Novelty in Evolution: Restructuring the Concept

Müller, Gerd B.; Wagner, Günter P.

doi:10.1146/annurev.es.22.110191.001305

Cited by 434 publications

(201 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…In our opinion, synthesizing this vast literature (for discussion and reviews, see e.g. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]) with the aim of finding a simple, one-size-fits-all definition of innovation may be futile, because the development of innovation as a concept has largely occurred at the discipline level with limited cross-talk, and different aspects of innovations are emphasized in different disciplines. Thus, regardless of how innovation is defined-mathematically, statistically or verbally-it invariably encompasses some degree of discipline-or system-specific subjectivity.…”

Section: What Is An Innovation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The change can in principle be quantified using information theory [33] (see also [34]). This criterion aims to exclude adaptations that result from a loss of traits [10]. Criterion 2: The qualitatively new phenotypic trait is associated with one or more measures of increased performance and/or utilization of a novel niche.…”

Section: Box 2 Statistical Detection Of Innovation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Innovation: an emerging focus from cells to societies

Hochberg

Marquet

Boyd

et al. 2017

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Innovations are generally unexpected, often spectacular changes in phenotypes and ecological functions. The contributions to this theme issue are the latest conceptual, theoretical and experimental developments, addressing how ecology, environment, ontogeny and evolution are central to understanding the complexity of the processes underlying innovations. Here, we set the stage by introducing and defining key terms relating to innovation and discuss their relevance to biological, cultural and technological change. Discovering how the generation and transmission of novel biological information, environmental interactions and selective evolutionary processes contribute to innovation as an ecosystem will shed light on how the dominant features across life come to be, generalize to social, cultural and technological evolution, and have applications in the health sciences and sustainability. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Process and pattern in innovations from cells to societies’.

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Section: What Is An Innovation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Box 2 Statistical Detection Of Innovation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovation: an emerging focus from cells to societies

Hochberg

Marquet

Boyd

et al. 2017

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…On the one hand, Darwin's theory of evolution is based on descent with modification, wherein everything new, ultimately, must come from something old [2]. On the other hand, biologists are captivated by complex novel traits precisely because they often lack obvious homology to pre-existing traits [3]. How, then, does novelty arise within the confines of ancestral developmental patterns and variation?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of developmental plasticity in evolutionary innovation

et al. 2011

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Explaining the origins of novel traits is central to evolutionary biology. Longstanding theory suggests that developmental plasticity, the ability of an individual to modify its development in response to environmental conditions, might facilitate the evolution of novel traits. Yet whether and how such developmental flexibility promotes innovations that persist over evolutionary time remains unclear. Here, we examine three distinct ways by which developmental plasticity can promote evolutionary innovation. First, we show how the process of genetic accommodation provides a feasible and possibly common avenue by which environmentally induced phenotypes can become subject to heritable modification. Second, we posit that the developmental underpinnings of plasticity increase the degrees of freedom by which environmental and genetic factors influence ontogeny, thereby diversifying targets for evolutionary processes to act on and increasing opportunities for the construction of novel, functional and potentially adaptive phenotypes. Finally, we examine the developmental genetic architectures of environment-dependent trait expression, and highlight their specific implications for the evolutionary origin of novel traits. We critically review the empirical evidence supporting each of these processes, and propose future experiments and tests that would further illuminate the interplay between environmental factors, condition-dependent development, and the initiation and elaboration of novel phenotypes.

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“…Essentially, the main difficulty here is to envision the evolution of a system that reconciles variability and heredityadaptation to changing environments requires generation of novel developmental variation, but heritability of such variation should, by definition, limit the range of future variability. In different reincarnations, the relationship between variability and heredity is expressed in the search for the 'non-Lamarckian' links between functional importance and heritability (Osborn 1896;, between novelty and contingency in the evolutionary process (Cope 1887;Baldwin 1896;Mü ller & Wagner 1991;Mü ller & Newman 2003;West-Eberhard 2003), between adaptation and adaptability (Severtsov 1934;Mayr 1960;Kirschner & Gerhart 2005) and, more generally, the connection between adaptation and evolutionary change (Schmalhausen 1938;Lewontin 1970).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolutionary significance of phenotypic accommodation in novel environments: an empirical test of the Baldwin effect

Badyaev

2009

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

164

123

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When faced with changing environments, organisms rapidly mount physiological and behavioural responses, accommodating new environmental inputs in their functioning. The ubiquity of this process contrasts with our ignorance of its evolutionary significance: whereas within-generation accommodation of novel external inputs has clear fitness consequences, current evolutionary theory cannot easily link functional importance and inheritance of novel accommodations. One hundred and twelve years ago, J. M. Baldwin, H. F. Osborn and C. L. Morgan proposed a process (later termed the Baldwin effect) by which non-heritable developmental accommodation of novel inputs, which makes an organism fit in its current environment, can become internalized in a lineage and affect the course of evolution. The defining features of this process are initial overproduction of random (with respect to fitness) developmental variation, followed by withingeneration accommodation of a subset of this variation by developmental or functional systems ('organic selection'), ensuring the organism's fit and survival. Subsequent natural selection sorts among resultant developmental variants, which, if recurrent and consistently favoured, can be inherited when existing genetic variance includes developmental components of individual modifications or when the ability to accommodate novel inputs is itself heritable. Here, I show that this process is consistent with the origin of novel adaptations during colonization of North America by the house finch. The induction of developmental variation by novel environments of this species's expanding range was followed by homeostatic channelling, phenotypic accommodation and directional cross-generational transfer of a subset of induced developmental outcomes favoured by natural selection. These results emphasize three principal points. First, contemporary novel adaptations result mostly from reorganization of existing structures that shape newly expressed variation, giving natural selection an appearance of a creative force. Second, evolutionary innovations and maintenance of adaptations are different processes. Third, both the Baldwin and parental effects are probably a transient state in an evolutionary cycle connecting initial phenotypic retention of adaptive changes and their eventual genetic determination and, thus, the origin of adaptation and evolutionary change.

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Novelty in Evolution: Restructuring the Concept

Cited by 434 publications

References 77 publications

Innovation: an emerging focus from cells to societies

Innovation: an emerging focus from cells to societies

The role of developmental plasticity in evolutionary innovation

Evolutionary significance of phenotypic accommodation in novel environments: an empirical test of the Baldwin effect

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