Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/11693.003.0005
A. Moczek
When I was a young and innocent postdoctoral researcher hunting for the elusive tenure track position, I would begin my seminars by briefly highlighting the major contributions made by alternative frameworks in conceptualizing what matters in directing evolution. Showing a slide of Darwin’s finches, I would emphasize the role of adaptive evolution and the view of organisms as Swiss army knives— accumulations of gadgets, each with a specific function honed over time. Showing a drawing of a prehistoric small mammal gnawing on a dinosaur carcass, I would highlight the role of chance and accidents in the diversification of life on earth. And lastly I would show a drawing of a bird embryo squeezed to its limits within an egg and emphasize the role of developmental constraints in determining where and where not evolution may be allowed to go. I would close this introduction with three major conclusions: First, all three of these perspectives have been incredibly illuminating. Second, they are not mutually exclusive. Third, they are all roughly equally useless when it comes to understanding the origins of novelty in evolution because se lection cannot select for traits that do not yet exist, accidents can only sort among preexisting variation, and constraints only limit options, but by themselves do not create new ones (Moczek 2008). Instead I would posit that how the origin of novelty can be integrated within a framework of descent with modification, how novel complex traits may originate from within the confines of ancestral variation, the baby steps of innovation needed to eventually yield the first limb, wing, eye, feather, photic organ, and so on all remain remarkably poorly understood in spite of over 150 years of vibrant evolutionary biology since the publication of the Origin of Species (Darwin 1859). And then I would say that my research program addresses these shortcomings by integrating the role of development into our understanding of speed and direction in organismal evolution, in par tic u lar in the origins of novelty, and that I will fi nally resolve this long-standing, foundational challenge to evolutionary biology. And that you really should strongly consider hiring me. The Shape of Things to Come: Evo Devo Perspectives on Causes and Consequences in Evolution
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