Macroevolution: Explanation, Interpretation and Evidence

407 Pages·2015·7.26 MB·English

by  Emanuele Serrelli

Interdisciplinary Evolution Research 2
Emanuele Serrelli
Nathalie Gontier Editors
Macroevolution
Explanation, Interpretation and
Evidence
Interdisciplinary Evolution Research
Volume 2
Series editors
Nathalie Gontier, Lisbon, Portugal
Olga Pombo, Lisbon, Portugal
About the Series
The time when only biologists studied evolution has long since passed. Accepting
evolution requires us to come to terms with the fact that everything that exists
must be the outcome of evolutionary processes. Today, a wide variety of academic
disciplines are therefore confronted with evolutionary problems, ranging from physics
and medicine, to linguistics, anthropology and sociology. Solving evolutionary
problems also necessitates an inter- and transdisciplinary approach, which is why
the Modern Synthesis is currently extended to include drift theory, symbiogenesis,
lateral gene transfer, hybridization, epigenetics and punctuated equilibria theory.
The series Interdisciplinary Evolution Research aims to provide a scholarly
platform for the growing demand to examine specific evolutionary problems from
the perspectives of multiple disciplines. It does not adhere to one specific academic
field, one specific school of thought, or one specific evolutionary theory. Rather,
books in the series thematically analyze how a variety of evolutionary fields and
evolutionary theories provide insights into specific, well-defined evolutionary
problems of life and the socio-cultural domain.
Editors-in-chief of the series are Nathalie Gontier and Olga Pombo. The Series is
edited from within the Applied Evolutionary Epistemology Lab, more information
on the lab is available at http://appeel.fc.ul.pt.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13109
Emanuele Serrelli · Nathalie Gontier
Editors
Macroevolution
Explanation, Interpretation and Evidence
1 3
Editors
Emanuele Serrelli Nathalie Gontier
“Riccardo Massa” Department AppEEL, Centre for Philosophy of Science
of Human Sciences Campo Grande
University of Milano-Bicocca University of Lisbon
Milan Lisbon
Italy Portugal
ISSN 2199-3068 ISSN 2199-3076 (electronic)
Interdisciplinary Evolution Research
ISBN 978-3-319-15044-4 ISBN 978-3-319-15045-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15045-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014959855
Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
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Preface and Acknowledgments
In the early 1980s of the twentieth century, which is now a little less than 40 years
ago, and in response to the uproar that the introduction of Punctuated Equilibria
theory had caused within evolutionary biology, John Maynard Smith invited pale-
ontologists to join what he called, the “high table” of evolutionary theory. In the
1970s, Niles Eldredge and Stephen J. Gould provided convincing theoretical argu-
ments as well as empirical data that the Modern Synthesis was incomplete because
its founders had not adequately incorporated the study of life’s evolution above
and beyond the differential distribution of genes across populations through time.
They defined macroevolutionary research by arguing that species are real bio-
logical individuals that have a clear beginning, lifespan, and ending in time, and
furthermore proved that the fossil record evidences that species demonstrate long
periods of stasis where no apparent morphological change occurs, which are inter-
spersed by rapid speciation events that follow a branching pattern. When the fossil
record does not give proof for intermediate life forms, then instead of assuming
the incompleteness of the fossil record as Darwin and Neodarwinians did, they
suggested to understand the gaps as data, and to postulate that no intermediates
existed when none are found. Because species are understood as real biological
individuals, speciation and extinction events are also understood as real phenom-
ena that require scientific investigation.
Researching morphological stasis, species and above species phenomena such
as (mass) extinctions and speciation events, large-scale evolutionary trends, and
major transitions across all domains of life; or mapping the various units, l evels,
and mechanisms whereby life evolves as well as the hierarchical nature there exists
between these units, levels, and mechanisms; require an epistemic incorporation
of fields such as developmental biology, ecology, systematics, and b iophysics.
Most of all, it requires a change in scholarly research attitudes, a willingness to
transcend classic field-specific disciplinary boundaries that remain focused on
reductionist, gene-centered theoretical accounts, in favor of complexity-focused,
holistic epistemic stances.
In recent years, the heated aura that surrounded these often polemic debates
that associated with the introduction of micro- versus macroevolutionary stances
v
vi Preface and Acknowledgments
appears to have cooled down a bit. The explosive entrance of macroevolutionary
areas of research has cleared room for what we can characterize as an almost silent
integration of the major claims first put forth by macroevolutionary scholars into
standard evolutionary research. One can safely say that evolutionary biologists in
both micro- as well as macro-oriented fields today accept that species are real bio-
logical entities with an important evolutionary role to play, and research on the
evolutionary and abiotic causes that underlie constraints, stasis, extinction, and
speciation has never ranged so “high” at the “evolutionary table”. Indeed, these
topics defined the talks of many of the lectures of the speakers that were invited
to present their work at the Darwin 2009 bicentennial that was organized at the
University of Chicago.
One of us, Nathalie Gontier, attended that conference as an audience participant.
What amazed me was that the topics introduced by macroevolutionary scholars
ranged so high, while at the same time, little attention and credit was given to where
these ideas stemmed from and in which context they had originated. During that
same period, and with a grant from the European Marie Curie fellowships, I held a
one-year visiting research position at the American Museum of Natural History in
New York, under the supervision of Niles Eldredge, with the goal to perform theo-
retical research on punctuated equilibria theory in particular, and how macroevolu-
tionary theory in general is applicable within the sociocultural sciences. For many
years, the Museum has set a crucial scene for the development of evolutionary the-
ory, both in what regards its micro- as well as macroevolutionary stances, not in the
least by employing scholars such as Niles Eldredge and Stephen J. Gould as well as
Ernst Mayr.
At that moment in time, by on the one hand reading these scholars’ important
works that lie at the basis of micro- and macroevolutionary stances as well as on
the other hand having the experience to attend the excellently organized Darwin
commemoration where I had the chance to discuss many of these ideas with my
contemporaries, I felt scholars from my generation had lost the roots of these
significant ideas. From there grew the idea to edit a book on the matter, as well
as to provide dissemination and outreach activities on the specificities of macro-
evolutionary research outside the classic paleontological and biogeographical
disciplines where they were first introduced, and to highlight how macroevolu-
tionary-oriented scholars have contributed to a richer conceptualization as well as
demonstration of life’s evolution.
To obtain these goals, and back in Belgium, I started with writing out these
ideas in the form of a grant proposal which I submitted to the John Templeton
Foundation. The proposal, that had as goal to investigate the importance of
both macroevolution as well as reticulate evolution for the Extended Synthesis
within the field of evolutionary biology, as well as the impact these new areas of
research have on the growing sociocultural evolutionary sciences, was accepted
by the Foundation and was successfully executed at the Applied Evolutionary
Epistemology Lab (http://appeel.fc.ul.pt), at the Portuguese University of Lisbon
in 2012–2013. I hereby want to thank again the staff of the Templeton founda-
tion and, in particular, Paul Wason as well as Kevin Arnold and Drew Rick-Miller,
Preface and Acknowledgments vii
my program officers. I am grateful to the project’s team, including Olga Pombo
as well as Márcia Belchior, Francisco Carrapiço, Luís Correia, Larissa Mendoza
Straffon, Marco Pina, and Emanuele Serrelli; and I want to express my gratitude
toward the Portuguese Gulbenkian Foundation and Ciência Viva Agency for their
enthusiasm and efforts in helping me to bring my ideas on outreach and knowl-
edge dissemination into action during what turned out to be a crazily busy year.
Together, we organized a session on how macroevolutionary theory transcends
the Modern Synthesis for the 2013-meeting for the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (http://appeel.fc.ul.pt/sub/eve/dir/aaas/aaas2013.html)
that among the speakers had Alycia Stigall who also contributed to this volume;
a session for the 2012-meeting of the American Anthropological Association
that partially focused on cultural macroevolutionary theories and methodologies
(http://appeel.fc.ul.pt/sub/eve/dir/aaa/aaa2012.html); two international evolu-
tion schools for pre- and postdoctoral university students with modules on mac-
roevolution (http://evolutionschool.fc.ul.pt) taught, among others, by Ilya Tëmkin
and Folmer Bokma who also contributed to this volume as well as the confer-
ence on Micro and Macro, Horizontal and Vertical Evolutionary Patterns (http://
evolutionarypatterns.fc.ul.pt); a public conference on evolution with special ses-
sions for teenagers (http://evolutionconference.fc.ul.pt); we conducted several
video interviews with the scholars who participated in the activities (https://
www.youtube.com/user/appeellisboa); and we concretized my multiple book
ideas further, including this one on macroevolution. I am grateful to Emanuele for
having accepted my invitation to co-edit the book.
We are very much indebted and grateful to the numerous scholars we encoun-
tered along our paths, who gave us advice and guidance, encouragement, and cri-
tique. In particular, we want to thank Wallace Arthur, Quentin Atkinson, Michael
Benton, Luis Borda de Agua, Rituparna Bose, Dan Brooks, Mike Bruford, Jorge
Carneiro, Maurizio Casiraghi, Lounes Chikhi, Alex de Voogt, Charbel Niño
El-Hani, Claus Emmeche, Douglas H. Erwin, Frietson Galis, Root Gorelick,
Ronald Jenner, Fiona Jordan, Bruce Lieberman, Paulo Madruga, Octávio Mateus,
Daniel McShea, Richard P. Meisel, Alex Mesoudi, Sérgio Moço, Ana Noronha,
Samir Okasha, Mark Pagel, Octávio Paulo, Telmo Pievani, Anna Marie Prentiss,
Luís Paulo N. Rebelo, Luis Mateus Rocha, Michael Ruse, Ana Sanchez, David
Sepkoski, Artur Santos Silva, Rui Silveira, Andrej Spiridonov, Ian Tattersall, Inês
Tomé, Derek Turner, Rosalia Vargas, Davide Vecchi, Emílio Rui Vilar, Tyler Volk,
Matthew Joseph Walsh, Richard Watson, and Jon Umerez.
We also want to cordially thank the whole Springer team, and in particular
Anette Lindqvist and Sabine Schwarz.
This book on macroevolution is neither a handbook for beginning scholars for
which there exist numerous excellent works written by paleontologists, nor a work
aimed toward philosophers and historians of science to exclusively highlight the
history and epistemology of macroevolutionary ideas. This book highlights some
of the most important research topics that macroevolutionary scholars have intro-
duced into the evolutionary sciences, including debates on how microevolution
differs from macroevolution; what the nature is of evolutionary stasis, extinction,
viii Preface and Acknowledgments
speciation; how we can define and measure evolutionary rates; how we can model
biological hierarchies; how biophysics, ecology, evo-devo, genetics, and systemat-
ics shed new light on life’s major patterns, trends and transitions, its origination,
extinction and diversity; how macroevolutionary theory transcends biology and
is applied within the sociocultural sciences; and how all the latter requires us to
reconceptualize the very nature of evolutionary research in light of an extended
synthesis.
We are enormously grateful toward the authors who found the time to contrib-
ute a chapter for the book, as well as the scholars who, behind the scenes, were
willing to peer-review the chapters. We hope the reader will find as much enlight-
enment on the subject of macroevolution as we did editing the volume.
Nathalie Gontier
Emanuele Serrelli
Contents
Macroevolutionary Issues and Approaches in Evolutionary Biology .... 1
Emanuele Serrelli and Nathalie Gontier
Part I Macroevolutionary Explanations and Interpretations
Can Modern Evolutionary Theory Explain Macroevolution? .......... 29
Douglas J. Futuyma
Evolution as a Largely Autonomous Process ........................ 87
Folmer Bokma
Visualizing Macroevolution: From Adaptive Landscapes
to Compositions of Multiple Spaces ............................... 113
Emanuele Serrelli
Toward a Natural Philosophy of Macroevolution .................... 163
Stanley N. Salthe
Networks and Hierarchies: Approaching Complexity
in Evolutionary Theory ......................................... 183
Ilya Tëmkin and Niles Eldredge
Uniting Micro- with Macroevolution into an Extended Synthesis:
Reintegrating Life’s Natural History into Evolution Studies ........... 227
Nathalie Gontier
ix