Evolution?

[stevevw]

You you do know that punk eek is accepted as how most species change. Not all but most. . Gradualism is observed but it’s rare . The abrupt appearance of new species mean that the change from species A to species B is rapid - geologically speaking . If you’re claiming that evolution is inadequate to explain how species change over time then you’re mistaken . We don’t need magic to explain a natural phenomena if that where you’re going with this. ( I’m not an IDer and I think it’s silly to mistake that discredited pseudoscience for real science)

I am not talking about ID or creationism or any particular belief. I am talking about a natural phenomenon. I am merely pointing out that adaptive evolution is not the only way living things change. Taking a constructivist view rather than an adaptive view can help explain what we see much better. It is not just about restructuring genotypes whether through gradualism or punctuated equilibrium.

Living things are not just passive independent things that need to be reconstructed by some outside force to help them change and adapt. There are a number of internal and external natural influences that can cause new traits and help creatures self-organise and control their situations. These are covered in areas such as developmental biology, ecology, non-genetic inheritance, and social sciences. Taken altogether this presents a more holistic view that incorporates all the aspects that life is influenced by and contributes to the direction of evolution. Ie

The extended evolutionary synthesis emphasizes two key unifying concepts that feature in progressive readings of some sections of the evolutionary biology literature – constructive development and reciprocal causation.

Constructive development
Constructive development refers to the ability of an organism to shape its own developmental trajectory by constantly responding to, and altering, internal and external states [34,71,102–105]. Constructive development goes beyond the quantitative-genetic concept of gene–environment interaction by attending to the mechanisms of development and emphasizing how gene (expression) and environment are interdependent. As a consequence, the developing organism cannot be reduced to separable components, one of which (e.g. the genome) exerts exclusive control over the other (e.g. the phenotype). Rather, causation also flows back from ‘higher’ (i.e. more complex) levels of organismal organization to the genes (e.g. tissue-specific regulation of gene expression) (figure 1). Constructive development does not assume a relatively simple mapping between genotype and phenotype, nor does it assign causal privilege to genes in individual development. Instead, the developmental system responds flexibly to internal and external inputs, most obviously through condition-dependent gene expression, but also through physical properties of cells and tissues and ‘exploratory behaviour’ among microtubular, neural, muscular and vascular systems.

These ideas are not just something that the current theory incorporates. They are reconceptualising the theory and replacing some of the past ideas like convergent evolution and punctuated equilibrium which requires assumption and extraordinary coincidence with explanations that make more sense and fit the evidence better because the influences are more flexible and inclusive.

The impetus for the Extended Synthesis, a graft onto, or a major departure from, the Modern Synthesis (depending on who is describing it), was the overwhelming data generated in recent years that just didn't fit the old formula. Phenomena like self-organization, epigenetics and plasticity intruded in ways that were complementary to, and sometimes contradictory to, natural selection. Then there was niche construction to consider--where organisms invent their habitats (burrows, bird nests, bee hives, etc.) rather than being selected by their fitness to pre-existing ones. And also punctuated evolution, abrupt transitions in the fossil record, and the even more puzzling episodes of stasis.
The Origin of Form Was Abrupt Not Gradual - Archaeology Magazine Archive

The validity of this extrapolationism depends on a priori assumptions. Since gene selection predicts slow and steady evolutionary change, all evolutionary patterns ought to be gradual and uniformitarian; any failure of this prediction must be explained by mitigating factors. Most famously, Darwin and the proponents of the MS explain away the appearance of what became known as punctuated equilibria in the fossil record as artefacts of preservation biases. If punctuated equilibria are taken as real data rather than mere illusions, however, process monism is then insufficient to explain the rapid origin and diversification of taxa (Jablonski 2008, 2010). This argument is often given in favour of species-level selection (see also Eldredge 1989, Gould 2002, Ezard et al. 2012); although the emergence of species as new individuals in a MET remains controversial, the example does suffice to show that extrapolationism in the MS is a methodological choice that may not be justified by the interpretation of data within the context of the ES (again, see Okasha 2006—particularly, chapter 8).
Extended (Evolutionary) Synthesis Debate: Where Science Meets Philosophy

A subtler version of the this-has-been-said-before argument used to deflect any challenges to the received view is to pull the issue into the never ending micro-versus-macroevolution debate. Whereas ‘microevolution’ is regarded as the continuous change of allele frequencies within a species or population [109], the ill-defined macroevolution concept [36], amalgamates the issue of speciation and the origin of ‘higher taxa’ with so-called ‘major phenotypic change’ or new constructional types. Usually, a cursory acknowledgement of the problem of the origin of phenotypic characters quickly becomes a discussion of population genetic arguments about speciation, often linked to the maligned punctuated equilibria concept [9], in order to finally dismiss any necessity for theory change. The problem of phenotypic complexity thus becomes (in)elegantly bypassed. Inevitably, the conclusion is reached that microevolutionary mechanisms are consistent with macroevolutionary phenomena [36], even though this has very little to do with the structure and predictions of the EES. The real issue is that genetic evolution alone has been found insufficient for an adequate causal explanation of all forms of phenotypic complexity, not only of something vaguely termed ‘macroevolution’. Hence, the micro–macro distinction only serves to obscure the important issues that emerge from the current challenges to the standard theory. It should not be used in discussion of the EES, which rarely makes any allusions to macroevolution, although it is sometimes forced to do so.
Why an extended evolutionary synthesis is necessary

 

[Brightmoon]

Ok but biologists know this . And as you’ve said speciation depends on which species your talking about . Some organisms will not breed with closely related relatives and some will . So drawing a line between the 2 species is problematic. Red wolves will mate with coyotes. The wolf population was so low that finding a pure red wolf was a problem and people thought of them as hybrid coyotes for a while. Neanderthals and humans are separate species as well yet there was some interbreeding going on. Even middle schoolers know that some species that were once a single population can produce either fertile or infertile hybrids . this is interesting but what’s your point besides being informative? Biologists know that evolution is a complex subject . Laymen might not.

 

[stevevw]

Ok but biologists know this . And as you’ve said speciation depends on which species your talking about . Some organisms will not breed with closely related relatives and some will . So drawing a line between the 2 species is problematic. Red wolves will mate with coyotes. The wolf population was so low that finding a pure red wolf was a problem and people thought of them as hybrid coyotes for a while. Neanderthals and humans are separate species as well yet there was some interbreeding going on. Even middle schoolers know that some species that were once a single population can produce either fertile or infertile hybrids. this is interesting but what’s your point besides being informative? Biologists know that evolution is a complex subject. Laymen might not.

I think there is debate among biologists as to what role these other influences play with the Extended Synthesis and to what extent. Supporters of evolution who lean toward the standard view (Modern Synthesis) or (Neo-Darwinism) tend to see processes like developmental bias, plasticity, niche construction and extra genetic inheritance as minor influences or already taken into account but do not see these as causes of evolution.

But to many, the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) is not only an add-on to the standard theory but a reformulation in how living things evolve and change. It changes the emphasis and role of random mutation and natural selection to being less significant. It is seen as a paradigm shift in thinking. It is not just about HGT and interbreeding. That can be seen as an additional influence to the EES which can makes evolution even more complex as well as symbiosis.

For many evolutionary biologists, the research described above is not viewed as a challenge to the traditional explanatory framework, but rather developmental bias, plasticity, non-genetic inheritance, and niche construction are considered proximate, but not evolutionary, causes [88–90]. Thus, while these phenomena demand evolutionary explanations, they do not themselves constitute valid, even partial, evolutionary explanations for organismal diversity and adaptation.

For biologists schooled in population genetic or quantitative genetic thinking, the starting point for evolutionary analyses is the selection pressures [94]. Leaving aside cases where the source of selection is another organism, environmental change has been treated as a ‘background condition’ (e.g. [88]; table 2).

We suggest that structuring evolutionary explanations around processes that directly change genotype frequencies is responsible for these interpretations. A widely accepted definition of evolution changes in the genetic composition of populations, which, to many evolutionary biologists, restricts evolutionary processes to those that directly change gene frequencies—natural selection, drift, gene flow and mutation. Phenomena such as developmental bias or niche construction do not directly change gene frequencies, and hence are not viewed as causes of evolutionary processes.

Contemporary evolutionary biology textbooks support this interpretation (see the electronic supplementary material, table S1). Only selection, drift, gene flow and mutation are consistently described as evolutionary processes and coverage of developmental bias, plasticity, inclusive inheritance and niche construction is at best modest (e.g. [95]) and, more commonly, absent [96,97]. What coverage does occur is typically given the traditional interpretation outlined above.

The incorporation of new data into the existing conceptual framework of evolutionary biology may explain why calls for an EES are often met with scepticism; even if the topics discussed above were historically neglected, there is now a substantial amount of research dedicated to them. However, for a second group of evolutionary researchers, the interpretation given in the preceding section underestimates the evolutionary implications of these phenomena (table 2). From this standpoint, too much causal significance is afforded to genes and selection, and not enough to the developmental processes that create novel variants, contribute to heredity, generate adaptive fit, and thereby direct the course of evolution. Under this perspective, the sharp distinction between the proximate and the ultimate is undermined by the fact that proximate causes are themselves often also evolutionary causes [90].

Hence, the EES entails not only new research directions but also new ways to think about, and interpret, new and familiar problems in evolutionary biology.
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1813/20151019

The EES is not a simple, unfounded call for a new theory but has become an ongoing project for integrating the theoretically relevant concepts that have arisen from multiple fields of evolutionary biology. Although the EES recognizes the fundaments of the classical MS theory, it differs in its interpretation of the role of some of its elements and integrates new components, such as constructive processes of development, multiple inheritance mechanisms, niche reciprocity, as well as behavioural and cultural elements.

It is unavoidable to notice that an integration of these concepts means not a simple add-on of a few peripheral notions to the MS model without any effects on its core logic. Rather, the EES establishes a new structure of the theoretical evolutionary framework that goes beyond the reductionist and gene-centred perspective of the past. It represents a different way of thinking about evolution, historically rooted in the organicist tradition [108]. Its predictions permit the derivation of new hypotheses and thus inspire novel and progressive research in evolutionary biology and adjacent fields.
Why an extended evolutionary synthesis is necessary

Some even go further and say that these additional processes in the EES challenge the standard theory and question its core tenets of natural selection and random mutations as being a central force. The emphasis on adaptive and gene-centred evolution with the standard theory is inadequate for explaining many aspects of how living things develop and change. Still many stick to the traditionalist view and reject any change and believe everything can be explained in adaptive terms.

The number of biologists calling for a change in how evolution is conceptualized is growing rapidly. Strong support comes from allied disciplines, particularly developmental biology, but also genomics, epigenetics, ecology and social science1, 2. We contend that evolutionary biology needs revision if it is to benefit fully from these other disciplines. The data supporting our position gets stronger every day.

Yet the mere mention of the EES often evokes an emotional, even hostile, reaction among evolutionary biologists. Too often, vital discussions descend into acrimony, with accusations of muddle or misrepresentation. Perhaps haunted by the spectre of intelligent design, evolutionary biologists wish to show a united front to those hostile to science. Some might fear that they will receive less funding and recognition if outsiders — such as physiologists or developmental biologists — flood into their field.
Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?

While much of the evolutionary biology community resists the notion of an evolutionary framework that begins to consider the role of determinants beyond the gene, as the Extended Synthesis does, the momentum of the new synthesis is undeniable (see Google for "the Altenberg 16"). And there are other scientists and philosophers of science--avowed non-creationists--who say the Extended Synthesis does not go far enough in relegating natural selection to a reduced role.
The Origin of Form Was Abrupt Not Gradual - Archaeology Magazine Archive

The limitations of the MS theory are not only highlighted by the criticisms directed against several of its traditional tenets but also by the failure to address some of the most important phenomena of organismal evolution.

Indeed, the MS theory lacks a theory of organization that can account for the characteristic features of phenotypic evolution, such as novelty, modularity, homology, homoplasy or the origin of lineage-defining body plans. As will be shown below, evo-devo, niche construction, systems biology and other areas harbour the capacity to address at least certain aspects of these topics where the classical theory fails.
Why an extended evolutionary synthesis is necessary