Laurel Fogarty, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany
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‘The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: Philosophical and Historical Dimensions’ Workshop Report
A group of biologists, philosophers and historians of science recently gathered at Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) for the 7th Workshop on History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences organized by Jan Baedke and Christina Brandt, entitled “The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: Philosophical and Historical Dimensions” (21-22 March, 2019). This multidisciplinary community of scholars was brought together to reflect on past and present conceptual, explanatory, methodological, and sociological challenges that developmentally-oriented views in evolutionary biology face. The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) was used as a stepping stone for many of these discussions; however, also other important philosophical and historical topics were addressed that ‘extend’ beyond this conceptual framework.
Niche construction, feedback cascades, and how food is produced in Polynesia
Few cultural practices are more fundamentally tied to the environment than agriculture. Because of this, archaeological explanations for the development of food production systems throughout the world have privileged the concept of adaptation. Adaptation in this context has referred to the functional role played by agricultural techniques in an environmental context, for instance the development of drainage ditching in marshlands, though the definition of adaptation is rarely made explicit. Given this particular usage of the term adaptation, the archaeological investigation of “adaptation” has largely centred around the role of the external environment, both physically and culturally defined. Frequently, explanatory narratives evoke a variety of catalysts that range from climate change to socio-political demands within particular environmental settings. While these factors have no doubt affected the evolutionary rate and trajectory of food production throughout the world, understanding the actual manifestation of agricultural systems at any given time requires evaluating the evolution of selective pressures resulting from feedback loops linking human cultural practice and ecological change.
From plasticity to diversity: accommodation of ancestral plasticity results in divergent developmental rates in spadefoot toads
"A plausible argument could be made that evolution is the control of development by ecology" Van Valen, 1973
IWEE Leeds 19
7-8 March 2019
The evolution of anti-teaching
In 1921 a British tit was observed opening a milk-bottle to eat the cream inside, and over the next 26 years this unique innovation spread to over 30 different sites. As just one example out of hundreds, this shows how animal populations contain a mixture of innovation and learning, with novel behaviors discovered, developed and spread through social learning. The question is, if these behaviors are advantageous to learn, are they ever adaptive enough for a demonstrator to teach?
Maternally transmitted dung beetle microbiota are species-specific, and impact host development across generations
Much of evolutionary biology is motivated by one basic question: what determines biological diversity? Traditional explanations emphasize the role of natural selection acting on variation among the individuals that make up a population, sorting them into fit and less fit versions, thereby creating adaptation and diversification across generations. However, recent advances in the study of host-associated microbes has complicated this understanding. The microbial symbionts now known to reside in and on virtually all eukaryotic organisms exert a vast array of influences on their hosts. Processes as diverse as early embryonic development, gut formation, digestion, and the regulation of some behaviors have now been shown to be influenced by the microbiota (see a previous blog post). Though this line of evidence is exciting, the degree to which microbes and hosts may influence each other’s evolution remains largely unexplored.
Workshop report: Developmental Biases in Evolution
"Developmental bias is a manifestation of a much more fundamental principle, and is the norm rather than the exception", according to one scientist. "Developmental bias is a misleading term and we should get rid of it", according to another. Both were in the same room, at the same time. So what is developmental bias, what role does it play in evolution, and why do we even care? These questions were the focus of an interesting and spirited workshop, the third in a series of EES project meetings, held recently at the Santa Fe Institute. As with the first meeting, I was able to sit in on this workshop, like a fly on the wall, and listen to the presentations, arguments, and debates. Here's what I learned...
Darwin 1.0: Is the EES playing catch-up?
A consequence of the gene-centric view of evolution we call the Modern Synthesis (MS) is to foster a severe constriction in scientists’ understandings of Darwin. Despite Darwin’s original treatment of evolution being enormously rich, he becomes the purveyor of just one dangerous idea: evolution by natural selection – the idea which, when modified by the post-Darwinian discoveries of Mendelian and population genetics, underpins the MS. Hence we find Richard Dawkins catching the gist of a hundred biology textbooks by claiming both that ‘the selfish gene theory is Darwin’s theory expressed in a way that Darwin did not choose’ [1], and, that while Darwin believed in the ‘Lamarckian’ principle that acquired characters were heritable, this belief ‘was not a part of his theory of evolution’ [2]. Only in such an intellectual world, a world still sustained by MS assumptions, could the MS be said to capture the ‘central tenets’ of Darwin’s work [3].
