A flexible theory of evolution

摘要

It is an ancient truism that what evolves is the developmental system, from which it follows that genetics, development and evolution are interwoven. Genetics and evolution were integrated long ago in the synthetic theory of evolution; development has only lately rejoined the evolutionary fold. The field of evolutionary developmental biology thus created is mostly concerned with patterns of evolution, comparing the genetic basis of evolutionary changes in development, rather than with the dynamics of evolutionary changes. Its sister, developmental evolutionary biology, studies how selection works on development to produce the adaptive phenotype, necessarily becoming linked to evolutionary ecology. This is a field worth pursuing, and Mary Jane West-Eberhard's Developmental Plasticity and Evolution certainly belongs within it, but the question is whether the book does the field good service.