linkedin post 2018-02-14 06:06:39

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NICHE ADAPTATION CAUSES SPECIATION. “Studies of fish, birds, amphibians and insects suggest that adaptations that were, initially, environmentally induced may promote colonization of new environments and facilitate speciation. Some of the best-studied examples of this are in fishes, such as sticklebacks and Arctic char.” https://lnkd.in/gninbRv View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-02-14 06:08:31

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NOT ONLY RANDOM VARIATION. “Differences in the diets and conditions of fish living at the bottom and in open water have induced distinct body forms, which seem to be evolving reproductive isolation, a stage in forming new species. The number of species in a lineage does not depend solely on how random genetic variation is winnowed through different environmental sieves. It also hangs on developmental properties that contribute to the lineage’s ‘evolvability’.” https://lnkd.in/gninbRv View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-02-14 06:11:04

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NOISE VERSUS SIGNAL. “In essence, Standard Evolutionary Theory treats the environment as a ‘background condition’, which may trigger or modify selection, but is not itself part of the evolutionary process. It does not differentiate between how termites become adapted to mounds that they construct and, say, how organisms adapt to volcanic eruptions. We view these cases as fundamentally different.” http://www.nature.com/news/does-evolutionary-theory-need-a-rethink-1.16080 View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-02-15 05:35:21

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“STANDARD EVOLUTIONARY THEORY has long regarded inheritance mechanisms outside genes as special cases; human culture being the prime example. The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis explicitly recognizes that parent–offspring similarities result in part from parents reconstructing their own developmental environments for their offspring. ‘Extra-genetic inheritance’ includes the transmission of epigenetic marks (chemical changes that alter DNA expression but not the underlying sequence) that influence fertility, longevity and disease resistance across taxa.” http://www.nature.com/news/does-evolutionary-theory-need-a-rethink-1.16080 View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-02-15 05:38:42

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NON-RANDOM VARIATION. “The above insights derive from different fields, but fit together with surprising coherence. They show that variation is not random, that there is more to inheritance than genes, and that there are multiple routes to the fit between organisms and environments.” An important paper. https://lnkd.in/gninbRv View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-02-15 05:41:18

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SPECIES BARRIERS. The next sections feature an extraordinary paper written in 2000 about the leaky species barrier, if any, in prokaryotes, a precursor to a lengthy and important paper on biological dark matter. Both papers are paradigm shifts with old thinking, heretical tomes. Both papers are unashamedly abstracted. View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-02-15 05:42:46

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SWAPPING GENES. “Accumulating prokaryotic gene and genome sequences reveal that the exchange of genetic information through both homology-dependent recombination and horizontal (lateral) gene transfer (HGT) is far more important, in quantity and quality, than hitherto imagined.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-02-15 05:44:42

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OLD CLONAL VIEW. “As prokaryotes, Bacteria and Archaea propagate themselves primarily by binary fission. Cell fusion and recombination are not necessary steps in their reproduction, unlike in the reproduction of complex eukaryotes. As a result, early models for understanding adaptation, evolution, and speciation in these organisms often focused on clonality and periodic selection.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-02-15 05:46:35

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NEW VIEW. “The traditional view, that prokaryotic evolution can be understood primarily in terms of clonal divergence and periodic selection, must be augmented to embrace gene exchange as a creative force, itself responsible for much of the pattern of similarities and differences we see between prokaryotic microbes.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-02-16 06:28:06

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MAIN LINE THINKING. “According to such models, all individuals within a species resemble each other because they descend from a single ancestor that bested its siblings by virtue of some beneficial mutation (or sequence of mutations)—fixing not only the favored mutation but the entire genome in which it first occurred. (Microbiologists vigorously debate the applicability of species concepts developed by animal and plant biologists, as if the concepts themselves were clear.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn
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