Phylogenies and the New Evolutionary Synthesis

2003 ◽  
pp. 283-292
Author(s):  
Francesco Santini
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Synthesis

Revising Plants, man and life: Edgar Anderson reshapes a classic book

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Kleinman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Ernst Mayr ◽  
Active Participant ◽  
Evolutionary Mechanism ◽  
Popular Work ◽  
Scientific Attention ◽  
Key Events ◽  
Jesup Lectures

On at least four occasions, Edgar Anderson (1897–1969) began revising his book Plants, man and life (1952). Given both its place in Anderson's career and his place in the development of evolutionary theory in the mid-twentieth century, the emendations are noteworthy. Though a popular work, Plants, man and life served as the distillation of Anderson's ideas on hybridization as an evolutionary mechanism, the need for more scientific attention on domesticated and semi-domesticated plants, and the opportunities such plants provided for the study of evolution. Anderson was an active participant in several key events in what historians have come to call the Evolutionary Synthesis. For example, he and Ernst Mayr shared the 1941 Jesup Lectures on “Systematics and the origin of species”. Anderson's proposed revisions to his book reflect both an attempt to soften certain acerbic comments as well as an attempt to recast the book as a whole.

Introduction: Challenging the Modern Synthesis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis M. Walsh ◽  
Philippe Huneman
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Cell Biology ◽  
Population Change ◽  
Modern Synthesis ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Comparative Biology ◽  
Darwinian Theory ◽  
Modern Evolutionary Synthesis

The modern evolutionary synthesis arose out of the conjunction of the Mendelian theory of inheritance and the neo-Darwinian theory of population change early in the 20th century.1 In the nearly 100 years since its inception, the modern evolutionary synthesis has grown to encompass practically all fields of comparative biology—ecology, ethology, paleontology, systematics, cell biology, physiology, genetics, development. Theodosius Dobzhansky’s dictum—“nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” (...

Toward a Nonidealist Evolutionary Synthesis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart A. Newman
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Living Systems ◽  
Evolution Of Development ◽  
Search Process ◽  
Physical Processes ◽  
Explanatory Framework ◽  
Material Systems ◽  
Modern Physics

The received model of evolution sees all inherited features resulting from deterministic networks of interacting genes, implying that living systems are reducible to information in genetic programs. The model requires these programs and their associated phenotypes to have evolved by an isotropic search process occurring in gradual steps with no preferred morphological outcomes. The alternative is to recognize that clusters and aggregates of cells, the raw material of evolution, constitute middle-scale material systems. This implies the necessity of bringing the modern physics of mesoscale matter into the explanatory framework for the evolution of development. The relevant, often nonlinear, physical processes were mobilized at the inception of the phyla when their signature morphological outcomes first appeared and remain as efficient causes, albeit transformed, in present-day embryos. This physicogenetic perspective reengages with concepts of saltation, orthogenesis, and environment-induced plasticity long excluded from evolutionary theory.

Why Would We Call for a New Evolutionary Synthesis?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Huneman
Keyword(s):  
Genotypic Variation ◽  
Modern Synthesis ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Alternative Scheme ◽  
Random Nature

Considering challenges to the modern synthesis (MS), this chapter reconstructs an explanatory scheme proper to the MS. It contrasts it with the explanatory scheme proper to some alternatives to the MS. It considers which empirical facts should compel us to adopt the alternative scheme, or stand with the MS, or consider a weakly attenuated form of its explanatory scheme. Hence the last section focuses on the form of variation: Given that many findings are accumulating concerning the not purely random nature of variation, it asks which specific patterns of variation would be likely to support an alternative explanatory scheme. It argues that neither biased variation nor random genotypic variation is likely to vindicate a specific explanatory scheme.

Evolutionary synthesis

1994 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
V.A. Kramilov
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Synthesis

scholarly journals Between Teleophilia and Teleophobia

Biosemiotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schaetzle ◽  
Yogi Hendlin
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Biology ◽  
Modern Synthesis ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Evolutionary Processes ◽  
Extended Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
New Findings ◽  
Multi Level

AbstractDenis Noble convincingly describes the artifacts of theory building in the Modern Synthesis as having been surpassed by the available evidence, indicating more active and less gene-centric evolutionary processes than previously thought. We diagnosis the failure of theory holders to dutifully update their beliefs according to new findings as a microcosm of the prevailing larger social inability to deal with competing paradigms. For understanding life, Noble suggests that there is no privileged level of semiotic interpretation. Understanding multi-level semiosis along with organism and environment contrapunctally, according to Jakob von Uexküll’s theoretical biology, can contribute to the emerging extended evolutionary synthesis.

scholarly journals Massive close binaries and evolutionary synthesis of young starbursts

1999 ◽  
Vol 193 ◽  
pp. 596-597
Author(s):  
Dany Dionne
Keyword(s):  
Magellanic Clouds ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Close Binaries

With an evolutionary synthesis code, I follow the evolution of a starburst composed of massive close binaries (MCBs) and of single stars at various metallicities. Evolutionary tracks for MCBs have been developed in collaboration with D. Vanbeveren and C. de Loore. The models reproduce the observed WR/O ratio in the Magellanic Clouds.

scholarly journals Evolutionary biology today and the call for an extended synthesis

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 20160145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas J. Futuyma
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Epigenetic Inheritance ◽  
Reaction Norm ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Extended Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Extended Synthesis ◽  
Proximate Causation

Evolutionary theory has been extended almost continually since the evolutionary synthesis (ES), but except for the much greater importance afforded genetic drift, the principal tenets of the ES have been strongly supported. Adaptations are attributable to the sorting of genetic variation by natural selection, which remains the only known cause of increase in fitness. Mutations are not adaptively directed, but as principal authors of the ES recognized, the material (structural) bases of biochemistry and development affect the variety of phenotypic variations that arise by mutation and recombination. Against this historical background, I analyse major propositions in the movement for an ‘extended evolutionary synthesis’. ‘Niche construction' is a new label for a wide variety of well-known phenomena, many of which have been extensively studied, but (as with every topic in evolutionary biology) some aspects may have been understudied. There is no reason to consider it a neglected ‘process’ of evolution. The proposition that phenotypic plasticity may engender new adaptive phenotypes that are later genetically assimilated or accommodated is theoretically plausible; it may be most likely when the new phenotype is not truly novel, but is instead a slight extension of a reaction norm already shaped by natural selection in similar environments. However, evolution in new environments often compensates for maladaptive plastic phenotypic responses. The union of population genetic theory with mechanistic understanding of developmental processes enables more complete understanding by joining ultimate and proximate causation; but the latter does not replace or invalidate the former. Newly discovered molecular phenomena have been easily accommodated in the past by elaborating orthodox evolutionary theory, and it appears that the same holds today for phenomena such as epigenetic inheritance. In several of these areas, empirical evidence is needed to evaluate enthusiastic speculation. Evolutionary theory will continue to be extended, but there is no sign that it requires emendation.

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