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DUSTING OFF DARWIN. "Such problems motivate the growing recognition that the Darwinian machine needs an overhaul: That self-referential evolutionary mechanisms (where the products of evolution alter the processes of evolution) create serious problems for existing theory, and that a new and expanded theoretical framework is needed that integrates “eco-evo-devo” processes (and we would add “ego” to this list also)." https://lnkd.in/dTqS4ZN View in LinkedIn

HIGHER LEVEL SELECTION. "In the absence of a higher-level selective process that might favour evolutionary processes that are successful in the long term, it seems equally likely that such organisations might constrain or frustrate subsequent adaptation." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-015-9358-z View in LinkedIn

EVOLVABILITY LIMITS. "Although it is clear that evolution can modify the parameters of variation, selection and inheritance, and this might facilitate evolvability, it is not at all clear that these organisations can be adaptations for increased evolvability." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-015-9358-z View in LinkedIn

SCALE CHANGES. "Such features change the scale at which heritable variation in reproductive success is manifest, thus resulting in the evolution of new levels of Darwinian individuality." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-015-9358-z View in LinkedIn

VARIOUS GROUP OPTIONS. "This may involve reproductive organisations that synchronise the transmission of information across generations (e.g. vertical transmission of symbionts; compartmentalisation of replicators; or linkage of replicating molecules into chromosomes), or restrict the channels of communication (e.g., bottle-necked life-cycle, germ-soma separation)." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-015-9358-z View in LinkedIn

STEPPING IT UP. "These changes, i.e. changes that prevent independent replication, act to suppress fitness differences between individuals at one level of organisation and may provide opportunities for natural selection to create heritable fitness differences at a higher-level of organisation." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-015-9358-z View in LinkedIn

A GREATER WHOLE. "These are not just changes in the characteristics of an existing evolutionary entity, but the result of changes to the reproductive relationships between evolutionary entities such that “entities that were capable of independent replication before the transition can replicate only as part of a larger whole after the transition” (Maynard Smith and Szathmáry 1995)." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-015-9358-z View in LinkedIn

SPECTRAL INTERACTIONS. "The models of May represent communities with random types of interactions (predator–prey, competition, facilitation, mutualism, commensalism) with random strength of the interactions." Not just eating one another. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12080-016-0292-1 View in LinkedIn

DATA THIN. "Of the 58 studies included in this paper, only seven provided data or cited papers with data that demonstrated environmental autocorrelation between generations. Thus, the extent to which the parental phenotype is likely to provide a cue is surprisingly poorly understood in the maternal effects literature, which substantially weakens inference of adaptive function." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jeb.12212/full View in LinkedIn

CONNECTANCE. "Robert May "showed that aspects of biological complexity, i.e., the number of species and the frequency of interactions among the species (“connectance”), constrains stability. The apparent contradiction between the notion of MacArthur and the model results of May has been a central focus of ecology ever since." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12080-016-0292-1 View in LinkedIn