…and nobody took any notice for a long time. Now it’s clear that some epigenetic mechanisms are not replication mechanisms; they are reconstruction mechanisms.   One has to remember that…

…‘How do novel complex traits originate?’ is such a question. How does a major invention in evolution come into being in the first place? What are the baby steps of…

…are unnecessary. For instance, the fact that honeybee comb cells are hexagonal in cross-section might not require an explanation in terms of natural selection fashioning bee cognition in a way…

Niche construction refers to a process by which organisms modify their environments through their evolved traits, which in turn can feed back on the organisms themselves by modifying the selection…

…developmental mechanisms, in the transition to more complex biological organization.   Together these studies will increase our understanding of how selection interacts with the way organisms are constructed to influence…

…for free”, providing an additional mechanism, besides natural selection, to obtain the complexity we see in biological organisms. This view was most explicitly and elaborately expressed in his now-classic book…