unexplained. Equally the origin of the genetic information and the intertwined nature of ‘hardware’ and ‘software’ involved in the evolution of bio-molecules and the cells are shrouded in mystery. This treatise aims at exploring individual and swarm behaviour patterns which potentially hint at as yet unknown biological principles. It reviews theories of (...) evolution with perspectives from the earth sciences, commencing with the earliest observed records of life. This is followed by reviews and discussion of the building blocks of life, marine and terrestrial communities, the arthropods, birds and finally humans. It is suggested that, further to the mutation/natural selection processes established by Darwin and Wallace, an understanding of the evolution of intelligence remains little understood. A directionality of evolutionary trajectories is evident, not least the purposeful thinking process of humans as well as animals. It is not clear how directional intelligence, manifested for example by the collective intelligence of arthropod colonies, has evolved from mutation/natural selection processes. Potential clues for the understanding of life and evolution are provided by Aristotle’s dictum of “the whole being greater than the sum of the parts”, Niels Bohr’s principle of quantum complementarity and George Ellis’ theory of top-down causality. Inherent in the question of the origin of life is an anthropocentric bias, related to the self-referential Anthropic Principle and theological paradigms of man’s supposed dominion over all other species. The Anthropic Principle, however, should be capable of being circumvented using the scientific falsification method, assuming universal verified constants of physics. The phenomenon of the human mastery of fire and the splitting of the atom, leading to the seventh major mass extinction of species, remains incomprehensible. (shrink)

In The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply-held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a material, not divine, origin of species, he showed that new species are achieved by "natural selection." The Origin communicates the enthusiasm of original thinking in an open, descriptive style, and Darwin's emphasis on the value of diversity speaks more strongly now than ever. As well as a stimulating introduction and detailed notes, this edition offers a (...) register of the many writers referred to by Darwin in the text. (shrink)

For principled and substantially philosophical reasons, based largely on his reform of natural history by inverting the Paleyan notion of overarching and purposeful beneficence in the construction of organisms, Darwin built his theory of selection at the single causal level of individual bodies engaged in unconscious struggle for their own reproductive success. But the central logic of the theory allows selection to work effectively on entities at several levels of a genealogical hierarchy, provided that they embody a set (...) of requisite features for defining evolutionary individuality. Genes, cell lineages, demes, species, and clades-as well as Darwin’s favoured organisms-embody these requisite features in enough cases to form important levels of selection in the history of life. R. A. Fisher explicitly recognized the unassailable logic of species selection, but denied that thsi real process could be important in evolution because, compared with the production of new organisms within a species, the origin of new species is so rare, and the number of species within most clades so low. I review this and other classical arguments against higher-level selection, and conclude that they are invalid in practice for interdemic selection, and false in principle for species selection. Punctuated equilibrium defines the individuality of species and refutes Fisher’s classical argument based on cycle time. In the second part of the paper, I argue that we have failed to appreciate the range and power of selection at levels above and below the organismic because we falsely extrapolate the defining properties of organisms to these other levels, and then regard the other levels as impotent because their effective individuals differ so much from organisms. We would better appreciate the power and generality of hierarchical models of selection if we grasped two key principles: first, that levels can interact in all modes, and not only in the negative style that, for heuristic and operational reasons, has received almost exclusive attention in the existing literature; and second, that each hierarchical level differs from all others in substantial and interesting ways, both in the style and frequency of patterns in change and causal modes. (shrink)

Natural selection [Darwin 1859] is perhaps the most important component of evolutionary theory, since it is the only known process that can bring about the adaptation of living organisms to their environments [Gould 2002]. And yet, its study is conceptually and methodologically complex, and much attention needs to be paid to a variety of phenomena that can limit the efficacy of selection [Antonovics 1976; Pigliucci and Kaplan 2000]. In this essay, I will use examples of recent work carried (...) out in my laboratory to illustrate basic research on natural selection as conducted using a variety of approaches, including field work, laboratory experiments, and molecular genetics. I also discuss the application of this array of tools to questions pertinent to conservation biology, and in particular to the all-important problem of what makes invasive species so good at creating the sort of problems they are infamous for [Lee 2002]. (shrink)

Marine scientists have reported drastic environmental changes in marine and polar regions as a result of climate change. The changes range from species compositions in coastal regions and the deep-sea floor, the degradation of water and ice quality to the ever-growing plastic pollution affecting marine habitats. Marine scientists study these changes in their fieldwork, and communicate their findings in scientific publications. Some also rally in protests for the necessity of political programs to tackle changes. Based (...) on ethnographic visits and interviews with marine scientists, this study examines how marine scientists experience and act on environmental changes as individuals and as collectives. In order to analyze their experiences and actions, I use the notion of care and portray care in different times and spaces, from work to protest. I demonstrate how care needs to be situated in different times and spaces, how care is embedded in a complex relationship of institutional requirements and structural demands that researchers experience, but also how care receives institutionalization and has an impact on research interests and agendas. In doing so, I show the social and epistemic consequences of care, opening up a view of individual and collective care in the marine sciences. (shrink)

Species are thought by many to be important units of evolution. In this paper, I argue against that view. My argument is based on an examination of the role of species in the synthetic theory of evolution. I argue that if one adopts a gradualist view of evolution, one cannot make sense of the claim that species are units in the minimal sense needed to claim that they are units of evolution, namely, that they exist as discrete (...) entities over time. My second argument is directed against an appeal to Eldredge and Gould's theory of punctuated equilibria to support the claim that species are units of evolution. If one adopts their view, it may be possible to identify discrete temporal entities that can plausibly be termed species, but there is no reason to claim that those entities are units of evolution. Thus, on two plausible interpretations of the role of natural selection in the process of evolution, species are of no special importance. I then consider some of the reasons why species have been thought to be important evolutionary units by many contemporary evolutionary biologists. Finally, I discuss briefly the implications of this conclusion for evolutionary biology. (shrink)

This book puts multilevel selection theory into a much needed historical perspective. This is achieved by discussing multilevel selection in the first half of the twentieth century, the reasons for the energetic rejection of Wynne-Edwards’ group selectionist stance in the 1960s, Elisabeth Lloyd’s contribution to the units of selection debate, Price’s hierarchical equation and its possible interpretations and, finally, species selection in macroevolutionary contexts. Another idea also seems to emerge from these studies; namely, that perhaps (...) a more sure-footed position for multilevel selection theory would be acquired if we were to show a renewed interest in 'old group selection', i.e. in scenarios in which the differential reproduction of the groups themselves affects the frequencies of either individual-level or group-level traits. This book will be of interest to philosophers and historians of biology, as well as to theoretically inclined biologists who have an interest in multilevel selection theory. (shrink)

The influence of sediment oxygen heterogeneity, due to bioturbation, on diffusive oxygen flux was investigated. Laboratory experiments were carried out with 3 macrobenthic species presenting different bioturbation behaviour patterns: the polychaetes Nereis diversicolor and Nereis virens, both constructing ventilated galleries in the sediment column, and the gastropod Cyclope neritea, a burrowing species which does not build any structure. Oxygen two-dimensional distribution in sediments was quantified by means of the optical planar optode technique. Diffusive oxygen fluxes and a variability (...) index were calculated on the captured oxygen images. All species increased sediment oxygen heterogeneity compared to the controls without animals. This was particularly noticeable with the polychaetes because of the construction of more or less complex burrows. Integrated diffusive oxygen flux increased with oxygen heterogeneity due to the production of interface available for solute exchanges between overlying water and sediments. This work shows that sediment heterogeneity is an important feature of the control of oxygen exchanges at the sediment–water interface. (shrink)

h e Darwinian hypothesis has the merit of being eminently simple and comprehensible in principle, and its essential positions may be stated in a very few words: all species have been produced by the development of varieties from common stocks; by the conversion of these, first into permanent races and then into new species, by the process of natural selection , which process is essentially identical with that artificial selection by which man has originated the races (...) of domestic animals—the struggle for existence taking the place of man, and exerting, in the case of natural selection, that selective action which he performs in artificial selection. (shrink)

Following a controversy over the construction of a waste incinerator in the Fos-sur-Mer industrial area, residents pointed to the lack of knowledge of the industry’s cumulative impact on their health and environment. Under pressure, some of their elected representatives supported the creation of an independent scientific organization, the Ecocitizen Institute for Pollution Awareness. Its objective was to conduct localized scientific research on the effects of pollution and to lobby the administration to change its regulatory practices. This paper examines the efforts (...) made to ensure that the “undone science” gets done, by focusing on the specificities of this industrialized site. We look at a participatory biomonitoring experiment that aimed to document pollution in the Gulf of Fos where scientists working for the IECP accepted anglers’ requests and switched from an acknowledged sentinel species to another species. We tell the many stories that were shared with us about how conger qualified as a more suitable “cosmopolitical fish” in the study of pollution. Elaborating on actor–network theory and multispecies ethnographies, we discuss the appropriateness of congers as the newly appointed sentinel species. We argue that this demonstrates the importance of the “ecology of relations” in maintaining the livability of the area. (shrink)

Many people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the by-product of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of as-yet unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with every tenet of Darwinian theory – that it shows no genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate (...) forms, confers no selective advantage, and would require more evolutionary time and genomic space than is available. We examine these arguments and show that they depend on inaccurate assumptions about biology or language or both. Evolutionary theory offers clear criteria for when a trait should be attributed to natural selection: complex design for some function, and the absence of alternative processes capable of explaining such complexity. Human language meets these criteria: Grammar is a complex mechanism tailored to the transmission of propositional structures through a serial interface. Autonomous and arbitrary grammatical phenomena have been offered as counterexamples to the position that language is an adaptation, but this reasoning is unsound: Communication protocols depend on arbitrary conventions that are adaptive as long as they are shared. Consequently, language acquisition in the child should systematically differ from language evolution in the species, and attempts to analogize them are misleading. Reviewing other arguments and data, we conclude that there is every reason to believe that a specialization for grammar evolved by a conventional neo-Darwinian process. (shrink)

Posidonia oceanicais an endemic seagrass from the mediterranean that provides key ecosystem services. A protected species, its presence is regressing due to anthropogenic pressures, some associated to the tourism economy that much of the Mediterranean coast depends on. In 1992, the European Union declared it a priority habitat, and since the early 2000s, it has occupied a central space in marine conservation debates in the Balearic Islands. Popularly known as Posidonia, this seagrass went from being considereddirtthat ruinedvirginBalearic beaches (...) to become an emblematic species. This article takes this U-turn in policy and public perception as a study case to think of knowledge-making practices and restoration initiatives as a form of environmental care. The relational, situated and affective character of care ethics helps to understand the human and ecological labour embedded in knowledge-making and restoration practices and its inevitable engagement with the Balearic tourism industry. Drawing on those engagements, I reflect on environmental care practices of knowledge-making and restoration, arguing that they emerge ambivalently: they challenge management logics based on economic rationales while forced to develop and coexist inside those same rationales. I conclude by arguing that developing care-centric narratives for environmental conservation and restoration is essential to continue promoting more-than-human aquatic relations in which the needs of others are the ethical basis for action. (shrink)

In fisheries biology of the late 19th century, the challenges posed to taxonomy by Darwinian theory intersected with attempts to increase the productivity of marine populations. Addressing both discourses, the influential German zoologist Friedrich Heincke developed a set of methods to determine exactly the differences between varieties or races of herring. In taxonomy, his methods contributed to the development of a biological species concept; in fisheries biology, they allowed tracing the herrings' migrations, which ultimately aided in divising (...) schemes for sustainable fisheries. Heincke's use of mathematical statistics, some of them borrowed from anthropometry, served to distinguish his ‚exact’ approach from that of typological taxonomists. Beyond its use as a rhetorical ploy, exactness gained meaning in the epistemic regime of exact reproduction of measurements, which entailed the replication of measurement techniques for the purpose of comparison e.g. of herrings caught at different locations. This exactness was enabled by the formalisation of the process of taxonomic identification. (shrink)