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EMERGENT PROGRAMMING. "Genetic programming systems have always been engineered to produce emergent solutions. Through the use of genetic programming, we expect the computer to solve a problem without explicitly telling it what steps to take and in what order, often not knowing ourselves in advance what the solution should be." http://eprints.aston.ac.uk/20778/1/Emergence_in_genetic_programming.pdf View in LinkedIn

BILARVAL SPECIES. "In some spionid polychaetes, both planktotrophic and lecithotrophic larvae may occur in a single species, and in the marine gastropod Haminaea callidegenita, both veliger larvae and ‘post-larval’ juveniles are produced from the same egg mass. In another marine gastropod, Alderia modesta, the siblings are sometimes all planktotrophic, or all lecitotrophic, but sometimes both." http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1540/631.short View in LinkedIn

CAUSATION. "Selection exemplifies top-down causation, while genotype-phenotype mapping and phenotype to fitness mapping exemplify bottom-up causation...repetitive patterns emerge as a result of the presence of downward causation realized through selection”. http://eprints.aston.ac.uk/20778/1/Emergence_in_genetic_programming.pdf View in LinkedIn

WIDESPREAD PEOCILOGONY. "In other metazoans, alternative forms of larvae or juveniles eventually give rise to identical adults. This phenomenon of developmental plasticity, known as poecilogony, has been recorded from insects, nematodes, polychaetes, opisthobranch gastropods and amphibians." http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1540/631.short View in LinkedIn

EMERGING EMERGENCE. "The study of emergence is clearly important in many research fields, only in the last five years over one million scientific articles on the topic have been written (based on Google Scholar)." https://lnkd.in/daSHscy View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this section on complex life cycles. As you may surmise, the field is a bit stuck in a Victorian mindset, and needs a good kick in the rear end with deep comparative genomics. The fact remains, it is a curiosity box of strange evolutionary ticks and quirks, a funny farm looking for a cause. Nevertheless, our bespectacled Victorians did do an excellent job of curating their collection of freaks. View in LinkedIn

"LIFE CYCLE COMPLEXIFICATION is likely to originate, preferentially, in a less predictable and less stable, perhaps seasonally changing environment. This is the context where the extensive variation in external conditions is likely to release extensive polyphenic responses." http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1540/631.short View in LinkedIn

SWITCH FIXATION. "We can expect that even after genetic fixation of a developmental switch, its expression may still depend on the availability of generic cues. This is what is found in many embryonic and post-embryonic developmental sequences, when examining conspecific larvae exposed to different environmental cues, or through comparisons of the larvae of closely related species." http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1540/631.short View in LinkedIn

WHAT-A-SENTENCE. "If an animal's complex life cycle derives from diachronic fixation of the alternative phenotypes originally expressed as polyphenisms, this historical continuity is likely to have left an imprint in the internal mechanisms that mediate the most conspicuous developmental changes, as at metamorphosis." http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1540/631.short View in LinkedIn

RARE REVERSIBILITY. "Also, the probability that this sequence will occasionally reverse will probably vanish soon, as demonstrated by the life cycles of most animal species. Exceptions to this rule are indeed extremely rare. Best known is the case of the hydrozoan Turritopsis nutricula, where a medusa, under certain conditions, is able to revert to a polyp." http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1540/631.short View in LinkedIn