The Coming of Age of Evolvability [Book Review]

BioScience 74 (3) (2023)
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Abstract

Evolvability—which, in its broadest sense, means any causal factor that influences an evolutionary system’s ability to evolve (e.g., epistatic interactions, constraints, standing genetic variation)—could be the most significant addition to evolutionary theory since neutral theory in the 1980s, and Hansen and colleagues’ Evolvability: A Unifying Concept in Evolutionary Biology? (2023) is a major step forward for the maturation of the concept of evolvability. According to Hansen and colleagues, since evolvability research exploded onto the scene in the 1990s, the concept has developed divergently within the fields of evolutionary developmental biology, evolutionary quantitative genetics, paleobiology, and computational biology. No comprehensive attempt has so far been made to synthesize the expansive plurality of conceptions of evolvability. For this reason alone, I believe Hansen and colleagues' Evolvability: A Unifying Concept in Evolutionary Biology? (2023) is the steppingstone from which all future conceptual and empirical research on evolvability must build on. However, despite the acknowledged success of Hansen and colleagues (2023), the onerous tasks of maturing the concept of evolvability and successfully integrating it into modern evolutionary theory are now within reach but are still left incomplete.

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Mitchell Ryan Distin
Universitat de Valencia

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