frozen plasticity

Frozen Evolution book

Most biologists and biology students think that evolutionary biology is basically a closed chapter of science. But what if this is not the way things are? What if evolutionary biology underwent a quite fundamental revolution in the 70's and 80's of the past century, following which all the textbooks in this field should basically be rewritten?  >> Read more

Frozen plasticity theory

This theory suggests a mechanism of the origin of adaptive traits in sexual organisms. The classical Darwinian mechanism of the origin of adaptive traits by natural selection can explain the evolution of such traits only under a very special situation, e.g., in a genetically homogeneous population of asexual organisms. The frozen plasticity theory is much more general: It can also explain the origin and evolution of adaptive traits in a genetically heterogeneous population of sexual organisms. >> Read more

On the importance of being stable – evolutionarily frozen species can win in fluctuating environments

Type: 
Journal Article
Author(s): 
Flegr, J. & Ponížil, P.
Year: 
2018
Published: 
Biological Journal of Linnean Society, bly110, https://doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/bly110
Annotation: 

The ability of organisms to adaptively respond to environmental changes (evolvability) is usually considered to be an important advantage in interspecific competition. It has been suggested, however, that evolvability could be a double-edged sword that could present a serious handicap in fluctuating environments. The authors of this counterintuitive idea have published only verbal models to support their claims. Here we present the results of individual-based stochastic modelling of competition between two asexual species differing only by their evolvability. They show that, in changeable environments, less evolvable species could outperform their more evolvable competitors in a broad area of a parameter space, regardless of whether the conditions fluctuated periodically or aperiodically. Highly evolvable species prospered better nearly all the time; however, they sustained a higher probability of extinction during rare events of the rapid transient change of conditions. Our results offer an explanation of why sexually reproducing species, with their reduced capacity to respond adaptively to local or temporal environmental changes, prevail in most eukaryotic taxa in nearly all biotopes on the surface of Earth. These species may suffer several important disadvantages in direct competitive battles with asexual species; however, they might win in changeable environments in the more important sorting-according to-stability war

the frozen plasticity theory

1. This theory is based ( I think) on one wrong key assumption that all the offspring need to possess that useful trait which allowed parents to have more offspring than any other pair, for evolution to work. Evolution can still proceed even if none of the immediate descendants possesses the trait, because in the process of evolution what is changing is a species. Important for evolution is therefore the frequency of a trait in a population. A species become taller when there is more tall individuals in the population. >> Read more

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