Modular Evolution: How Natural Selection Produces Biological Complexity
by Lucio ViniciusFormat: Paperback
Pub. Date: 2010-08-23
Publisher(s): Cambridge University Press
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Summary
Natural selection is more than the survival of the fittest: it is a force engendering higher biological complexity. Presenting a new explanation for the tendency of life to become more complex through evolution, this book offers an introduction to the key debates in evolutionary theory, including the role of genes and sex in evolution, the adaptive reasons for senescence and death and the origin of neural information. The author argues that biological complexity increased through the process of 'modularity transfer': modular phenotypes (proteins, somatic cells, learned behaviours) evolved into new modular information carriers (regulatory proteins, neural cells, words), giving rise to new information systems and higher levels of biological organisation. Modular Evolution makes sense of the unique place of humans in evolution, both as the pinnacle of biological complexity and inventors of non-biological evolution.
Author Biography
Lucio Vinicius is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies in Cambridge, UK. He has published articles in various fields including life history evolution, Drosophila genetics, brain evolution and human growth.
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. xi |
| From natural selection to the history of nature | p. 1 |
| Nature after natural law | p. 2 |
| Reductionism and emergence | p. 4 |
| History and inheritance | p. 7 |
| Darwinian progress: order at the macroevolutionary scale | p. 10 |
| Macroevolution as history | p. 12 |
| Contingency as the startling consensus | p. 15 |
| Convergence | p. 18 |
| The denial of 'progress': Darwinism's prejudice against Darwin | p. 20 |
| Biological complexity and information | p. 22 |
| Organisms as DNA programs | p. 25 |
| Major transitions: the aggregational mode of evolution | p. 27 |
| Convergent aggregation, levels of selection and levels of organisation | p. 30 |
| The evolution of biological order | p. 32 |
| The evolution of order: macroevolutionary consequences | p. 35 |
| From the units of inheritance to the origin of species | p. 38 |
| The gene as the module of inheritance | p. 40 |
| The fundamental principle of natural selection | p. 43 |
| Gradualism: the cost of biological complexity | p. 46 |
| The adaptive walk in the real world | p. 51 |
| Epistasis as a main legacy of particulate inheritance | p. 55 |
| The shifting balance and the structure of real populations | p. 58 |
| Sex and the origins of species | p. 60 |
| Speciation as adaptation: the evolution of xenophobia | p. 62 |
| Speciation as an accident | p. 65 |
| Speciation and particulate inheritance | p. 67 |
| Levels of selection | p. 69 |
| Multicellularity and the developmental code | p. 72 |
| Replication and reproduction | p. 75 |
| Gene expression | p. 77 |
| Multicellularity and the developmental code | p. 79 |
| From gene expression to morphological pattern | p. 82 |
| Regulatory regions and gene bureaucracy | p. 84 |
| Is evolution mostly the evolution of regulatory regions? | p. 86 |
| Modularity and microevolution | p. 90 |
| The gradual evolution of homeotic mutations | p. 93 |
| The origin of animal phyla | p. 97 |
| The challenge of multicellularity | p. 99 |
| Life cycle evolution: life and death of the soma | p. 102 |
| Weismann's two insights | p. 104 |
| Fisher's second fundamental principle | p. 106 |
| Medawar and accidental death | p. 109 |
| Williams and the logic of trade-offs | p. 111 |
| Hamiltion: senescence beyond mortality and the return of the killer genes | p. 114 |
| Growth and fitness | p. 117 |
| The reproduction of soma: energy, time and trade-offs | p. 119 |
| The end of reproduction: menopause and senescence | p. 122 |
| Free radicals and molecular signalling | p. 124 |
| Conclusion: multicellularity and the life cycle | p. 126 |
| Sex and its consequences: the transition that never happened | p. 128 |
| The misleading cost of sex | p. 132 |
| Advantage of genetic exchange | p. 134 |
| The origin of separate sexes | p. 137 |
| Too many males | p. 140 |
| Sexual selection | p. 143 |
| Why sexual dimorphism? | p. 144 |
| Male ornaments as accidents | p. 147 |
| Ornaments: animal signals of fitness | p. 149 |
| The phylogeny of sex and asex | p. 150 |
| Sex and biological complexity | p. 152 |
| Animal societies: the case of incomplete evolutionary transitions | p. 154 |
| The problem of co-operation | p. 158 |
| Relatedness as the origin of true altruism | p. 160 |
| Limitations of kin selection theory | p. 165 |
| Selfish co-operation: an eye for an eye, a helping hand for a helping hand | p. 168 |
| The conditions for selfish co-operation | p. 171 |
| The birth of the selfless ape | p. 173 |
| Scratching the strong reciprocator | p. 179 |
| Conclusion: animal societies and biological complexity | p. 183 |
| The new 'Chain of Being': hierarchical evolution and biological complexity | p. 186 |
| Thermodynamics versus biological information | p. 187 |
| Schrödinger's Principle and the evolution of order | p. 188 |
| The historical transformation of selection | p. 197 |
| The hierarchical nature of macroevolution | p. 201 |
| Historical humans: the technological code and the end of evolution | p. 203 |
| Hierarchical evolution and the roots of Darwinism | p. 205 |
| References | p. 208 |
| Index | p. 233 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
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