Have Systematists Defined the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis?

[Eugene Shubert]

What is your favorite list of precisely stated ideas that is, or is logically equivalent to, the "modern evolutionary synthesis"?

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

I love these precisely stated ideas that very succinctly sum up evolutionary developmental biology.......

One way of visualizing this is to use a mathematical analogy.

Functional biology = anatomy, physiology, cell biology, gene expression

Developmental biology = δ [functional biology]/δt

Evolutionary biology = δ/[developmental biology]/δt​

To go from functional biology to evolutionary biology without development is like going from displacement to acceleration without dealing with velocity.


Reference:
Resynthesizing evolutionary and developmental biology.
Gilbert SF, Opitz JM, Raff RA.
Dev Biol. 1996 Feb 1;173(2):357-72.

 

[GeoffP]

Nice ideas. Very satisfying. But I'd redefine functional biology to its sphere of environmental exposure, or more properly to the typical environmental range. Too many people consider quantitative genetics as a static, omnipresent process. And maybe the last formula should be:

Evolutionary biology = δ/[developmental biology]/δi, where i is the number of generations. Or the inverse of the interval.

 

[tuberculatious]

there is no quantitative genetics in that equation.

that's probably good.

 

[GeoffP]

You be quiet.

 

[tuberculatious]

isn't evolution the foundation for all biology? do we need a synthesis then? It's like saying you need a plan to explain the role of the concrete in a parking garage. concrete is the parking garage.

 

[GeoffP]

But it keeps doing things that we don't like, which gets us money. Eventually.

 

[tuberculatious]

and one day you will find a cure for cancer.

 

[GeoffP]

Death? They already know about that one. I need something I can exploit people with for money.

 

[tuberculatious]

what about some drug that makes boobs bigger and firmer.

 

[GeoffP]

As long as the morbidity rate is lower than silicone (or at least concealable until the FDA looks the other way), that would be a winner.

 

[tuberculatious]

And there are no side effects till the age of 40 when trophy wives don't need their frontal assets any more since they will have been traded in for a newer model.

 

[GeoffP]

Well, we won't mention that in the NIH submission.