The place of development in mathematical evolutionary theory.

摘要: Development plays a critical role in structuring the joint offspring-parent phenotype distribution. It thus must be part of any truly general evolutionary theory. Historically, distribution has often been treated such way as to bury contribution development, by distilling from it single term, either heritability or additive genetic variance, and then working only with this term. I discuss two reasons why approach is no longer satisfactory. First, regression expected offspring on parent can easily nonlinear, nonlinearity have pronounced impact response selection. Second, even when linear, nearly always function environment, precise that covaries environment substantial effect adaptive evolution. Understanding these complexities will require understanding developmental processes underlying traits interest. briefly how we incorporate complexity into formal theory, likely important for are not traditionally focus evo-devo research. Finally, topic widely seen being squarely domain evo-devo: novelty. argue same conceptual mathematical framework allows us simple models trait evolution also yields insight novel traits.