Non-genetic inheritance: Evolution above the organismal level

Situating physiology within evolutionary theory

Traditionally defined as the science of the living, or as the field that beyond anatomical structure and bodily form studies functional organization and behaviour, physiology has long been excluded from evolutionary research. The main reason for this exclusion is that physiology has a presential and futuristic outlook on life, while evolutionary theory is traditionally defined as the study of natural history. In this paper, I re-evaluate these classic science divisions and situate physiology within the history of the evolutionary sciences, as well as within debates on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and the need for a Third Way of Evolution. I then briefly point out how evolutionary physiology in particular contributes to research on function, causation, teleonomy, agency and cognition.

Evolution of the Okvik/Old Bering Sea culture of the Bering Strait as a major transition

Great transitions are thought to embody major shifts in locus of selection, labour diversification and communication systems. Such expectations are relevant for biological and cultural systems as decades of research has demonstrated similar dynamics within the evolution of culture. The evolution of the Neo-Inuit cultural tradition in the Bering Strait provides an ideal context for examination of cultural transitions. The Okvik/Old Bering Sea (Okvik/OBS) culture of Bering Strait is the first representative of the Neo-Inuit tradition. Archaeological evidence drawn for settlement and subsistence data, technological traditions and mortuary contexts suggests that Okvik/OBS fits the definition of a major transition given change in the nature of group membership (from families to political groups with social ranking), task organization (emergent labour specialization) and communication (advent of complex art forms conveying social and ideological information). This permits us to develop a number of implications about the evolutionary process recognizing that transitions may occur on three scales: (1) ephemeral variants, as for example, simple technological entities; (2) integrated systems, spanning modular technology to socio-economic strategies; and (3) simultaneous change across all scales with emergent properties. This article is part of the theme issue 'Human socio-cultural evolution in light of evolutionary transitions'.

Reticulate evolution underlies synergistic trait formation in human communities

This paper investigates how reticulate evolution contributes to a better understanding of human sociocultural evolution in general, and community formation in particular. Reticulate evolution is evolution as it occurs by means of symbiosis, symbiogenesis, lateral gene transfer, infective heredity, and hybridization. From these mechanisms and processes, we mainly zoom in on symbiosis and we investigate how it underlies the rise of (1) human, plant, animal, and machine interactions typical of agriculture, animal husbandry, farming, and industrialization; (2) diet-microbiome relationships; and (3) host-virome and other pathogen interactions that underlie human health and disease. We demonstrate that reticulate evolution necessitates an understanding of behavioral and cultural evolution at a community level, where reticulate causal processes underlie the rise of synergistic organizational traits.

Overcoming the limits of natural computation in biological evolution toward the maximization of system efficiency

The goal-directedness of biological evolution is realized via the anticipatory achievement of the final state of the system that corresponds to the condition of its perfection in self-maintenance and in adaptability. In the course of individual development, a biological system maximizes its power via synergistic effects and becomes able to perform external work most efficiently. In this state, defined as stasis, robust self-maintaining configurations act as attractors resistant to external and internal perturbations. This corresponds to the local energy–time constraints that most efficiently fit the integral optimization of the whole system. In evolution, major evolutionary transitions that establish new states of stasis are achieved via codepoiesis, a process in which the undecided statements of existing coding systems form the basis for the evolutionary unfolding of the system by assigning new values to them. The genetic fixation of this macroevolutionary process leads to new programmes of individual development representing the process of natural computation. The phenomenon of complexification in evolution represents a metasystem transition that results in maximization of a system’s power and in the ability to increase external work performed by the system.

Autopoiesis, Thermodynamics, and the Natural Drift of Living Beings: Another Way to the New Evolutionary Synthesis

The New Evolutionary Synthesis (NES) groups a series of theories that, departing from the gene-centric approach of Modern Synthesis evolutionary theory (MS), place the organism as the central agent of evolution. Two versions of NES, each one with advantages and disadvantages, can be distinguished in this regard; the restrictive NES and the comprehensive NES. Comparatively, the comprehensive NES is a more robust theoretical construction than the restrictive one because it comes grounded on a general, thermodynamically informed theory of living beings (something that the restrictive NES lacks). However, due to its strong teleological commitments, the comprehensive NES has serious problems fitting with modern science’s methodological framework; a problem that the restrictive version, with no explicit commitment to teleology, does not face. In this paper, we propose the autopoietic approach to evolution as a way of integrating these two versions of NES, combining the theoretical robustness of the comprehensive view with the methodological appropriateness of the restrictive one. The autopoietic approach, we show, offers a non-teleological, organism-centered theory of evolution, namely the natural drift theory (NDT), and a grounding on a thermodynamic theory of living beings, namely the embodied autopoietic theory (EAT). We conclude that, from the programmatic point of view, an autopoietic (NDT plus EAT) approach to evolution offers a promising way to develop the NES project.

Comparative embryo/larval sensitivity of Australian marine bivalves to ten metals: A disjunct between physiology and phylogeny

Metal contamination within the urbanized coastal zon is one threat linked to a decline in the abundance, distribution and/or species diversity of wild marine bivalve populations. This study determined the 48-h embryo/larval sensitivity (no-effect concentration (NEC) and median-effect concentration (EC50)) of ten marine bivalve species (nine endemic to Australia) to aluminium (Al), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), lead (Pb), manganese (Mn), nickel (Ni) and zinc (Zn), key metal contaminants impacting urbanized coastal zones in south-eastern Australia, in natural seawater (20-22 °C, 30‰ salinity, pH 7.8-7.9, 1.2 mg/L dissolved organic carbon). For all metals, except Fe, the order of sensitivity was oysters > mussels ≥ scallops ≥ cockles ≥ clams, where the economically-important oysters, Magallana gigas and Saccostrea glomerata, were 2.6 (Al) to 4.2 (Cd) times more sensitive than the least sensitive clam species. For all bivalve species, the order of metal sensitivity was Cu > Pb > Zn = Ni > Co > Cd > Al > Cr(VI) > Mn ≥ Fe(III), where Cu was eight times more toxic than Zn or Ni, 28 times more toxic than Cd, 220 times more toxic than Cr(VI) and 570 times more toxic than Fe(III). Iron, unlike the other nine soluble metals, occurred as particulate Fe(III) oxyhydroxide, where EC50 values decreased with increasing exposure time as the larval (D-veliger) stage. There was no significant (p > 0.05) effect of embryo/larval mass, or surface area/volume, on metal sensitivity. Further, there was no significant (p > 0.05) relationship between metal sensitivity and phylogeny (genetic distance). Divalent metal sensitivity was positively related (r2 = 0.87) to cell surface metal-binding affinity. The current Australian marine water quality guideline for Ni is not protective of the ten bivalve species (NECs were 2-6-fold below the guideline), while the guideline for Zn is not protective of oysters.

Biosociological ethodiversity in the social system

A comprehensive understanding of human sociality needs to embrace the coevolution of genes and culture. Recent advances in biological research about niche construction by organisms, and the development of the concepts of social niche and ethodiversity, can be integrated into a common approach to understand this coevolution, which implies the interaction between sociology and ecology in an integrative framework of knowledge. In this paper the authors propose such inclusive biosociological and heuristic framework to improve the understanding of the evolution of social niche construction. In addition, it allows a better understanding of the concept of sociotype in non-human organisms and explains some aspects of the social or presocial behavior through the concept of ethodiversity.

Code biology and the problem of emergence

It should now be recognized that codes are central to life and to understanding its more complex forms, including human culture. Recognizing the 'conventional' nature of codes provides solid grounds for rejecting efforts to reduce life to biochemistry and justifies according a place to semantics in life. The question I want to consider is whether this is enough. Focussing on Eigen's paradox of how a complex code could originate, I will argue that along with Barbieri's efforts to account for the origins of life based on the ribosome and then to account for the refined codes through a process of ambiguity reduction, something more is required. Barbieri has not provided an adequate account of emergence, or the basis for providing such an account. I will argue that Stanley Salthe has clarified to some extent the nature of emergence by conceptualizing it as the interpolation of new enabling constraints. Clearly, codes can be seen as enabling constraints. How this actually happens, though, is still not explained. Stuart Kauffman has grappled with this issue and shown that it radically challenges the assumptions of mainstream science going back to Newton. He has attempted to reintroduce real possibilities or potentialities into his ontology, and argued that radically new developments in nature are associated with realizing adjacent possibles. This is still not adequate. What is also involved, I will suggest, utilizing concepts developed by the French natural philosopher Gilbert Simondon, is 'transduction' as part of 'ontogenesis' of individuals in a process of 'individuation', that is, the emergence of 'individuals' from preindividual fields or milieux.