Evolvability as the proper focus of evolutionary developmental biology

@article{Hendrikse2007EvolvabilityAT,
  title={Evolvability as the proper focus of evolutionary developmental biology},
  author={Jesse Love Hendrikse and Trish E. Parsons and Benedikt Hallgr{\'i}msson},
  journal={Evolution \& Development},
  year={2007},
  volume={9}
}
SUMMARY Research conducted under the label of evolutionary developmental biology has tended to revolve around a few central issues such as modularity, integration, and canalization. Yet, as the field has grown, it has become increasingly difficult to define in terms of its central question and relation to broader evolutionary concerns. We argue that these central issues of evo‐devo gain their currency from connections to a central question that defines the field, and we propose that this… 
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239 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
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239 Citations

Evolutionary Novelty and the Evo-Devo Synthesis: Field Notes
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Questions about how to define evolutionary novelty and understand its significance, how to interpret evolutionary developmental biology as a synthesis and its relation to neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, and how to integrate disparate biological approaches in general are addressed.
Evolutionary Developmental Biology: Philosophical Issues
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The heterogeneity of Evo-devo’s conglomerate structure (including disagreements over its individuation), as well as the concepts and controversies of philosophical interest pertaining to the evolution of development and the developmental basis of evolution are addressed.
Grand challenges in evolutionary developmental biology
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This discipline is now mature for addressing a number of more precise, and more challenging questions, as I will argue in this article, as it is primarily floated in discussions about the identity and research targets of evo-devo.
From Developmental Constraint to Evolvability: How Concepts Figure in Explanation and Disciplinary Identity
TLDR
The different functions that scientific concepts can have are discussed, highlighting that instead of classifying or explaining natural phenomena, concepts such as “developmental constraint” and “evolvability” are more important in setting explanatory agendas so as to provide intellectual coherence to scientific approaches.
Model organisms in evo-devo: promises and pitfalls of the comparative approach
TLDR
This work presents a modelling framework suitable to integrate data on individual variation into evo-devo studies on new model organisms and thus to compensate for current idealization practices deliberately suppressing variation.
How a growing organismal perspective is adding new depth to integrative studies of morphological evolution
TLDR
To understand the dynamic nature of morphological evolution, investigators need to give more explicit attention to the processes that generate evolutionarily relevant variation at the population level and the need for Evo‐devo to adopt a high‐resolution phylogenetic approach is proposed.
An Introduction to Evolutionary Developmental Biology
  • K. Willmore
  • Biology
    Evolution: Education and Outreach
  • 2012
TLDR
The title of their paper plainly suggests, evolvability—or the capacity of developmental systems to evolve—is the proper focus of evo-devo, and Hendrikse and colleagues (2007) argue that developmental processes determine variation by influencing the amount of variationgenerated as well as biasing the direction of variation generated.
What Evolvability Really Is
TLDR
It is argued that, in focusing too closely on the role played by evolvability as an explanandum in evo-devo, existing philosophical attempts to clarify the evolVability concept have been overly narrow.
The Modern Synthesis Is the Current Paradigm in Evolutionary Biology Is Evolvability Evolvable?
TLDR
It is argued that evolvability will be a cornerstone of the EES, and it is appropriate to discuss how the idea of evolVability can be properly formulated, in what sense — if any — it differs from the concepts within the Modern Synthesis, and what exactly the Ees can contribute to the authors' understanding of evolution.
Historical and philosophical perspectives on the study of developmental bias
TLDR
It is argued that the concept of developmental bias can still play a vital scientific role by means of setting an explanatory agenda that motivates investigation and guides the formulation of integrative explanatory frameworks.
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