Behavioral and developmental plasticity enable dung beetles to cope with temperature stress within and across generations

by Anna LM Macagno, Eduardo E Zattara, Armin P Moczek & Cris C Ledón-Rettig

While the climate is changing in complex patterns around our planet, there is strong consensus that global average temperatures are rapidly on the rise. Global climate change forces organisms to either cope with changing temperature regimes in their native habitats, or to face extinction. Furthermore, the resulting environmental changes can cause many areas to become

Rapid evolution and phenotypic plasticity: insights from horned beetles

by Sofia Casasa & Armin P Moczek

All organisms face the challenge of having to cope with variable environments. Diverse factors, from food and water availability to temperature, predation pressures, or conspecific densities, may impact an organism’s development, survival, and reproduction. Phenotypic plasticity is one mechanism that allows individuals to cope with variable environmental conditions within their life time, and most organisms

Coral reefs and niche construction: quantifying patterns

by Viviana Brambilla

Coral reefs are one of the most biodiverse and threatened ecosystems in the world. Scleractinian corals act as ecosystem engineers and build the three-dimensional framework that provides shelter and food for themselves and all the other species that inhabit the reef. They are characterised by high diversity in terms of species, growth forms and demographic

“Here I Go Again”—will Waddington’s hopes finally be fulfilled? Part III

by Erik L Peterson

Question 3: Why didn’t Waddington’s attempts fix the division? Answer 3: It’s complicated, but two factors jump out. I devoted chapters of a book to this question, so forgive me for not doing it justice here. I want to focus just on two important reasons. The first is that Waddington and epigenetics became

“Here I Go Again”—will Waddington’s hopes finally be fulfilled? Part II

by Erik L Peterson

Question 2: How did biologists attempt to mend the split between development and inheritance in the past? Answer 2: Morgan (1934) and Waddington (1940). T. H. Morgan’s 1934 book Embryology & Genetics was an important first attempt to close the development-inheritance divide. Morgan blamed the split on vitalism and Hans Spemann’s “organizer” work.

“Here I Go Again”—will Waddington’s hopes finally be fulfilled? Part I

by Erik L Peterson

Introduction Recently, a group of biologists gathered in picturesque accommodations on the side of a mountain to discuss the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). It was a motley crew. The group included theoreticians and experimentalists, population geneticists and organismal biologists. They brought in a few participants from the humanities and social sciences to boot. Some

Workshop report: Integrating development and inheritance

by Kevin Laland & Tobias Uller

Last month, researchers from around the world gathered at the Santa Fe Institute to discuss the evolutionary implications of extra-genetic inheritance. The workshop – Integrating Development and Inheritance – was organized as part of the EES research program. For two and a half days the participants – biologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, anthropologists, historians and philosophers of science –

Bridging cultural gaps: Promoting interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution

by Oren Kolodny, Marcus W Feldman & Nicole Creanza

Within the blink of an eye on a geological timescale, humans advanced from using basic stone tools to studying the rocks on Mars; however, our exact evolutionary path and the relative importance of genetic and cultural evolution remain a mystery. Our cultural capacities—to create new ideas, to communicate and learn from one another, and to

Extended evolutionary synthesis needs to include the social sciences

by Joe Brewer

It is an intellectual riddle—why is it that the biological and social sciences are divided into so many separate fields? If there was a “new synthesis” for evolutionary biology almost a hundred years ago, how did it manage to exclude (or get excluded by) the burgeoning fields of research that study the social behaviors of

Getting into the weeds: Individual plasticity and adaptive variation

by Sonia E Sultan

Starting with Watson and Crick, genes have been defined as stretches of the DNA molecule that contain developmental instructions for particular traits; evolutionary biologists consider genotypic variations to be the source of the differences among individual organisms that result in natural selection. Yet this elegantly simple view of adaptive evolution overlooks the fact that environmental