Canalization of Development and the Inheritance of Acquired Characters

Waddington, C. H.

doi:10.1038/150563a0

Cited by 2,787 publications

(2,050 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…More than half a century ago, developmental biologist Conrad Waddington described a process that he called genetic assimilation 15 . Here, new mutations can sometimes convert a plastic trait into one that develops even without the specific environmental condition that originally induced it.…”

Section: Page 164mentioning

confidence: 99%

Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?

Laland

Uller

Feldman

et al. 2014

Nature

840

609

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Section: Page 164mentioning

confidence: 99%

Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?

Laland

Uller

Feldman

et al. 2014

Nature

840

609

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…A related topic, but which we will not pursue here, is that of canalization in its specific sense of reduced variation found for a particular phenotype (Waddington, 1942;Rendel et al 1966), which has been subject to theoretical analysis in recent years by Wagner et al (1997), Gavrilets & Hastings (1994) and others. Here we concentrate on the more general nature of V E found over any range of genotypic or phenotypic mean.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic analysis of environmental variation

2010

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SummaryEnvironmental variation (V E ) in a quantitative trait -variation in phenotype that cannot be explained by genetic variation or identifiable genetic differences -can be regarded as being under some degree of genetic control. Such variation may be either between repeated expressions of the same trait within individuals (e.g. for bilateral traits), in the phenotype of different individuals, where variation within families may differ, or in both components. We consider alternative models for defining the distribution of phenotypes to include a component due to heterogeneity of V E . We review evidence for the presence of genetic variation in V E and estimates of its magnitude. Typically the heritability of V E is under 10 %, but its genetic coefficient of variation is typically 20 % or more. We consider experimental designs appropriate for estimating genetic variance in V E and review alternative methods of estimation. We consider the effects of stabilizing and directional selection on V E and review both the forces that might be maintaining levels of V E and heritability found in populations. We also evaluate the opportunities for reducing V E in breeding programmes. Although empirical and theoretical studies have increased our understanding of genetic control of environmental variance, many issues remain unresolved.

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“…That is, these scenarios have in common the feature that rapid non-heritable variation (lifetime learning or the temporary groups formed for contexts) guides a mechanism of relatively slow heritable variation (genetic mutation or composition, respectively). In other words, evaluation of entities in contextual groups 'primes' them for subsequent joins, or equivalently, solutions found first by groups are later canalised (Waddington, 1942) by composite entities (see also Bull and Fogarty, 1995). In Fig.…”

Section: Canalisation Of Successful Groupsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Sophisticated ontogenic processes (e.g. Waddington, 1942) provide a complex mapping from genotype to phenotype and the structure of this mapping is critical to understanding how small random changes in genotype might enable large changes in phenotype. Exaptation (Gould and Vrba, 1982) refers to cases where a collection of features adapted for some purpose is co-opted for some other purpose or function; with respect to the function of interest, a large set of phenotypic features may be introduced simultaneously.…”

Section: Some Related Models Impacting Biological Evolvabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1 1 There are two complementary views concerning the mechanisms of the major evolutionary transitions: (a) organisms cooperate because they have been encapsulated by some mechanism into a single reproductive unit (e.g. co-dispersal: Frank, 1997, shared genetic transmission mechanisms: Dawkins, 1976), (b) organisms become encapsulated as a single reproductive unit because this is a canalization (Waddington, 1942) of an existing co-operative relationship. In a sense, our model follows the latter view since…”

Section: Overview Of the Composition Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A computational model of symbiotic composition in evolutionary transitions

Watson

Pollack

2003

Biosystems

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Several of the major transitions in evolutionary history, such as the symbiogenic origin of eukaryotes from prokaryotes, share the feature that existing entities became the components of composite entities at a higher-level of organization. This composition of pre-adapted extant entities into a new whole is a fundamentally different source of variation from the gradual accumulation of small random variations, and it has some interesting consequences for issues of evolvability. Intuitively, the pre-adaptation of sets of features in reproductively independent specialists suggests a form of 'divide and conquer' decomposition of the adaptive domain. Moreover, the compositions resulting from one level may become the components for compositions at the next level, thus scaling-up the variation mechanism. In this paper, we explore and develop these concepts using a simple abstract model of symbiotic composition to examine its impact on evolvability. To exemplify the adaptive capacity of the composition model, we employ a scale-invariant fitness landscape exhibiting significant ruggedness at all scales. Whilst innovation by mutation and by conventional evolutionary algorithms becomes increasingly more difficult as evolution continues in this landscape, innovation by composition is not impeded as it discovers and assembles component entities through successive hierarchical levels.

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Canalization of Development and the Inheritance of Acquired Characters

Cited by 2,787 publications

References 7 publications

Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?

Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?

Genetic analysis of environmental variation

A computational model of symbiotic composition in evolutionary transitions

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