Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-x4r87 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T14:31:59.880Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Complex Life Cycles and the Evolutionary Process

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Peter Godfrey-Smith
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Problems raised by complex life cycles for standard summaries of evolutionary processes, and for concepts of individuality in biology, are described. I then outline a framework that can be used to compare life cycles. This framework treats reproduction as a combination of production and recurrence and organizes life cycles according to the distribution of steps in which multiplication, bottlenecks, and sex occur. I also discuss fitness and its measurement in complex life cycles and consider some phenomena that raise complications and difficulties for my framework.

Type
Complex Life Cycles and Reproduction
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 83 , Issue 5 , December 2016 , pp. 816 - 827
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I am grateful to all the participants in the PSA 2014 symposium on “Complex Life Cycles, Reproduction and Evolution,” and also to Jean Gayon, Ben Kerr, and Ron Planer for comments and correspondence.

References

Abrams, Marshall. 2009. “The Unity of Fitness.” Philosophy of Science 76:750–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ariew, André, and Lewontin, Richard. 2004. “The Confusions of Fitness.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55:347–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonner, John. 1974. On Development: The Biology of Form. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Byerly, Henry, and Michod, Richard. 1991. “Fitness and Evolutionary Explanation.” Biology and Philosophy 6:1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawkins, Richard. 1982. The Extended Phenotype: The Gene as the Unit of Selection. Oxford: Freeman.Google Scholar
Dupré, John, and O’Malley, Maureen. 2009. “Varieties of Living Things: Life at the Intersection of Lineage and Metabolism.” Philosophy and Theory in Biology 1:1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farrar, Donald R. 1990. “Species and Evolution in Asexually Reproducing Independent Fern Gametophytes.” Systematic Botany 15:98–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2009. Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godfrey-Smith, Peter 2015. “Individuality and Life Cycles.” In Individuals across the Sciences, ed. Pradeu, Thomas and Guay, Alexandre, 85–102. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griesemer, James. 2005. “The Informational Gene and the Substantial Body: On the Generalization of Evolutionary Theory by Abstraction.” In Idealization XII: Correcting the Model, Idealization and Abstraction in the Sciences, ed. Jones, Martin and Cartwright, Nancy, 59–115. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Hennig, Willi. 1966. Phylogenetic Systematics. Trans. David, D. and Zangerl, R.. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Herron, Matthew, Rashidi, Armin, Shelton, Deborah, and Driscoll, William. 2013. “Cellular Differentiation and Individuality in the ‘Minor’ Multicellular Taxa.” Biological Reviews 88:844–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hull, David L. 1980. “Individuality and Selection.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 11:311–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janzen, Daniel H. 1977. “What Are Dandelions and Aphids?” American Naturalist 111:586–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewontin, Richard. 1970. “The Units of Selection.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 1:1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard Smith, John. 1988. “Evolutionary Progress and Levels of Selection.” In Evolutionary Progress, ed. Nitecki, Matthew H., 219–30. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Nitecki, Matthew H.. 1991. “Byerly and Michod on Fitness.” Biology and Philosophy 6:37.Google Scholar
O’Malley, Maureen. 2016. “Reproduction Expanded: Multigenerational and Multilineal Units of Evolution.” Philosophy of Science, in this issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pradeu, Thomas. 2011. “A Mixed Self: The Role of Symbiosis in Development.” Biological Theory 6:80–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Straehler-Pohl, Ilka, and Jarms, Gerhard. 2005. “Life Cycle of Carybdea Marsupialis Linnaeus, 1758 (Cubozoa, Carybdeidae) Reveals Metamorphosis to be a Modified Strobilation.” Marine Biology 147:1271–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toshino, Sho, Miyake, Hiroshi, Ohtsuka, Susumu, Okuizumi, Kazuya, Adachi, Aya, Hamatsu, Yoshimi, Urata, Makoto, Nakaguchi, Kazumitsu, and Yamaguchi, Syuhei. 2013. “Development and Polyp Formation of the Giant Box Jellyfish Morbakka virulenta (Kishinouye, 1910) (Cnidaria: Cubozoa) Collected from the Seto Inland Sea, Western Japan.” Plankton and Benthos Research 8:1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar