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The Spandrels of San Marco

The Spandrels of San Marco. Adaptation or Drift?. Gould and Lewontin (1979). The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme . Do not assume that every trait is an adaptation Cited more than 4000X. The Cathedral of San Marco.

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The Spandrels of San Marco

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  1. The Spandrels of San Marco Adaptation or Drift?

  2. Gould and Lewontin (1979) • The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationistprogramme. • Do not assume that every trait is an adaptation • Cited more than 4000X

  3. The Cathedral of San Marco

  4. Are spandrels necessary architectural elements or byproducts of having adjacent arches? • How many traits of living organisms are spandrels rather than adaptations? • Organisms are more than collections of traits. Stephen Jay Gould, 1941-2002, USA Richard Charles Lewontin, 1929-present, USA

  5. Empedocles: adaptation does not require a purpose (final cause) • Aristotle: adaptation requires a purpose • Paley (Natural Theology): organisms perfectly adapted through design toward a purpose • Lamarck: adaptation through increased complexity and influence of circumstances • Darwin and Wallace: adaptation is ‘good enough’ outcome of natural selection

  6. Adaptation • Genetic change in response to changes in habitat (Red Queen Hypothesis) • Co-adaptations (diversification between insects and flowering plants in Cretaceous) • Compromise (e.g. sexual selection)

  7. Classic Research on Adaptation • Peter and Rosemary Grant (1973-present) • John Arthur Endler (1980)

  8. Genetic Drift

  9. Genetic Drift in Mice Genetic drift in inbred mouse colonies happens slowly, subtly, and is difficult to detect and control. It is caused by the same factors (Bailey 1977; Bailey DW. 1982.  Immunology Today 3:210-14) that lead to substrain divergence.

  10. Developmental Allometry

  11. Developmental Allometry of Humans

  12. Developmental Allometry of Humans

  13. Khrameeva et al. 2014. Neanderthal ancestry drives evolution of lipid catabolism in contemporary Europeans. Nature Communications. 5:3584 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4584

  14. Importance of Gould and Lewontin (1979) • Cited ~4,000X • Functioned as a heuristic • When we examine traits should we assume that they are adaptations or drift? • G&L (1979) helped to make evolutionary biology more rigorous.

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