The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

The extended evolutionary synthesis: its structure, assumptions and predictions.

På svenska

Author

  • Kevin N Laland
  • Tobias Uller
  • Marcus W Feldman
  • Kim Sterelny
  • Gerd B Müller
  • Armin Moczek
  • Eva Jablonka
  • John Odling-Smee

Summary, in English

Scientific activities take place within the structured sets of ideas and assumptions that define a field and its practices. The conceptual framework of evolutionary biology emerged with the Modern Synthesis in the early twentieth century and has since expanded into a highly successful research program to explore the processes of diversification and adaptation. Nonetheless, the ability of that framework satisfactorily to accommodate the rapid advances in developmental biology, genomics and ecology has been questioned. We review some of these arguments, focusing on literatures (evo-devo, developmental plasticity, inclusive inheritance and niche construction) whose implications for evolution can be interpreted in two ways-one that preserves the internal structure of contemporary evolutionary theory and one that points towards an alternative conceptual framework. The latter, which we label the 'extended evolutionary synthesis' (EES), retains the fundaments of evolutionary theory, but differs in its emphasis on the role of constructive processes in development and evolution, and reciprocal portrayals of causation. In the EES, developmental processes, operating through developmental bias, inclusive inheritance and niche construction, share responsibility for the direction and rate of evolution, the origin of character variation and organism-environment complementarity. We spell out the structure, core assumptions and novel predictions of the EES, and show how it can be deployed to stimulate and advance research in those fields that study or use evolutionary biology.

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Publication/Series

Royal Society of London. Proceedings B. Biological Sciences

Volume

282

Issue

1813

Document type

Journal article review

Publisher

Royal Society Publishing

Topic

  • Evolutionary Biology

Status

Published

Research group

  • Evolutionary Biology

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1471-2954