Developmental bias in horned dung beetles and its contributions to innovation, adaptation, and resilience

Abstract

Developmental processes transduce diverse influences during phenotype formation, thereby biasing and structuring amount and type of phenotypic

Does the extended evolutionary synthesis entail extended explanatory power?

“…Take, for example, research on developmental bias in horned dung beetles in the genus Onthophagus. These studies try to integrate explanations of (a) gene regulatory networks that pattern specific body regions, (b) plastic developmental mechanisms that coordinate environmental responses, and (c) developmental symbioses and niche construction that enable organisms to build assemblages and to modify their own selective environments (see Hu et al 2020;Schwab et al 2019). Such attempts at complex integration within EES might be problematic if there are different explanatory standards at work in the relevant explanations involving niche construction, inclusive inheritance, developmental bias and plasticity, as well as microbiomes.…”

Historical and philosophical perspectives on the study of developmental bias

“…In a similar vein, the contributions to this special issue illustrate that the study of developmental bias spans different biological domains (and thus implicates different fields): gene regulation (e.g., Hu et al, ), parthenogenesis (Galis & van Alphen, ), phenotypic plasticity (Draghi, ; Levis & Pfennig, ; Parsons et al, ; Uller et al, ), the morphology of extant and fossil species (Jablonski, ; Jackson, ), brain development (Finlay & Huang, ), symbiosis and interactions involving microbial species (Gilbert, ), development of the vertebrate skeleton (Kavanagh, ), and behavior, learning, and niche construction (Hu et al, ; Laland et al, ), among others. Some of the studies are experimental, some include field work, and others make primarily use of theory and computational simulation (Draghi, ; Hordijk & Altenberg, ).…”

“…Salazar-Ciudad (2006) made the suggestion to replace the concept of developmental constraint with the concept of the variational properties of a developmental mechanism, which might also be a possible alternative to "developmental bias." Cases of niche construction and animal learning can lead to biases, in which case organism-environment mutual influences, organism-organism interactions, and animal behavior are part of the "developmental" account (Hu et al, 2019;Laland et al, 2019). As a result, my view is that for the purpose of setting a compelling explanatory agenda and of generating significant intellectual identity across different research projects, the label of "developmental bias" is preferable (similar to how the notion of novelty emphasizes the origin of quantitatively new structures).…”

“…Many will argue that an explanation of developmental bias requires more than the study of gene regulatory mechanisms. Indeed, several of the contributions to this special issue investigate cases where phenotypic plasticity (Draghi, 2019;Levis & Pfennig, 2019;Parsons, McWhinnie, Pilakouta, & Walker, 2019;Uller, Feiner, Radersma, Jackson, & Rago, 2019), niche construction (Hu et al, 2019;Laland, Toyokawa, & Oudman, 2019), and symbiosis (Gilbert, 2019) form the basis for biases in phenotypic variation. Generally, phenotypic variation is not only generated by means of mutations, but also by environmental changes, where such environmentally induced variation can matter for evolution (Sultan, 2017;West-Eberhard, 2003).…”

“…Biases result not only from the organization of gene regulatory networks, but in many cases also from the nature of phenotypic plasticity, so that the interaction between development and an organism's environment has to be part of the explanatory story (Draghi, ; Levis & Pfennig, ; Parsons et al, ; Uller et al, ). Cases of niche construction and animal learning can lead to biases, in which case organism–environment mutual influences, organism–organism interactions, and animal behavior are part of the “developmental” account (Hu et al, ; Laland et al, ). Examples of developmental biases due to symbiosis likewise broaden the scope of a general explanatory framework that can include metabolic and physiological interactions between organisms of different species (Gilbert, ).…”