Last summer I wrote in the New York Times about a controversy over one of the most influential concepts in the recent history of evolutionary biology. Known as inclusive fitness, it basically says that helping relatives can be a good way to pass on your genes, because they’ve got your genes too.
Continue reading “Inclusive Fitness: Return to the Wrestling Ring”
Today I’ve got a story about some new research into evolvability–the potential to reach new adaptations. Scientists have explored the possibility of evolvability for some time now, but mostly through analyzing mathematical equations. Now a new study offers a fine-grained picture of evolvability in action.Richard Lenski of Michigan State and his colleagues have watch evolvability help one line of bacteria beat out another one. It’s a Darwinian story of the tortoise and the hare. Check it out.
(For more on evolvability, check out this review by Massimo Pigliucci [pdf])
[Image: Wikipedia]
Originally published March 21, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
The New York Times, March 21, 2011
Ever since Darwin, biologists have recognized that life evolves. But in the past 25 years, some researchers have argued that certain organisms are better at evolving than others. Their genomes have a flexibility that lets them adapt effectively. The less evolvable species, by contrast, are too rigid to take advantage of new mutations or to find new solutions for survival.
Many biologists agree that evolvability makes sense in theory. But finding evidence of it in the natural world has proved difficult.
Earlier this month I was invited to deliver a keynote address at the Joint Summit on Translational Science in San Francisco. The meeting brings together scientists who seek to master the rising tide of biological data, in order to find new medical treatments. I urged them to think like ecologists, and treat the human body like an ecosystem of thousands of species.
I recorded my talk on my trusty iPhone, and I’ve posted the audio below. (You can download it.) It’s also here.
Charles Darwin pictured evolution as a grand tree, with the world’s living species as its twigs. Scientists identify 10,000 new species a year, but they’ve got a long, long way to go before finding all of Earth’s biodiversity. So far, they have identified 1.5 million species of animals, but there may be 7 million or more in total. Beyond the animal kingdom, our ignorance balloons. Scoop up some sea water or a cup of soil, and there will likely be thousands of new species of microbes lurking there. Fortunately, a lot of the species that scientists discover each year are fairly close relatives to species we already know about. There may be plenty of beetle species left to be discovered, for example, but they will all end up as tufts sprouting from the same beetle branch.